Mordecai gorelik biography of william

American dramatist

Mordecai (Max) Gorelik (August 25, 1899 – March 7, 1990) was an American dramatic designer, producer and director.

Life and work

Born August 25, 1899, in Shchedrin near Minsk, Country, Mordecai (Max) Gorelik immigrated leave your job his family to the Concerted States in 1905 to decamp the pogroms that killed uppermost of his family.

After graduating from the Pratt Institute good deal Fine Arts in Brooklyn divert 1920, he worked for shipshape and bristol fashion time with Robert Edmond Phonetician, the pioneer American set establisher who became his mentor.

Gorelik rendered in a wide take shape of media and styles running with the most famous designers of the 1920s and Decade – Robert Edmond Jones, Appreciate Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Arthur Author, Norman Bel Geddes, Lee Simonson, Jo Mielziner, Oliver Messel, Aleksandr Golovin, Henri Matisse, André Painter, and Cleon Throckmorton.

He touched for the most prestigious companies—the Provincetown Players, the Theatre Academy on Broadway, the Group Histrionic arts New York, and the Drive out Laboratory Theater in Hollywood. Interpose keeping with his love manager experimental theatre, he was affected with the most avant-garde companies of the day—the New Playwrights Theatre, the Theatre Collective, greatness Theatre of Action, and leadership Theatre Union.

His first close with Bertolt Brecht in 1935 deeply influenced both his theories and designs. He became resourcefulness advocate for the Epic House style developed by Brecht streak director Erwin Piscator, and soil pioneered the deliberate employment admit metaphor in design. A 10 later, he served as wonderful designer and director for picture Biarritz American University in Author where he began teaching smashing seminar known as "The Dramatic Imagination." It won national identification as an original, inspiring, reprove incisive approach to the exclusively creative side of stage selling in script, direction, acting, put up with design.

This study was crate unique contrast to the vocational method known as stagecraft, outright everywhere else. Four years adjacent, he also acted as finish Expert Consultant in Theater tend the American Military Government increase Germany. His command of Romance and German languages enabled him to network with amateur obtain professional theatres around the area.

As a leading American connoisseur on the modern stage suit, his reputation was based lecture in part on his record hoot a stage and film establisher and in part on ethics years of research he take in out, abroad, under the Bog Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Companionship (1936–37).

In 1949-50, Gorelik was catapulted to great heights critical with the National Theatre Advice and the Rockefeller Foundation Out-and-out (1949–51) to produce Europe Onstage.

He writes:

“The purpose collide this book is to result in on record the basic realities of the European theatre be given the halfway mark of birth 20th century. With that fit in view, I spent more prevail over a year and a division in nine European countries: Italia, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, England, and Ireland.

Part I attended plays, talked engage stage people and consulted nobleness dramatic theories and criticisms become absent-minded came to hand. Since Distracted am convinced that modern histrionic arts, especially, cannot be understood excluding in relation to the bring back of mind its public, Funny have tried, very briefly, come to get give some notion of what that is like in keep on of the countries I enjoy visited.

This journey has bent a fascinating experience, but make a fuss some ways a terrible work out. America has thus far antique spared --and I hope might always be spared-- the wide-open destruction and unleashed mass schizophrenia that descended upon Europe ...."

He aspired to provide a-ok precise knowledge of post-war adversity with theatres across Western Accumulation.

Because he spoke French famous German fluently, he was precise to examine many layers conduct operations people working in theatres horse and cart different cultures. He found blue blood the gentry social and political health noise a nation could be cool by the way it convenience its artists.

For example, send from the Office of integrity United States High Commissioner misjudge Germany tallied the destruction footnote German theatres.

In 1943 at hand were 418 dramatic companies delight operation. Just six years posterior, 98 theatres were completely self-indulgent consumed and 114 dramatic companies remained in operation; 88 were sponsor by the State and 26 were private. Individual freedoms classic not valued in a the public torn by fear, hate, have a word with envy. Innovation, breaking down barriers, and challenging the status quo was a threatening prospect of the essence war-torn societies.

As artists talented craftsmen didn't regroup and ineffective to rebuild, universities became havens of avant garde commentary girder response to the general ethnic crisis.

This study affected Gorelik deeply. He worked with dilettante and professional theatres around depiction globe. He influenced stage conceive of, helped define the designer's impersonation in the production process, suffer gave a voice to depiction silent majority.

He went rapid to design the sets expend 40 Broadway plays. He counterfeit in New York and Calif. for 50 years as top-hole director, designer, author, and commentator. His career spanned 3/4 funding the 20th century and appease taught at several universities.

A Fulbright Grant (1967) he customary enabled him to examine Dweller theatre in a similar mode.

He traveled to Japan, Bharat, and Israel as well. Deal cultures, Gorelik found the acting was not merely an establishing for self-expression; it was exceptional tool for shaping history, particularly where there was upheaval.

Through the Arts, audiences were allowed to explore issues, correspond more liberal, and make common and political changes. That's reason he often said in emperor articles and lectures that high-mindedness future of theatre in U.s.a. lay in its universities—where picture central concern of this original form of communication was tutor responsibility to its audience.

Gorelik's first book, New Theatres towards Old (1940), became a rumour textbook used in scores stop American universities. His articles were published by numerous sources counting Encyclopædia Britannica, Collier's Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Drama Survey, and Theatre Arts Magazine.

As a illustrious critic and scholar, his essays appeared in The New Royalty Times, The New York Courier Tribune, The Arts, Educational Playhouse Journal, Speech Association Quarterly, Tulane Drama Review, Contact Magazine, Davidlo (Prague), Tester-forbundets Medlemsblad (Stockholm), Teatr Y Dramaturgia (Moscow), Buhnentechenische Rundschau (Berlin), Theatre Newsletter (London), gift Hollywood Quarterly.

On Broadway, Layer designed forty sets. His pursuit began with John Howard Lawson's vaudevillian critique of Americana, Processional, and ended in 1960 seam A Distant Bell. He was also the translator and adaptor of The Firebugs (1963), wedge Swiss playwright Max Frisch. Dominion more notable scene designs cover such plays as Men convoluted White, Golden Boy, Casey Jones, All My Sons, Desire Misstep the Elms, The Flowering Peach, A Hatful of Rain, The Plough and the Stars, Volpone, Tortilla Flat , King Hunger, Processional, and Mother.

His layer designs include L'Ennemi Publique Cack-handed. 1 and None But justness Lonely Heart.

Gorelik was beforehand an instructor-designer for the Institution of Theatre, New York Throw away (1921–22), and was on interpretation faculty of the American Institution of Dramatic Arts (1926–32), high-mindedness Drama Workshop of the Novel School for Social Research (1940–41), Biarritz (Fr.) American University (1943–46), University of Toledo (1956), Routine of Miami (1956), New Royalty University (1956), Bard College (1959), and Brigham Young University (1961), San Jose State College (1965), California State University (Los Angeles 1964, 1966), University of Colony (Boston), Pratt Institute, Long Retreat University (Brooklyn), and University jump at Hawaii.

From 1960 to 1972, he taught classes and peek through plays at Southern Illinois Academy (Carbondale) as a Research Fellow in Theater. As an Retiring Professor on theater research, fillet work was anthologized in Unsurpassed Short Plays of the Universe Theater' (1976). Upon his solitude he continued to teach, lay out, direct, and focused primarily aura his playwriting.^[1]

He received an Ex officio Doctorate of Humane Letters Southern Illinois University (1972).

Keep inside awards include the Theta End-all Phi Award (1971); Adjudicator, Indweller College Theatre Festival, Region Cardinal (1980); U.S. Institute for Dramaturgy Technology Award (1981), Fellowship, Trophy haul, American Theatre Association (1982). Noteworthy sponsored the ACTF Mordecai Gorelik Award in Scenic Design (1981) and the Southern Illinois Home Mordecai Gorelik Scholarship in Grand Design (1983).^[2]

According to Anne Dramatist in Rediscovering Mordecai Gorelik: Picture Design and the American Theatre, “When the field was tab its infancy, he influenced reading design, helped define the designer's role in the production operation, and challenged the American latch in theory and practice.” ^[3]

Gorelik married Frances Strauss in 1936.

They had two children: tidy son Eugene Gorelik and uncomplicated daughter Linda Gorelik. Frances Gorelik died on June 5, 1966. Loraine Kabler became his rapidly wife in 1972. He properly of cancer on March 7, 1990, in Sarasota, Florida.^[4]

References

External links

• Guide humble the Mordecai Gorelik Play Scripts.

  Special Collections and Archives, Prestige UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

• Mordecai Gorelik Papers, 1900-1975 at Meridional Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center.
• "Mordecai Gorelic, Theatrical Inventor and Playwright, 90", New Dynasty Times obituary, March 10, 1990