GEORGE HITCHCOCK SIGNED TYPESCRIPT AN INVITATION TO THE HUNT AUTOGRAPH

Description: GEORGE HITCHCOCK SGNED TYPESCRIPT AN INVITATION TO THE HUNT AUTOGRAPH 8.5X11 PAPER Before I knew him, before I learned that everything about George loomed large, I saw that physically he was big. George Hitchcock, poet-in-residence at what was then College V, the arts cluster college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was crossing the college quad the night I worked up the courage to meet him. At 6'4'', George wore dark woolen slacks, ecologically sound, furry shoes, cotton shirt and embroidered vest, corduroy jacket, a paisley ascot, loosely knotted, and a black hat with a discreet red feather in its band. His salt and pepper hair, though not horsetail garish, was long even by 1971 faculty standards. His head was huge, but not out of whack or inappropriate to his size, and he casually puffed on a briar stuffed with Revelation pipe tobacco. Of course I already knew who he was, our resident poet and the editor/publisher of kayak magazine and books. George's presence on the faculty was the main reason I'd picked UCSC for undergraduate school. In the quad that night, I had been in residence for almost a quarter, yet had not met the man I hoped to work with. To that point in my life, it felt like my biggest challenge. I needed to seize the moment, meet the maestro. If I ever hoped to take his series of writing courses, I would need his consent. Flustered, I fell into step beside him and introduced myself. He barely broke stride or glanced at me as he heard me out, but there was something in his glance that made me feel seen. That was it, a quality I would see and feel in George so many times in the years ahead. Compared to others, so little got by him. The man was sharp, and had about him the air of mystery one associates with seers and magicians. Fog like witches' hair drifted around us. He told me to drop some poems in his box. If they showed promise, I'd hear from him. The next day, after casing out the joint and making sure he wasn't in his office, I dropped a packet of half a dozen poems in the box outside his door. A few days later I found a simple typewritten note in my mailbox. It said: The poems show a little promise. You are welcome to enroll in the next workshop I offer. From that first workshop on, I worked with George through several classes and independent projects until my graduation in 1974. George could be, and often was, an intimidating, inspiring teacher. Much to the surprise of a student who was used to attending classes in the sterile atmosphere of 70s conventional classrooms, George's workshops often met at his home, first in the Bonny Doon woods, then in the Victorian showcase he later owned with his partner, the poet Marjorie Simon. It was not unusual for other faculty writers like Raymond Carver, David Swanger, Lynn Sukenick, and Brother Antoninus to drop in. Guest authors such as Jack Gilbert, Carolyn Kizer, Bert Meyers, Philip Levine, W. S. Merwin, Charles Simic, Robert Bly, also occasionally attended, and their impromptu visits and contributions contributed to the theatrical quality of the evening. Now that we are three decades into the poetry workshop culture, it might be difficult to imagine what made Hitchcock's workshops stand out, but in fact they were original and dramatic in every way. Overhead lighting was not favored. Participants sat on plush couches, chairs, and pillows. George or some previously appointed student would begin by talking about some aspect of writing, or specific authors. Guest authors would talk about their life, their work, their process. Later, George would bring out The Object (a Tahitian sailing vessel, a frightening Mexican mask). At first many self-consciously resisted. We were used to opening books, being told what to write on, listening for buzzers or bells. Some smiled, swallowing a chuckle (to make a derisive sound aloud was to invite certain death). Yet somehow in the quiet of the room, inside the nimbus of the atmospheric lighting, the spirit of invention (aided, I'm convinced, by George's calm, his theatrical bearing) came over us. The object passed around the room. For twenty minutes or so, we invited it into us. Then we wrote what came. A break followed, a break consistined of wine and beer, meats and breads and cheeses, conversation the Irish call "good crac," flirtations and inspired arguments. When we reconvened on George's signal, it was worksheet time. That was always a moment of high excitement. The two or three featured writers read aloud, the rest offered critiques. Eventually, George weighed in, provoking despair, elation, or anger (never indifference). He might growl during his comments, but one could count on no b.s. In all things George was honest. One night a student on the worksheet brought her guitar. When her turn came, she strummed and sang her poem-songs. Initial feedback was uncomfortable, stilted, kind. "Why is it," George said, "that when middle and upper-middle class white people sing folk songs, they make themselves sound like illiterate hillbillies?" The mortified student became microscopic. Shocked and indignant, we rallied to her defense. Not that most of us didn't agree with George. We did. But we were following a workshop code, coming to the defense of a peer because we feared and knew that our time was coming, and coming all too soon. Much later, I realized that George deliberately turned a class into a hornet's nest to force people to articulate arguments and positions in extreme