Yale Press Log

"Grenadine" author enjoys the sweet taste of victory

Playwright Neil Wechsler has been selected as the second winner of the Yale Drama Series Competition, co-sponsored by the Yale University Press and the Yale Repertory Theatre. Wechsler's original work, Grenadine, has been chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Albee as the second installment in the series, following John Austin Connolly's The Boys from Siam, which will be published in the fall.

A Buffalo-based writer, Wechsler graduated from Yale College, where he studied Philosophy and Psychology, in 1996. Grenadine tracks one man's relationships with his three best friends as they journey through an unfamiliar landscape. The formal presentation of Wechsler's award (which carries with it the David C. Horn Prize of $10,000) will take place at the Ritz-Carlton New York, Battery Park on Sunday, September 14, 2008. A reading of the play will be given by Yale Rep in New Haven on Monday, September 15.

Submissions are now being accepted for next year's competition, which will be judged by British playwright David Hare. All entries must be postmarked no later than August 15, 2008. See here for more details.
 

The New Republic on Obama's economic guru and Gordin's yikhes

In the March 12th issue of The New Republic, Noam Scheiber writes of the effect of Richard Thaler's economic theories on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Scheiber writes, "Thaler is revered by the leading wonks on Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Though he has no formal role, Thaler presides as a kind of in-house intellectual guru, consulting regularly with Obama's top economic adviser." Thaler and Cass Sunstein recently wrote Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Read more about Thaler's influence on Obama here.

Elsewhere in that same issue of The New Republic, Stephen Greenblatt discusses the yikhes--"status or honor" in Yiddish--of playwright Jacob Gordin. Greenblatt positively reviews The Jewish King Lear: A Comedy in America, saying that "the late Ruth Gay's fine and lively translation of Gordin's most famous play, along with the richly informative accompanying biographical and interpretative essays by Gay and Sophie Glazer, enable readers without Yiddish to understand what stirred Gordin's original audience so deeply." Read the entire review here.

The New Republic also extensively reviewed The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial by James Q. Whitman for their February 27th issue. TNR subscribers can read that review here.

At the Met, New York meets Oklahoma!

This year marks the centenary year of the state of Oklahoma. So, Tim Carter, author of Oklahoma!: The Making of an American Musical, is speaking today in a lecture at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. This "informative, entertaining, and topical tribute to Oklahoma (state and musical)" is part of the Met's "The Sound of Broadway" series. Also, keep on the lookout for Bud Elder's interview with Carter on WKY Radio, Oklahoma City.

For more information on the lecture, click here.

Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway in 1943 under the auspices of the Theatre Guild, and today it is performed more frequently than any other Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. In this book Tim Carter offers the first fully documented history of the making of this celebrated American musical.

Drawing on research from rare theater archives, manuscripts, journalism, and other sources, Carter records every step in the development of Oklahoma! The book is filled with rich and fascinating details about how Rodgers and Hammerstein first came together, the casting process, how Agnes de Mille became the show’s choreographer, and the drafts and revisions that ultimately gave the musical its final shape. Carter also shows the lofty aspirations of both the creators and producers and the mythmaking that surrounded Oklahoma! from its very inception, and demonstrates just what made it part of its times.

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents.

Panel at Yale in honor of Nuttall's Shakespeare the Thinker

Shakespeare's inner thought process will be the subject of a panel discussion held at Yale tomorrow, October 30. "Shakespeare the Thinker" will be at 4:30 p.m., in the Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall, 1080 Chapel Street. The panel is free and open to the public.

Among the notable panelists are literary critic Harold Bloom and Connecticut Poet Laureate John Hollander. The event is hosted by Yale University Press, the Yale Center for British Art and the Whitney Humanities Center.

According to the Yale University Office of Public Affairs, the event was organized in honor of the late A. D. Nuttall and the recent publication of his book, Shakespeare the Thinker.

A. D. Nuttall’s study of Shakespeare’s intellectual preoccupations is a literary tour de force and comes to crown the distinguished career of a Shakespeare scholar. Certain questions engross Shakespeare from his early plays to the late romances: the nature of motive, cause, personal identity and relation, the proper status of imagination, ethics and subjectivity, language and its capacity to occlude and to communicate. Yet Shakespeare’s thought, Nuttall demonstrates, is anything but static. The plays keep returning to, modifying, and complicating his creative preoccupations. Nuttall allows us to hear and appreciate the emergent cathedral choir of play speaking to play. By the later stages of Nuttall’s book this choir is nearly overwhelming in its power and dimensions. The author does not limit discussion to moments of crucial intellection but gives himself ample space in which to get at the distinctive essence of each work.

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents.

For more information about the panel discussion, click here or contact Manana Sikic at 203 432-0673.

Yale Rep gives free staged reading of John Austin Connolly's The Boys from Siam

Yale Repertory Theatre will present a free staged reading of John Austin Connolly's new award-winning play, The Boys from Siam, on Monday, October 1 at 7:30pm at The New Theater (1156 Chapel Street) in New Haven, Connecticut.

The Boys from Siam won the The Yale Drama Series' first David C. Horn Prize, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee from more than 500 submissions from the US, UK, Canada, and Republic of Ireland. In addition to the reading, John Austin Connolly was awarded $10,000 and publication of his play by Yale University Press.

Connolly's The Boys from Siam is based loosely on the lives of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), the original so-called "Siamese twins," joined at the sternum.  Much of the action of the play takes place on the day of the twins' deaths. Under the direction of Yale Repertory's resident director Liz Diamond, Broadway's Francis Jue ("Thoroughly Modern Millie") and Jason Ma ("Miss Saigon") are set to star as Siamese Twins Pigg and Pegg.

Admission is free on a first-come, first-served basis. Reservations, made by calling 1-800-YSD-CUES (1-800-973-2847) are strongly recommended. Seating is limited.

Click here to listen to a podcast of the The Yale Drama Series ceremony, held earlier this year.

Yale Drama Series Award Ceremony: Podcasted from Lincoln Center!

The inaugural Yale Drama Series award ceremony recorded on April 26th at Lincoln Center is now available as a podcast!

Listen in to the festivities.

Speaking at the event were Yale University Press Director John Donatich, Academy Award-winning actress Mercedes Ruehl, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, prize-winner John Austin Connolly, and series sponsor and prize-donor Francine Horn.

The inaugural Yale Drama Series award ceremony recorded on April 26th at Lincoln Center is now available as a podcast!

Listen in to the festivities.

Speaking at the event were Yale University Press Director John Donatich, Academy Award-winning actress Mercedes Ruehl, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, prize-winner John Austin Connolly, and series sponsor and prize-donor Francine Horn.

Yale University presents 24-hr Shakespeare Marathon

A 24-hr Shakespeare marathon, the first of its kind at Yale Unversity, will be held this weekend at the Old Campus. According to the Yale Daily News, a full reading of all of his 39 plays, 5 narrative poems and 154 sonnets will be performed and read on campus. A similar marathon was peformed at Wellesley College in 2004 and several Yale students who attended the even decided to bring the project to New Haven. Taking place in four classrooms on Old Campus, the event is open to the public and participation is encouraged.

Released last week by Yale University Press, A.D. Nuttall's Shakespeare the Thinker is hot on the heels of this one-of-a-kind event.  A. D. Nuttall's profound and elegantly written study of Shakespeare's thought is a literary tour de force, a marvelous inquiry into the questions that engrossed the playwright throughout his life. Nuttall investigates the dynamic nature of Shakespeare's evolving answers and provides for twenty-first-century readers an unparalleled guide to Shakespeare's plays.

For full text of the Yale Daily News article, written by contributing reporter Rebecca Arzoian, click here.

Eugene O'Neill on Broadway (and at Yale)!

The first American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Eugene O'Neill has grown steadily more popular with audiences and critics alike in the decades since his death in 1953. This month, Kevin Spacey and Eve Best star in a new Broadway production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, widely considered one of O'Neill's greatest works.

Perhaps the only one of O'Neill's works more highly acclaimed than A Moon for the Misbegotten is the play to which it is a sequel: Long Day's Journey into Night was first published by Yale in 1956 and won the Pulitzer Prize the next year.

Both plays, along with The Iceman Cometh, Hughie, and other classics by O'Neill, are available in updated paperback versions from Yale University Press.

Williams' Notebooks in the News Again

Edmund White reviewed Tennessee Williams' Notebooks in this weekend's New York Times Book Review, which tracks Williams' growth as a writer from his undergraduate years to his early successes of "The Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" to his troubled descent into alcohol and drug addiction.

Although continually plagued by anxiety and fear, Williams was never afraid to write, and he was haunted by the same characters in depicting the uninhibited record of his life. Edmund writes, "What becomes clear in these notebooks is that Williams feared that he himself might sink into the same madness that afflicted his sister. His writing not only extended sympathy to the wounded of the world but also acted as a form of therapy to keep him sane...This book gives us a look at the sometimes sad, sometimes shoddy backstage of real life that permitted Williams to create his unforgettable and perfect dramas."

To read the full review, click here.

Tennessee Williams' Notebooks

Tennessee William’s later life often proved mysterious to his colleagues and critics; he was infamous for being erratic, and was lambasted by critics who longed for his earlier days. His Notebooks, recently published for the first time in an annotated edition by the Yale University Press, offer insight into the playwright’s tormented inner thoughts. Simon Callow writes in The Guardian, “It was a terrible spectacle. How had the writer out of whom had poured The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, come to this? The revelation of Margaret Bradham Thornton's stupendous, superbly annotated edition of Williams's Notebooks is that nothing ever poured out of him. Everything, from the beginning, was squeezed out with agonizing difficulty, surrounded by intense self-doubt and constant premonitions of physical and emotional collapse.”

Yale Drama Series

Yale University Press and Yale Repertory Theatre are joining forces in a new venture to support emerging playwrights. They will jointly sponsor a major new playwriting competition, The Yale Drama Series. The winner of the annual competition will be awarded the David C. Horn Prize of $10,000, publication of his/her manuscript by Yale University Press, and a staged reading at Yale Rep. In addition, Yale Rep may exercise its right to option the play for a professional production. The Yale Drama Series and David C. Horn Prize are funded by generous support from the David Charles Horn Foundation.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee serves as first judge of The Yale Drama Series. His appointment extends two years; he will select winners for the 2006 and 2007 competitions. Future judges of the series will include both distinguished playwrights and directors.

Submissions for the 2007 Competition must be postmarked no earlier than July 15, 2006 and no later than August 15, 2006. See the Guidelines for Submission for precise information regarding your entry.

A Touch of the Poet

"This distinguished production builds into a commandingly theatrical experience," says David Rooney in his review of the Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet, now playing on Broadway for the first time in almost thirty years.

The cast is led by Gabriel Byrne, who gives a "haunting interpretation" of the brooding and melodramatic Cornelius "Con" Melody, the ex-army officer turned Irish immigrant clinging resolutely to the old world while forced to make his way in the new.

A Touch of the Poet is one of only two plays which survive from O'Neill's projected 11-play cycle, "A Tale of Possessors Self-Possessed," in which the playwright intended to trace the materialistic corruption masquerading as the American dream. The other play, More Stately Mansions, left unfinished by O'Neill, forms a companion piece linked by characters and themes to A Touch of the Poet.

These two works, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions, are available together in a paperback volume from Yale University Press. The version of More Stately Mansions presented in the volume is O'Neill's unexpurgated text, scrupulously edited by Martha Gilman Bower, which restores the playwright's original opening scene, a crucial epilogue, and other material essential to understanding the play.

A Touch of the Poet, a Roundabout Theatre Company production, is playing at Studio 54. It will continue until January 29, 2006.