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PLAYWRIGHTS SERIES
BARD GRADUATE CENTER LECTURE HALL
38 WEST 68TH ST
NEW YORK CITY
Samuel Beckett | Thursday, September 12 6:00 pm
Samuel Beckett (1906 — 1989) was an Irish avant-garde nov-
elist, playwright, theater director and poet who lived in Paris
for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French.
His work offers a bleak tragicomic outlook on human nature
often coupled with black comedy and gallows humor.
Beckett is most famous for his play, "Waiting for Godot". In a
much quoted article the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that
Beckett has "achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in
which nothing happens, that yet keeps audience glued to their
seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different
reprise of the first he has written a play in which nothing
happens, twice."
Edward Albee | Tuesday, October 9 7:30 pm
Edward Franklin Albee III (b. 1928) is an American play-
wright known for works such as "The Zoo Story", "The
Sandbox", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". His rewrite
of the book for the unsuccessful musical "Breakfast at
Tiffany's" and adaptation of Truman Capote's 1966 book
of the same name are considered well-crafted but often
unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition.
The Pulitzer Prize committee for the best play recom-
mended "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", in 1963 but
the Pulitzer Board, which has sole discretion in awarding
the prize, rejected the recommendation and no award
was given that year.
"What could be worse than getting to the end of your
life and realizing you hadn't lived it?” —— Edward Albee
Clare Booth Luce | Wednesday, November 2 6:00 pm
Clare Booth Luce (1903 – 1987) was the first American woman
appointed to a major ambassadorial post abroad. A versatile
author, she is best known for her 1936 hit play The Women,
which had an all-female cast. Her writings extended from
drama and screen scenarios to fiction, journalism, and war re-
portage. She was the wife of Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life
and Fortune.
Politically, Luce was a Republican who became steadily more
conservative in later life. In her youth however, she flirted
briefly with the Democratic liberalism of Franklin D. Roosevelt,
as a protege of Bernard Baruch. During her two terms as a
Congresswoman from Connecticut in the early 1940s, her mod-
erate views, especially toward blacks, immigrants, and women
denied professional careers, contrasted with those of most of
men in her party. Although she was a strong supporter of the
Anglo-American alliance in World War II, she remained outspo-
kenly critical of the British presence in India. A charismatic and
forceful public speaker, especially after her conversion to
Roman Catholicism in 1946, she campaigned for every Republi-
can presidential candidate from Wendell Willkie to Ronald
Reagan.
Henrik Ibsen Thursday, December 4 6:30 pm
Henrik Ibsen (1828 — 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwe-
gian playwright, theater director, and poet. He is often referred
to as the father of realism and is one of the founders of modern-
ism in theater. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in
the world after Shakespeare, and "A Doll's House" became the
world's most performed play by the early 20th century. "A Doll's
House" is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century
marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it
concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and
children because she wants to discover herself.
In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, "A Doll's House" held
the distinction of being the world's most performed play.
Ibsen's work examined the reality is that lay behind many
façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contempo-
raries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the condi-
tions of life and issues of morality.
A series of lectures and panel discussions on important
playwrites of the 20th century