duress. He also did it to build the community among us. He did it, too, of course, to make a point, as in Write and speak in your own voice! I remember vividly one worksheet on which I appeared. I read five poems. I thought highly of them. The comments of my peers suggested, for the most part, that they thought highly of them, too. Oh, I swelled with success. Then George spoke. "Robert," he said "I could take the best line or two from each of these and use them to make a better poem than anything you read tonight." I stared at George, wondering if he had suddenly gone mad. I struggled to contain my anger, which flagged as I acknowledged a stronger interior voice. It said, Yes, he's right. I have never forgotten the lesson. In one sentence, George schooled me in life and writing. In moments like that one, he opened our eyes to the demands of serious literature, to the rigor required of the writer who must develop and trust that merciless inner critic. He taught us to beware the quicksilver dangers of unbridled ego and unearned claps on the back. It wasn't always a fright show. George could be and often was encouraging. We lived for his pronouncement that something we had written was "eminently publishable." Once he was convinced of our seriousness, he gave much more of himself in one-on-ones, encouraging a student writer, for instance, to read recommended philosophy and nature texts, attend the opera, ballet, theatre, get a summer job doing some interesting manual labor. I remember him once taking two of us up to San Francisco to participate in a reading and get-together that included Jack Gilbert, Kathleen Fraser, Laurence Ferlinghetti, and a very angry Eugene Ruggles, among others. Ruggles demanded that George explain why James Tate was getting so much more attention than he (Ruggles) was receiving. With remarkable kindness, even tenderness, George answered that not everyone was going to be famous, and that's just the way it would always be. But fame or the lack of it had nothing to do with whether or not you wrote good poems, or lived a satisfying life. This was heady stuff for a nineteen year old to walk into. If I had to name one word that would capture the message George as teacher had for all of us, it would probably be Grow. Our George Hitchcock obscured, early on, the many other essential Hitchcocks we would eventually discover and admire. It was a natural segue to link our sharply intelligent, tough loving, and nurturing leader of writing classes with the publisher and editor of the liveliest quarterly poetry magazines in the country. We soon learned about the professional actor and playwright, whose plays have been produced more than thirty times world-wide. In a recent review in Booklist, Ray Olson commented, "...indeed, that the plays aren't regularly staged is inexplicable..." George's social activism was always center stage, but one had to get to know him much better before hearing stories about him crisscrossing California in the forties to organize dairy unions, or his experience as a journalist for the Western Worker, then as Sports Editor for the People's Daily World where he wrote his column under the by-line, Lefty (and hired Kenneth Rexroth to write an outdoor column). We knew he had testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in San Francisco in 1957, and that his testimony had been nationally broadcast. Courtesy of the Congressional Record, here is an excerpt from Hitchcock's testimony. Mr. Tavenner: What is your occupation or profession?Mr. Hitchcock: My occupation is a gardener.Mr. Tavenner: What is your profession?Mr. Hitchcock: My profession is a gardener. I do underground work on plants. The transcript of the entire event retains its timeliness, especially today. Its lessons are still clear: That bravery and wit are more than a match for those who would entrap us and severely limit our human rights. In addition to all of these compelling figures, there was the writer of fiction. In the thirties, George wrote several novels. Because he considered them not good enough, he burned them all. Later he produced two keepers, The Racquet and Another Shore, and two volumes of short stories. One of these, Invitation to the Hunt, was made into a French film of the same title and directed by Claude Chabrol. To this day, my personal favorite remains Another Shore. It is one of the most beautiful, delightful, and oddly uplifting novels I have ever read. I find that I have to pick it up every couple of years because it helps me to right my own drifting spiritual course. If Another Shore isn't a cult classic, it should be. In all personas and in all endeavors, George Hitchcock is a superb artist, first and last. We must add to this assessment the fact that he was also one of our most influential and perceptive editors and publishers. Kayak magazine was launched in 1964 in San Francisco. Each issue began with this manifesto: A kayak is not a galleon, ark, coracle or speedboat. It is a small watertight vessel operated by a single oarsman. It is submersible, has sharply pointed ends, and is constructed from light poles and the skins of furry animals. It has never yet been successfully employed as a means of mass transport. The magazine moved with George to Santa in 1968, and continued to appear through its 64th issue published in 1984. Through two decades, poets, collagists, and essayists vied to be published there. George's editorial sensibility favored political, Surrealist and Imagist poems, but he was always capable of publishing poems that fit