Martin Esslin
Martin Julius Esslin OBE (6 June 1918 – 24 February 2002) was a Hungarian-born British producer, dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama, known for coining the term " theatre of the absurd" in his 1961 book ''The Theatre of the Absurd''. This work has been called "the most influential theatrical text of the 1960s". Life and work Born Pereszlényi Gyula Márton in Budapest, Esslin moved to Vienna with his family at a young age. He studied Philosophy and English at the University of Vienna and later studied directing under Max Reinhardt at the Reinhardt Seminar of Dramatic Arts in 1928; actor Milo Sperber was a classmate. Of Jewish descent (but not of Jewish practice), he fled Austria in the wake of the ''Anschluss'' of 1938, moving to Brussels for a year and then moving on to England. In his book, ''Theatre of the Absurd'', written in 1961, he defined the "Theatre of the Absurd" as follows: This attribute of "abs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Budapest
Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the List of cities and towns on the river Danube, second-largest city on the river Danube. The estimated population of the city in 2025 is 1,782,240. This includes the city's population and surrounding suburban areas, over a land area of about . Budapest, which is both a List of cities and towns of Hungary, city and Counties of Hungary, municipality, forms the centre of the Budapest metropolitan area, which has an area of and a population of 3,019,479. It is a primate city, constituting 33% of the population of Hungary. The history of Budapest began when an early Celts, Celtic settlement transformed into the Ancient Rome, Roman town of Aquincum, the capital of Pannonia Inferior, Lower Pannonia. The Hungarian p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. Its larger metropolitan area has a population of nearly 2.9 million, representing nearly one-third of the country's population. Vienna is the Culture of Austria, cultural, Economy of Austria, economic, and Politics of Austria, political center of the country, the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, fifth-largest city by population in the European Union, and the most-populous of the List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. The city lies on the eastern edge of the Vienna Woods (''Wienerwald''), the northeasternmost foothills of the Alps, that separate Vienna from the more western parts of Austria, at the transition to the Pannonian Basin. It sits on the Danube, and is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Magic Theatre
The Magic Theatre is a theatre company founded in 1967, presently based at the historic Fort Mason Center on San Francisco's northern waterfront. The Magic Theatre is well known and respected for its singular focus on the development and production of new plays. Sean San José is the Artistic Director. History Founding The Magic Theatre originated in 1967 when John Lion, a student of Jan Kott at the University of California, directed a production of Eugène Ionesco's ''The Lesson'' at the Steppenwolf Bar on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley. The theatre's name came from a crucial location in Hermann Hesse's 1927 novel '' Steppenwolf'': "Anarchist Evening at the Magic Theatre, For Madmen Only, Price of Admission Your Mind". The Magic's first real success came with plays written by renowned Beat poet Michael McClure, who sustained an eleven-year residency. The theatre reached a turning point when company members wanted to restructure it as a collective. Lion responded by moving th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth List of governors of California, governor of and then-incumbent List of United States senators from California, United States senator representing California) and his wife, Jane Stanford, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., Leland Jr. The university admitted its first students in 1891, opening as a Mixed-sex education, coeducational and non-denominational institution. It struggled financially after Leland died in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, university Provost (education), provost Frederick Terman inspired an entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial culture to build a self-sufficient local industry (later Silicon Valley). In 1951, Stanfor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Florida State University
Florida State University (FSU or Florida State) is a Public university, public research university in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preeminent university in the state. Chartered in 1851, it is located on Florida's oldest continuous site of higher education. Florida State University maintains 17 colleges, as well as 58 centers, facilities, labs, institutes, and professional training programs. In 2023, the university enrolled 43,701 students from all 50 states and 135 countries. Florida State is home to Florida's only national laboratory, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, and was instrumental in the commercial development of the anti-cancer drug Taxol. Florida State University also operates the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida and one of the nation's largest museum/university complexes. The university is accredited by the Southern Association of College ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A List of Nobel laureates in Literature, Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include ''The Birthday Party (play), The Birthday Party'' (1957), ''The Homecoming'' (1964) and ''Betrayal (play), Betrayal'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include ''The Servant (1963 film), The Servant'' (1963), ''The Go-Between (1971 film), The Go-Between'' (1971), ''The French Lieutenant's Woman (film), The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981), ''The Trial (1993 film), The Trial'' (1993) and ''Sleuth (2007 film), Sleuth'' (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, Ha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jean Genet
