Murray Mednick
Encyclopedia
Murray Mednick is an American playwright and poet. He's best known as founder of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival
, where he served as artistic director from 1978 to 1995. He has received numerous awards for his plays, including two Rockefeller Grants and an OBIE.
and became involved with New York's off-off Broadway company Theatre Genesis
, where much of his early work was staged. He was eventually appointed to the post of artistic co-director in 1970. In 1974, Mednick moved to Los Angeles after being evicted from his apartment while on a trip to the Yucatan on a Guggenheim grant.
Mednick founded the long-running summer workshop Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival in 1978 with funding from LaVerne University, where he was teaching at the time. The workshop was meant to be an extension of his collaborations with Ralph Cook, his mentor and founder of Theatre Genesis. In his teachings at Padua, Mednick stressed a strong grounding in theater and literary history, specifically the Ancient Greeks, Shakespeare and Beckett
. Language was especially important. In a 2001 interview, Mednick said that Padua's teaching was "based in a literary knowledge, with a seriousness of purpose that isn't necessarily commercial. Both the writing and the acting are like realism-plus. Ordinary exchanges of life are put in an occasion that heightens them. The dialogue is really the action; it has a life of its own. The story is reflected by the dialogue." Notable participants in the Workshop/Festival included Maria Irene Fornes
, Sam Shepard
, John Steppling
, John O'Keefe
, Jon Robin Baitz
and Kelly Stuart
".
Padua ceased operation in 1995 and reemerged in 2001, premiering three Mednick works as part of a tribute series honoring influential local playwrights.
Mednick has been mentioned as influencing other playwrights including Sam Shepard
, Eduardo Machado
, and David Scott Milton
.
drawn from traditional Native American folklore. The Coyote character was also featured in Destruction of the Fourth World, part of the 2009 series performed by Padua Playwrights
.
His published plays include Three Plays by Murray Mednick (Padua Hills Press), Switchback (Sun and Moon Press). His book of plays, Hipsters in Distress, Are You Lookin’?, and other plays, was published in Spring of 2005 by (Padua Hills press). Anthologized plays include Freeze, The Deer Kill, Willie the Germ, The Hawk, Sand, Switchback, Taxes, and others.
Mednick is also credited as writer for the 2005 movie Girl on a Bed, a short film adaptation of his play.
IMDB
More biographical details from official site for A Girl on a Bed
New Works By Murray Mednick
Padua Playwrights
Padua Playwrights Productions, or Padua, is a Los Angeles-based theater company founded in 1978 by playwright and poet Murray Mednick. The site-specific Workshop/Festival ceased operation in 1995 and reemerged in 2001 under the artistic direction of Guy Zimmerman.-Padua Hills Playwrights'...
, where he served as artistic director from 1978 to 1995. He has received numerous awards for his plays, including two Rockefeller Grants and an OBIE.
Life and Career
Born in 1939 to a family with Jewish roots, Mednick attended Brooklyn CollegeBrooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
and became involved with New York's off-off Broadway company Theatre Genesis
Theatre Genesis
Theatre Genesis was an off-off-Broadway theater founded in 1964 by Ralph Cook. Located in the historic St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, it produced the work of new American playwrights, including Lanford Wilson, Murray Mednick, Leonard Melfi, Walter Hadler and most notably Sam Shepard...
, where much of his early work was staged. He was eventually appointed to the post of artistic co-director in 1970. In 1974, Mednick moved to Los Angeles after being evicted from his apartment while on a trip to the Yucatan on a Guggenheim grant.
Mednick founded the long-running summer workshop Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival in 1978 with funding from LaVerne University, where he was teaching at the time. The workshop was meant to be an extension of his collaborations with Ralph Cook, his mentor and founder of Theatre Genesis. In his teachings at Padua, Mednick stressed a strong grounding in theater and literary history, specifically the Ancient Greeks, Shakespeare and Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. Language was especially important. In a 2001 interview, Mednick said that Padua's teaching was "based in a literary knowledge, with a seriousness of purpose that isn't necessarily commercial. Both the writing and the acting are like realism-plus. Ordinary exchanges of life are put in an occasion that heightens them. The dialogue is really the action; it has a life of its own. The story is reflected by the dialogue." Notable participants in the Workshop/Festival included Maria Irene Fornes
María Irene Fornés
María Irene Fornés is a Cuban-American avant garde playwright and director who is associated with the establishment of the Off-off-Broadway movement in the 1960s. Fornes themes focused on poverty and feminism. In 1965, she won her first Obie Award for Promenade and her second for The Successful...
, Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...
, John Steppling
John Steppling (playwright)
John Steppling , born June 18, 1951, Burbank, California, is an American playwright. Los Angeles native, John Steppling became a prominent figure of the Los Angeles theater scene in the 1980s. He has influenced a generation of playwrights including Jon Robin Baitz, Marlene Mayer, Kelly Stuart, and...
, John O'Keefe
John O'Keefe
John O'Keefe may refer to:* John O'Keeffe , sometimes O'Keefe, Irish playwright* John O'Keeffe , an Irish painter* John A. O'Keefe , American planetary scientist...
, Jon Robin Baitz
Jon Robin Baitz
Jon Robin Baitz is an American playwright, screenwriter, television producer and sometime actor.-Life and career:Baitz was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Edward Baitz, an executive of the Carnation Company. Baitz was raised in Brazil and South Africa before the family returned to...
and Kelly Stuart
Kelly Stuart
-Life:She lived in Los Angeles.She has been a New Dramatists writer in residence at The Royal National Theatre’s Studio in London.She lives in New York, and teaches in the Theatre Department at Columbia University.-Awards:* 2000 Whiting Writers' Award...
".
Padua ceased operation in 1995 and reemerged in 2001, premiering three Mednick works as part of a tribute series honoring influential local playwrights.
Mednick has been mentioned as influencing other playwrights including Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...
, Eduardo Machado
Eduardo Machado
Eduardo Oscar Machado is a Cuban playwright living in the United States. Notable plays include Broken Eggs and Havana is Waiting and The Cook. Many of his plays are autobiographical or deal with Cuba in some way. Machado teaches playwriting at New York University. He has served as the Artistic...
, and David Scott Milton
David Scott Milton
David Scott Milton is an American author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His plays are known for their theatricality, wild humor, and poetic realism, while his novels and films are darker and more naturalistic. As a novelist, he has been compared to Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, and Nelson...
.
Works
Mednick's works include an autobiographical series 16 Routines, Joe and Betty (concerning his parents' difficult marriage, performed in New York starting in June 2002), and Mrs. Feuerstein, as well as Sand, The Hawk, and The Coyote Cycle, a series of one-act plays involving four characters such as Spider GrandmotherSpider Grandmother
The Spider Grandmother is creator of the world in Native American religions and myths such as that of the Pueblo and Navajo/Dineh peoples. According to mythology, she was responsible for the stars in the sky, she took a web she had spun, laced it with dew, threw it into the sky and the dew became...
drawn from traditional Native American folklore. The Coyote character was also featured in Destruction of the Fourth World, part of the 2009 series performed by Padua Playwrights
Padua Playwrights
Padua Playwrights Productions, or Padua, is a Los Angeles-based theater company founded in 1978 by playwright and poet Murray Mednick. The site-specific Workshop/Festival ceased operation in 1995 and reemerged in 2001 under the artistic direction of Guy Zimmerman.-Padua Hills Playwrights'...
.
His published plays include Three Plays by Murray Mednick (Padua Hills Press), Switchback (Sun and Moon Press). His book of plays, Hipsters in Distress, Are You Lookin’?, and other plays, was published in Spring of 2005 by (Padua Hills press). Anthologized plays include Freeze, The Deer Kill, Willie the Germ, The Hawk, Sand, Switchback, Taxes, and others.
Mednick is also credited as writer for the 2005 movie Girl on a Bed, a short film adaptation of his play.
Awards and recognition
Mednick is the recipient of two Rockefeller Foundation grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an OBIE, several Bay Area Critics Awards, two LA Weekly Playwriting Awards (for Dictator and Fedunn), the American Theater Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Citation (for Joe and Betty), an Ovation Lifetime Achievement Award from Theatre LA for outstanding contributions to Los Angeles Theatre, a Local Hero Garland Award from Back Stage West for a Distinguished Body of Work, a Career Achievement Award from the LA Weekly, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s most prestigious honor, The Margaret Harford Award for “Sustained Excellence in Theater.” His work "The Deerkill" was highly regarded when it ran as an entry in The American College Theater Festival in the early seventies; Mednick provided on-site guidance for the director, Gil Lazier, and cast of Florida State University School of Theatre students.External Links
Awards information noted on Barnes & Noble synopsis of Three PlaysIMDB
More biographical details from official site for A Girl on a Bed
New Works By Murray Mednick