none of these categories. Poets as diverse and valuable as Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton, Michael McClure, Robert Bly, Margaret Atwoood, Nancy Willard, John Haines, W. S. Merwin, Philip Levine, Frederick Morgan, Carolyn Kizer, Raymond Carver, Charles Simic, Bill Knott and many others regularly appeared. Issues included lively Correspondence Columns where the arguments of the day raged like so many impetuously set brush fires, articles and reviews attacking pompous literary celebrities of the moment, and, of course, the most entertaining, unforgettable rejection slips ever unleashed on hopeful writers. kayak rejection slips ended up decorating bathroom walls, foyers, kitchens, writing studios. They were laid out on tables at therapy sessions. They provoked grim, hysterical laughter, threats, and tears. Today, nineteen years after the appearance of kayak's last issue, writers who now feel fortunate to have received them in the past share laughs and stories about them. "Did you ever get the one where the guy has just been pushed down a hole? What about the one in which the man is pursued by a pack of rabid dogs?" At some point, George also began issuing books. He did so when the spirit or a particular book moved him. Again, his taste stood out. He published second books by Philip Levine and Raymond Carver, early volumes by James Tate, Kathleen Fraser, Robin Magowan, Nancy Willard, Hayden Carruth, Jay Wright, Morton Marcus, and the first two books by Charles Simic. He published transltions by W. S. Merwin and prose poems and fables by the legendary Edouard Roditi. These volumes were lovely to look at. Most were illustrated with prints or wood-cuts. All are collectors' items today, if one can find them. The magazine and press successfully created and sustained a national, even international community. At its peak, thanks to the management of Marjorie Simon, the magazine's subscription base exceeded 7,000 libraries, individuals, and universities. It is hard to imagine a small, quarterly poetry magazine today commanding the attention that kayak commanded throughout its twenty year run. Everybody wanted to be in it. It was essential for anyone who was serious about reading and writing poetry. Perhaps most important, Kayak was fun. Against a clubby, lockstep mentality, George's kayak celebrated independence. Reading kayak was like romping through a field, engaging in effervescent conversation and play. Its wit and high spirits were infectious. Each issue provided a reading experience one dreams of but rarely finds. Its followers devoured it, reading it over and over, debating its contents in classes, discussing it with friends. A brief description of the way that kayak was physically put together may give a very good sense of the spirit that made it all so special. Students, friends, and writers convened for collating parties at George's house. Directed by George, they put together, stapled, and trimmed the magazine, addressed and stuffed envelopes, affixed postage and updated subscription cards, and replenished themselves at huge tables of wine, breads, salads, pastries, cold cuts, soda, and beer. The day hummed with work and spirited gab. People talked politics, poetry and writing, baseball and tennis. They talked about love and travel, music and theatre. They swapped jokes, shared the scoop on jobs and court cases, told stories about kids and pets, and debated the growing of healthy roses and fruit trees. The poet Morton Marcus said once that the kayak collating parties were the closest he ever came to experiencing the atmosphere of a European salon. Over the last thirty years, I've attended thousands of literary gatherings, but I've never experienced anything quite like those perfect days in Santa Cruz, California when the collating parties stretched from early morning to early evening. At the end, there was the new issue of the magazine we could not wait to take home and read. George Hitchcock was, of course, the central figure, the director who guided our play. In retrospect, I see that his multi-faceted personality made George a compelling teacher. He ignited us. He freed us to dream big dreams. He encouraged us and taught us to work hard. And he also always reminded us never to take ourselves too seriously. In a recent letter to Poet & Writers, the poet Aliki Barnstone concludes her reminiscence of many nights of warmth and support at the Hitchcock/Simon home with these words: "George shows us through the example of his life that American poetry extends into the social and political, a gift that, at this painful moment in our history, I cherish most deeply." That he was able to give similar support to emerging and established professionals is perhaps even more remarkable. Raymond Carver, who taught the first writing workshop I ever attended, loved George as a friend, poet, and editor. Ray, himself a superb, gentle teacher, marveled at George' generosity of spirit. "He saved me," Ray told me once. "When I didn't think I'd write or publish another thing, George befriended and encouraged me, and published my second book." Philip Levine read at UCSC in 1973, and in introductory remarks he told a similar story. Following publication of his first book, Not This Pig, he had no success finding a publisher for his second volume. George stepped up and published the beautiful Red Dust, the volume preceding They Feed They Lion (the title poem of which originally appeared in the pages of kayak). The dual achievement of kayak magazine and press would be enough to set one's permanent place of importance in our literary pantheon. But Hitchcock's legacy includes his achievement as a poet. George's poems, it seems, have always been undervalued. It's easy to see why.In America we tend to tag people as soon as we can. Generally, we like others to be one thing (housepainter, yes, but not housepainter and gardener). We rush to make sense of someone, then lapse into a comfortable social stasis. For our own sakes, for our own sense of security, we like our defined people to stay put. In his intimate introduction to One-Man Boat: The George Hitchcock Reader (edited by Joseph Bednarik, Mark Jarman, and myself, and published earlier this year by Story Line Press), Philip Levine makes a generous confession. "For many years," he writes, "I did not take George's poetry as seriously as it merited. I think I may have been so enraptured by his presence that I assumed that was the entree of the feast he is. In 1984 he sent me a copy of a large collection, The Wounded Alphabet, which contains several extraordinary poems in his distinctive voice, poems as extraordinary as anything being written. Here is one..." End of Ambition when I get there the lastmail has been sortedmy friends gatherin their arctic parkasthey speak a languageI don't understandthey've put off theirtogas I don't recognizethe pumping stationor the grimy collierdocked at the pier I'd waited a long timeI sat in the towerfor months weavingthese wings out of rage& envy I'd almostforgotten the songof the parapet &the green visionwe saw from the cliffs perhaps it's too lateperhaps they no longercare the tide is outthe rules of flighthave been altered andmaybe there's no way nowto get beyond the cloudsof white corpusclesand the tonguesdarting & skimmingover the parched mud-flats All of his life, George Hitchcock has successfully resisted definitions. He has said of his poems that he works at them until he almost understands what's going on. Success, to him, means stopping at that point. George's poems, almost baroque in their beauty, incite radical political and psychological action. In their way, they form a call to arms, a call to living an uncompromising life. Mark Jarman told me once he wished he had George's imagery in his own poetry tool kit. I told him I felt the same way. Though identified with American Surrealism, George in his poetry cannot really be pinned down so easily. His poems, after all, are original. Emily Dickinson would have happily felt the top of her head coming off had she been alive to read them. At the close of his introduction to One-Man Boat, Levine adds, "To understate the matter, George gave the American poetry world three priceless gifts: his own writing, kayak--the finest poetry magazine of my era--and his complex and unusual presence, which served as a model for so many of us: the model of the poet as a total human being (as my mother would have said, a mensch)." For the last fifteen years George Hitchcock has concentrated on yet another aspect of his artistic life, that of the painter. Dividing his time each year between La Paz, Mexico and Harrisburg, Oregon, he has created hundreds of paintings whose style might be described as American Primitive meets Magritte. In one we are treated to the profile of a man's head, which is depicted as a tight, circling maze of letters, tools, train sets, random, foreign words, and math equations. In another an angular figure with an ochre complexion stares openmouthed at a two-faced reflection in a hand-held mirror. George's paintings and collages are regularly featured in Mexican and West Coast galleries. On June 2nd, 2003, George Hitchcock celebrated his 89th birthday. A film documentary on his life and work is currently in production. When George moved from his Bonny Doon creek side home to town in Santa Cruz in 1972, Mark Jarman and I volunteered for the task of packing up the inventory of kayak books and back issues of the magazine. Down a slippery embankment, in a small room under the house, we found ourselves alone with black widow spiders and boxes of magazines and books bearing the stamped names of Carver, Levine, Merwin, Simic, Tate. For our services, we'd been promised copies of whatever we wanted. I think I suggested we abscond with all of it, drop out of school, and open a bookshop. We thought then that we had been entrusted with the kingdom's gold. Considering the prices collectors pay for those books and magazines today, we were more accurate than we knew. All day we packed and toted, brushing aside spiders, braced by the dank forest air and the aroma of George's pipe tobacco. We talked about that smell, how it accompanied George everywhere and always comforted us. "It smells like poetry," Mark said. "We're moving the House of Poetry." It did. And we were. And lo, the deed has been done. The beast vanquished. The dragon slain. The old anthology read. I skipped last week, because …*cough*mutter*mumble*… but finished the book this week as planned. So here we are, the last three stories. “An Invitation to the Hunt” by George Hitchcock The problem with this story is that it’s not Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” It’s an okay story, but it reminds you enough of the Jackson story that you realize her absence from the collection is one of the worst marks against the entire book. This story goes like this: striving suburbanite thinks he has made it into the big leagues when he gets an invitation to the annual hunt held by all the town’s swank upper crust types. At first, he’s reluctant to go because