Jean Genet (; ; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels '' The Thief's Journal'' and '' Our Lady of the Flowers'' and the plays '' The Balcony'', '' The Maids'' and '' The Screens''. Biography Early life Genet's mother was a prostitute who raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption. Thereafter Genet was raised in the provincial town of Alligny-en-Morvan, in the Nièvre department of central France. His foster family was headed by a carpenter and, according to Edmund White's biography, was loving and attentive. While he received excellent grades in school, his childhood involved a series of attempts at running away and incidents of petty theft. Detention and military service For this and other misdemeanors, including repeated acts of vagrancy, he was sent at the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arthur Adamov
Arthur Adamov (23 August 1908 – 15 March 1970) was a playwright, one of the foremost exponents of the Theatre of the Absurd. Early life Adamov (originally Adamian) was born in Kislovodsk in the Terek Oblast of the Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ... to a wealthy Armenians, Armenian family.:92 At the outbreak of the First World War, the family was at risk of being interned as "enemy citizens", and only "through the special intervention of the King of Wurttemberg" were they able to escape to Geneva, Switzerland.:93 Adamov was educated in Switzerland and Germany,:93 with French language, French as his primary language. In 1924, when he was sixteen years old, he moved to Paris, France.:93 There he met artists associated with the surrealist, Surrealis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tragicomic episodes of life, often coupled with black comedy and literary nonsense. A major figure of Irish literature and one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, he is credited with transforming the genre of the modern theatre. Best remembered for his tragicomedy play ''Waiting for Godot'' (1953), he is considered to be one of the last Modernism, modernist writers, and a key figure in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd." For his lasting literary contributions, Beckett received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation." A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both Frenc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ahmad Kamyabi Mask
Ahmad Kamyabi Mask (; born 1944) is a writer, translator, publisher, and current Professor Emeritus of Modern Drama and Theater of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran. He is a prominent scholar of French Avant-garde theater and influential in the study of Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. Biography Ahmad Kamyabi Mask was born in Khusf, a village in the vicinity of Birjand in the east of Iran, in 1944 during the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran. He attended university in Mashhad, Tehran and Montpellier and taught as a school teacher. Having earned a doctorate de 3e cycle from Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III, he started as a university professor in 1978 in Tehran. He earned his doctorate d'État (state doctorate) in Comparative Literature and Theatrical Studies in 1999 and is "Professor of Humanities" since then. Kamyabi Mask authored and translated numerous books and essays in French and Persian and self-published them in Paris and with other publ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (; ; born Eugen Ionescu, ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre#Avant-garde, French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco instigated a revolution in ideas and techniques of drama, beginning with his "anti play", ''The Bald Soprano'' which contributed to the beginnings of what is known as the Theatre of the Absurd, which includes a number of plays that, following the ideas of the philosopher Albert Camus, explore concepts of absurdism and surrealism. He was made a member of the Académie française in 1970, and was awarded the 1970 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the 1973 Jerusalem Prize. Biography Ionesco was born in Slatina, Romania, Slatina, Romania. His father belonged to the Romanian Orthodox Church, Orthodox Christian church. His mother was of French and Romanian heritage. According to some sources, he ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after the unification of Germany, 1871 unification of Germany excluded Austria and the German Austrians from the Prussian-dominated German Empire. It gained support after the Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire fell in 1918. The new Republic of German-Austria attempted to form a union with Germany, but the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919), Treaty of Saint Germain and Treaty of Versailles forbade both the union and the continued use of the name "German-Austria" (); they also stripped Austria of some of its territories, such as the Sudetenland. This left Austria without most of the territories it had ruled for centuries and amid economic crisis. By the 1920s, the proposal had strong support in both Austria and Germany, particularly ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |