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John Guare | |
|---|---|
 Guare at theTribeca Film Festival in 2009 | |
| Born | (1938-02-05)February 5, 1938 (age 87) |
| Occupation | Playwright |
| Education | Georgetown University(BA) Yale University(MFA) |
| Period | 1964–present |
| Notable works | The House of Blue Leaves;Six Degrees of Separation |
| Spouse | Adele Chatfield-Taylor |
John Guare (/ɡɛr/GERR; born February 5, 1938) is an Americanplaywright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author ofThe House of Blue Leaves andSix Degrees of Separation.
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John Guare was raised inJackson Heights, Queens.[1] In 1949, his father suffered a heart attack and subsequently moved the family toEllenville, New York, while he recovered.[2] His father's relatives lived there, making it an idyllic experience for him. Guare did not regularly attend school in Ellenville because the school's daily practices were not in keeping with the recommendations of the Catholic Church, causing his father to suspect the school had communist leanings. Instead of attending school, Guare was assigned home study and took exams intermittently, which allowed him time to go to the movies and see all the hits of the time.[2] This had a lasting influence on Guare and his career.
He attendedGeorgetown University and theYale School of Drama, graduating in 1962 with a M.F.A in Playwriting.[2][1] Under the direction of Georgetown'sDonn B. Murphy, his playThe Toadstool Boy, about a country singer's quest for fame, won first place in theDistrict of Columbia Recreation Department's One-Act-Play competition.[2] In 1960, the Mask and Bauble presentedThe Thirties Girl, a musical for which Guare did the book, much of the music and the lyrics,[2] again under Murphy's tutelage. Set in 1920s Hollywood, it deals with the dethronement of a reigning diva by a fresh-faced starlet.
Guare's early plays, mostly comic one-acts exhibiting a flair for the absurd, includeTo Wally Pantoni, We Leave a Credenza, produced atCaffe Cino in 1965[2] andMuzeeka (1968).[3]
Cop-Out premiered onBroadway at theCort Theatre on April 7, 1969, and closed on April 12, 1969, as part of two one-act plays, includingHome Fires.Cop-Out starredLinda Lavin andRon Leibman.[4][5]
The House of Blue Leaves, a domesticblack comedy, premiered Off-Broadway in 1971 at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre. It was revivedoff-Broadway at theLincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1986 before transferring to Broadway later in 1986.[6] The play was revived on Broadway in 2011, starringBen Stiller, whose mother,Anne Meara, had appeared in the 1971 production.[7] According to Marilyn Stasio writing inVariety the play "sets the bar for smart comic lunacy."[8]
Chaucer in Rome, "said to be a sequel of sorts to ...The House of Blue Leaves and includ[ing] the son of one of the earlier play's characters"[9] received its world premiere at theWilliamstown Theatre Festival in July 1999[10] and was producedOff-Broadway in 2001 atLincoln Center Theater's Newhouse Theater.[11]
Later plays includeMarco Polo Sings a Solo, produced at theJoseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival in January to March 1977, with a cast that featuredJoel Grey,Anne Jackson,Madeline Kahn, andSigourney Weaver.Bosoms and Neglect was produced on Broadway in 1979, and revived off-Broadway in 1998 by theSignature Theatre Company.Moon Over Miami was produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1987 and then at theYale Repertory Theatre in New Haven in February 1989.[12]
Guare's cycle of plays on nineteenth-century America are:Gardenia (1982)[13]Lydie Breeze (1982)[14] andWomen and Water (1985).[15] The so-calledLydie Breeze series, also called the "Nantucket" series, "follows a group of idealistic 19th century characters and their attempts to create autopian society. "[16]
Six Degrees of Separation was originally produced off-Broadway by Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in June 1990.[17]Six Degrees of Separation is an intricately plotted comedy of manners about an African-Americanconfidence man who poses as the son of film starSidney Poitier. It has been the most highly praised and widely produced of Guare's full-length plays.[citation needed] It was made into afilm in 1993, starring Stockard Channing andWill Smith.[18]
Four Baboons Adoring the Sun was presented on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater from February 22, 1992, to April 19, 1992, and was nominated for the 1992 Tony Award, Best Play.[19]
Lake Hollywood (1999) andA Few Stout Individuals (2002) both received their world premieres at the Signature Theatre.A Few Stout Individuals is set in nineteenth century America, with a cast of characters that includesUlysses S. Grant,Mark Twain, sopranoAdelina Patti and the Emperor and Empress of Japan.[20]
Guare has also been involved with musical theatre. His libretto withMel Shapiro for the musicalTwo Gentlemen of Verona was a success when it premiered in 1971 and was revived in 2005 at thePublic Theater'sShakespeare in the Park. It won theDrama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical as well as the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. He wrote the songs forLandscape of the Body.[21] Guare wrote narration forPsyche, a tone poem byCésar Franck, which premiered atAvery Fisher Hall in October 1997, conducted byKurt Masur with theNew York Philharmonic.[22]
Guare made uncredited revisions to the book for the 1999 Broadway revival of theCole Porter musical comedyKiss Me, Kate.[23] He wrote the book for the musicalSweet Smell of Success, which premiered on Broadway in 2002, for which he received a 2002 Tony Award nomination, Book of a Musical.[24]
His playA Free Man of Color was a finalist for the 2011Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer citation called it "an audacious play spread across a large historical canvas, dealing with serious subjects while retaining a playful intellectual buoyancy."[25]
Guare wrote the screenplay forLouis Malle's filmAtlantic City (1980), for which he was nominated for an Oscar.[26]
Guare was an original member in 1965 of theEugene O'Neill Theater Center inWaterford,Connecticut[27] and Resident Playwright at theNew York Shakespeare Festival, during which time he wroteLandscape of the Body,Rich and Famous, andMarco Polo Sings a Solo.[27]
He is a council member of theDramatists Guild.[28]
He is Co-Executive Editor of theLincoln Center Theater Review,[29] which he founded in 1987.[30] He co-produces the New Plays Reading Room Series at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts and teaches in the Playwriting department at theYale School of Drama.[citation needed]
In his foreword to a collection of Guare's plays, Louis Malle wrote:
Guare practices a humor that is synonymous with lucidity, exploding genre and clichés, taking us to the core of human suffering: the awareness of corruption in our own bodies, death circling in. We try to fight it all by creating various mythologies, and it is Guare's peculiar aptitude for exposing these grandiose lies of ours that makes his work so magical.[31]
Gregory Mosher, formerly the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, said that Guare, "along withDavid Mamet,Sam Shepard and a handful of other dramatists, reshaped the face of contemporary American theater over the past quarter century."[32]
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All plays for the stage unless otherwise noted.
Guare is married toAdele Chatfield-Taylor, a historic preservationist; she was President and CEO of theAmerican Academy in Rome. They split their time between New York City, Long Island and the historic village ofWaterford, Virginia, where his wife grew up.[27]
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