New York Theater: Tom Stoppard, 88, an acclaimed author of some three dozen plays, had an extraordinary body of work, and lived an unusual life:
Although he was viewed as one of the greatest English-language playwrights of his generation, his first language was not English.
Although he was an erudite intellectual and the most cerebral of playwrights, he dropped out of school as a teenager, never attending college.
1 comment:
Prior to this article, I knew very little about Tom Stoppard other than the content of his plays Arcadia, Travesties, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, as well as his work on Brazil. I didn’t realize he was a sort of cognitive dissonance in and of himself. I wouldn’t have guessed he was a conservative, nor that his first language wasn’t english. I have certainly enjoyed the cerebral nature of his works, as this author’s reviews of Tom Stoppard’s works seems to agree with. They bring up a good point - a few of his plays almost encourage an audience member to read it beforehand to fully appreciate their staging. While I as an individual like to do this to explore the depth of a piece, I as an audience member find it to be somewhat of a flaw in accessibility for the common theatregoer. That being said, I think that we all could benefit from a little literary critical thinking these days.
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