he wants nothing to do with those people, but his friends, spouse, and neighbors all prevail upon him to accept. So, he finally does and for a bit everyone’s happy. Even his boss, who’s going to be at the hunt, stops by his desk to chat with him. All’s great, right up until the early hours before the hunt when two game keepers break into his house, drag him from his bed, and force him to run, as far off in the distance the hounds catch his scent and begin to howl. Don’t get me wrong. “Invitation to the Hunt” is a strong, visceral read, but it’s too structurally unsound. If you think about it for two seconds it falls apart completely. The size of the conspiracy required to keep the hunt’s nature secret is too large. Better to mire it in the weird familiarity of ritual, like in Jackson’s “The Lottery”, or shrink the conspiracy to the size of a family like in the film Ready or Not. Verdict: Okay, but not Shirley Jackson. “From the ‘American Notebooks’” by Nathaniel Hawthorne This is a collection of writing prompts taken from Hawthorne’s journals. They make for interesting reading and have been used by other writers to provide the kernel for their own works. Poe certainly swiped from here. “The Notebooks” themselves I hope to check out at some point. “The Dream” by O. Henry I did not know O. Henry was serving a jail sentence when he started seriously getting published. In my mind I had him filed in the cornball corner, but I will be the first to admit to being wrong on that score. A glance at his Wikipedia page paints a portrait of someone more at home in an episode of The Knick. Also, dead from alcoholism at forty-six… like holy hells. How much do you have to drink to die from it at age forty-six? Anyway, “The Dream” is O. Henry’s last story. It was found unfinished on his desk when he died and his editor wrote a meta-style ending and published it. The story is about a guy on Death Row awaiting his execution and the relationships he has with those around him. It’s a bit Runyonesque in its dialect and characterization, which is not a problem for me. Then it ends, right in the middle as the guy’s entering the chamber, with the editor pulling back to summarize the ending in broad strokes that O. Henry had not yet finished writing. This invitation to finish the story, along with the brief list of Hawthorne ideas that preceded it, are kind of the perfect finale to the collection. It’s like the stories have been a courtship and now at the book’s end you’re invited to take a turn and tell a tale. That’s it. The strangeness and mystery are yours now. ### This has been a year. Next month is a different one. I will continue to blog like a dinosaur. I suffer under the misguided notion that this gives structure to my life. This was a fun ride and I really enjoyed the collection. I’ll list my favorite ten stories in a patreon exclusive post. Next year’s book club will start in January 2021 with the recent Women of Weird Tales collection from Valancourt. George Parks Hitchcock (June 2, 1914 – August 27, 2010) was an American actor, poet, playwright, teacher, labor activist, publisher, and painter. He is best known for creating Kayak, a poetry magazine that he published as a one-man operation from 1964 to 1984.[1] Equally important, Hitchcock published writers under the "Kayak" imprint including the first two books by Charles Simic, second books by Philip Levine and Raymond Carver, translations by W.S. Merwin, and early books by Robert Bly and James Tate.[2] BiographyHitchcock was born in Hood River, Oregon, graduating in 1935 from the University of Oregon, where he was a reporter on the school newspaper. After college, he worked as a journalist for several labor movement periodicals, including The Western Worker and The People’s Daily World, simultaneously developing an interest in poetry which was fostered by Kenneth Rexroth. He joined the United States Merchant Marine during World War II, and worked as a cook and a waiter in the South Pacific.[1] After the war, he became more active in the labor movement, working to organize dairy workers in California and teaching at the California Labor School. Later, he became active in the San Francisco theater scene, writing plays and acting with the Actor's Workshop and the Interplayers while working as a landscape gardener.[1] While performing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1957, Hitchcock was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where in response to a question asking him his profession, he responded, "I am a gardener. I do underground work on plants". He refused to answer any further questions "on the grounds that this hearing is a big bore and waste of the public's money".[1] Magazine publisherIn 1958, after the San Francisco Review published one of Hitchcock's plays, he joined it as an editor. When the organization folded, he founded Kayak as a response to what he saw as the "tepid eclecticism" of the other literary journals of the day, with the journal's title representing the "small watertight vessel operated by a single oarsman" that was a metaphor for the way he personally ran the publication as a self-titled "dictator".[3] Hitchcock ran Kayak frugally as a one-man show from its creation in 1964, using an offset printing press he had purchased and having personally "designed the magazine, edited it, printed it, illustrated it" and ran parties where the printed sheets would be assembled for mailing.[1] During his Kayak period in San Francisco, ca. 1967, he was on the adjunct faculty of San Francisco State and taught a lively graduate level playwriting course out of his home on Webster Street—three hours in the evening once a week—where students effectively performed scenes they had written for assignments; often visiting poets like Robert Bly and other Kayak writers dropped in for a cup of coffee and observed quietly from the kitchen. Hitchcock moved to Santa Cruz, California in 1970 and joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he taught poetry and playwriting until 1989. In the magazine's 64 issues published before he shut the publication in 1984, Kayak included many significant poets and writers of prose, such as Raymond Carver, Anne Sexton, Robert Bly, and Margaret Atwood.[1] Howard Junker, founder and editor of Zyzzyva: The Journal of West Coast Writers and Artists, called Hitchcock "the pre-eminent maverick independent magazine publisher".[1] Hitchcock had co-written a critical satire Pioneers of Modern Poetry with poet Robert Peters in 1966. It was led to be an experiment in criticism. In these pieces where Hitchcock arranged most of the "poems" from various prose texts, and Peters wrote most of the "interpretations." These ripostes between Hitchcock & Peters were thrust against some of the excesses of Projective Verse poets, their adulators, and academic readings of poems.[4] LegacyHitchcock died at age 96 on August 27, 2010, at his home in Eugene, Oregon. He was survived by his companion, Marjorie Simon, as well as by a son, two grandchildren and a great-grandchild.[1] A Tribute to George Hitchcock was published in ViVACE 2 Literary Magazine in 2010. Included in the tribute were quirky vignettes by Hitchcock's fellow poets, colleagues, friends and former students. ViVACE was founded by one of Hitchcock's former UCSC students Christine Neilson in 2009.[citation needed] A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between characters and is intended for theatrical performance rather than mere reading. Ben Jonson coined the term "playwright" and is the first person in English literature to refer to playwrights as separate from poets. The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. William Shakespeare is one of the most famous playwrights in English literature. EtymologyThe word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause").[1] The word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsperson or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright).[2] The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.) The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605,[3] 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist".[4] It appears to have been first used in a pejorative sense by Ben Jonson[5] to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston[6] or Thomas Dekker:[7] Epigram XLIX — On PlaywrightPLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns,He says I want the tongue of epigrams ;I have no salt, no bawdry he doth mean ;For witty, in his language, is obscene.Playwright, I loath to have thy manners knownIn my chaste book ; I profess them in thine own.Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets. This view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term "playwright" later again lost this negative connotation. HistoryMain article: List of playwrightsEarly playwrightsThe earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. These early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers[8] held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.[9][a] The origins of Athenian tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century it was institutionalised in competitions (agon) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility).[10] As contestants in the City Dionysia's competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama), playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play.[11][b] For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, "the act of making". This is the source of the English word poet. Despite Chinese Theatre having performers dated back to the 6th century BC with You Meng, their perspective of theatre was such that plays had no other role than "performer" or "actor", but given that the performers were also the ones who invented their performances, they could be considered a form of playwright.[12] Outside of the Western world there is Indian classical drama, with one of the oldest known playwrights being Śudraka, whose attributed plays can be dated to the second century BC.[13] The Nāṭya Shāstra, a text on the performing arts from between 500BC-500AD, categorizes playwrights as being among the members of a theatre company, although playwrights were generally the highest in social status, with some being kings.[14] Aristotle's Poetics techniquesIn the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy.[15] He then considered elements of drama: plot (μύθος mythos), character (ἔθος ethos), thought (dianoia), diction (lexis), music (melodia), and spectacle (opsis). Since the myths on which Greek tragedy were based were widely known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material.[15] Character was determined by choice and by action. Tragedy is mimesis—"the imitation of an action that is serious". He developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist, which provides the basis for the "conflict-driven" play.[15] The Chandos portrait, likely depicting Shakespeare, c. 1611MedievalThere were also a number of secular performances staged in the Middle Ages, the earliest of which is The Play of the Greenwood by Adam de la Halle in 1276. It contains satirical scenes and folk material such as faeries and other supernatural occurrences. Farces also rose dramatically in popularity after the 13th century. The majority of these plays come from France and Germany and are similar in tone and form, emphasizing sex and bodily excretions.[16] The best known playwright of farces is Hans Sachs (1494–1576) who wrote 198 dramatic works. In England, The Second Shepherds' Play of the Wakefield Cycle is the best known early farce. However, farce did not appear independently in England until the 16th century with the work of John Heywood (1497–1580). Playwright William Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career.[17] His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[18] In England, after the interregnum, and Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy. Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson.[19] This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn. As a reaction to the decadence of Charles II era productions, sentimental comedy grew in popularity. Playwrights like Colley Cibber and Richard Steele believed that humans were inherently good but capable of being led astray.[20][21] Neo-classical theory The literary production of Aleksis Kivi, the Finnish national author, consisted mainly of plays. One of his best-known plays is Heath Cobblers from 1864.The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action, place, and time. This meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its "virtual" time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, and that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed the subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for behavior and language on stage. In France, contained too many events and actions, thus, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, and Shakespeare's plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy, improvised and bawdy commedia dell'arte and opera were more popular forms. One structural unit that is still useful to playwrights today is the "French scene", which is a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed.[22] Notable playwrights: Pierre Corneille (1606–84)Molière (1622–73)Jean Racine (1639–99)Cretan Renaissance theatreGreek theater was alive and flourishing on the island of Crete. During the Cretan Renaissance two notable Greek playwrights Georgios Chortatzis and Vitsentzos Kornaros were present in the latter part of the 16th century.[23] 19th centuryThe plays of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and other Sturm und Drang playwrights inspired a growing faith in feeling and instinct as guides to moral behavior and were part of the German romanticism movement. Aleksandr Ostrovsky was Russia's first professional playwright). Contemporary playwrights in the United States Agatha Christie, author of The Mousetrap, the longest run play in historyAuthor and playwright Agatha Christie wrote The Moustrap, a murder mystery play which is the longest-running West End show, it has by far the longest run of any play in the world, with its 29,500th performance having taken place as of February 2024.[24] Contemporary playwrights in the United States are affected by recent declines in theatre attendence.[25] No longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, theatrical productions must use ticket sales as a source of income, which has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works being produced. For example, Playwrights Horizons produced only six plays in the 2002–03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973–74.[26] Playwrights commonly encounter difficulties in getting their shows produced and often cannot earn a living through their plays alone, leading them to take up other jobs to supplement their incomes.[27] Many playwrights are also film makers. For instance, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock began his career as a playwright, winning awards for his play The Phoenix at both the New York International Fringe Festival in 1999 and the Route 66 American Playwriting Competition in 2000.[28] New play developmentToday, theatre companies have new play development programs meant to develop new American voices in playwriting. Many regional theatres have hired dramaturges and literary managers in an effort to showcase various festivals for new work, or bring in playwrights for residencies.[29] Funding through national organizations, such as the National Endowment for the Arts[30] and the Theatre Communications Group, encouraged the partnerships of professional theatre companies and emerging playwrights.[31] Playwrights will often have a cold reading of a script in an informal sitdown setting, which allows them to evaluate their own plays and the actors performing them. Cold reading means that the actors haven't rehearsed the work, or may be seeing it for the first time, and usually, the technical requirements are minimal.[32] The O'Neill Festival[33] offers summer retreats for young playwrights to develop their work with directors and actors. Playwriting collectives like 13P and Orbiter 3[34] gather members together to produce, rather than develop, new works. The idea of the playwriting collective is in response to plays being stuck in the development process and never advancing to production.[35]

Price: 221.94 USD

Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan

End Time: 2024-11-22T02:25:29.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD