The Marowitz Compendium. Charles Marowitz

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СКАЧАТЬ has worked at West End theaters, including the Arts Theater, Leicester Square Theater, St. James Theater, Trafalgar Studios, and the Soho Theater, as well as Off-West End/regionally/internationally at the Young Vic Theater, Oxford Playhouse, Piper’s Opera House, Cockpit Theater, King’s Head Theater, Rose Playhouse, Theatro Technis, Baron’s Court Theater, Burton Taylor Studio, Etcetera Theater, Actors Lab Theater (Los Angeles), Hudson Theater (Los Angeles), RADA, and a festival hosted by the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon. In 2012 it was confirmed that he was the first American to direct at the historic Rose Theatre, Bankside, where the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe were originally performed. He has taught theater studies at Kingston University London and the University of London.

      Table of Contents

       Foreword by Glenda Jackson CBE

       Introduction

       Part One OUT OF THE MELTING POT (Four Excerpts)

       Dumped in the Melting Pot

       The Golden Year

       Harold Pinter: Pinteresque until the End

       Working with Havel

       Part Two PRODUCTION DIARIES

       RSC Theatre of Cruelty (1966)

       The Four Little Girls by Pablo Picasso (1972)

       The Sherlock File (1987)

       Part Three PLAYS

       The Marowitz Hamlet & Introduction (1968)

       Tea with Lady Bracknell (1981)

       Epilogue

       Remembering Charles Marowitz by Thelma Holt CBE (2014)

       Appendices

       Artaud at Rodez (1972)

       Conversation with Gaston Ferdiere

       Conversation with Roger Blin

       Conversation with Arthur Adamov

Foreword by Glenda Jackson CBE

      Charles and I first met when I auditioned for what, many months later, became the Theatre of Cruelty. He was always work oriented, a style very different to his style as a friend. But whatever his ‘style’, he was always honest, creative, rambunctious absolutely, open to ideas, hungry for innovation, cynical, caustic, fearless and a true, true friend and a true, true believer in the power of theatre, to transform, engage, question, involve, and discover.

      His was a transformative view of what a director can, perhaps even, should do. Never mis-lead, always lead, always explore, truth, truth, truth. He was deeply human, sensitive, intelligent, supportive or scathing if the situation warranted it. He was truly an explorer and I still feel privileged that I went on some of his journeys with him.

      He would close as many doors as he would open, but he never left you outside on the doorstep. I’ll never forget ‘Charles’, as I always called him, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to work with him. Even more, he was a friend, much loved, much missed but never forgotten.

Introduction

      During 1963 and 1964 Charles Marowitz and Peter Brook put Artaud’s theories into practice with the Royal Shakespeare Company Experimental Group/Theatre of Cruelty at LAMDA. This was the first full-fledged experimental project of its kind in Britain and injected Artaud’s ideas into contemporaneous theatre practice. Marowitz was the first American to direct at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the first American to direct at the Czech National Theatre (while collaborating with Vaclav Havel). A police raid on his theatre in London during the screening of an Andy Warhol film was the subject of a debate in the British Parliament involving a future prime minister. He wrote over a million words and numerous figures who have come to shape contemporary theatre and larger society were influenced in the formative stages of their careers by Marowitz. Marowitz directed the British premieres of Pablo Picasso’s The Four Little Girls, Samuel Beckett’s Act Without Words II, Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All The Luck, Saul Bellow’s The Bellow Plays, and the 1966/67 production of Joe Orton’s Loot, which received the Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year.

      It has been seven years now since Marowitz’s passing on 2 May 2014 due to complications from Parkinson’s disease. It is important with perspective and hindsight to consider the significance of his life and career and his impact on theatre and the times in which he lived. Without Marowitz the theories and ideas of Antonin Artaud would potentially remain obscure. The entire trajectory and ecology of theatre and performance since the 1960s has been considerably influenced by this alone. The present-day popularity of ‘immersive theater’ was a mode of performance originally popularized in British theatre by Charles Marowitz and Allan Kaprow in the famous ‘Happening’ at the 1963 Edinburgh Drama Conference. The conference may be seen as marking the point when the experimental practices of the Edinburgh Fringe began to proliferate more widely to the rest of the UK.

      In 1968 Marowitz started the Open Space Theatre on Tottenham Court Road in collaboration with Thelma Holt. The Open Space was an experimental theater run as a repertory company and introduced many important American writers to the British Theatre including Sam Shepard, Terence McNally, and John Guare. In many respects the Open Space was an Off Broadway Theatre based in London. It hosted an American season of plays in 1969 and continued to premiere many more American plays. The work at the Open Space also included British theatre artists such as Howard Barker and Mike Leigh in the early stages of their careers. There is a gap in our collective understanding of this important figure and a gap in currently available literature about him.

      I collaborated with Marowitz four times and he sent me his new writing for feedback over the last fifteen years of his life. In an informal sense I inherited Charles’ collection of theater journals, magazines, and trade publications, and in reading my way through the material I found a number of gems that have not seen the light of day in fifty years or more. I also had works of his that have not been published as well as several hours of recorded interviews with Marowitz and his close associate Jim Haynes. This inspired me to organise a compendium of Marowitz’s unpublished and otherwise obscure but intensely СКАЧАТЬ