Susan Yankowitz (born February 20, 1941 in
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.[Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a Private university, private liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. The college models its approach to education after the Supervision system, Oxford/Cambridge system of one-on-one student-faculty tutorials. Sara ...]
, and she earned a graduate degree at the
Yale School of Drama
The David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University is a graduate professional school of Yale University, located in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1924 as the Department of Drama in the School of Fine Arts, the school provides training in e ...
.
[William M. Hoffman, editor, New American Plays, volume 4 (1971) A Mermaid Drama Book / Hill & Wang, p.3.] She subsequently submitted a play to
Joseph Chaikin
Joseph Chaikin (September 16, 1935 – June 22, 2003) was an American theatre director, actor, playwright, and pedagogue.
Early life and education
The youngest of five children, Chaikin was born to a poor Jewish family living in the Borough Pa ...
and
The Open Theater The Open Theater was an experimental theatre group active from 1963 to 1973.
Foundation
The Open Theater was founded in New York City by a group of former students of acting teacher Nola Chilton, together with director Joseph Chaikin (formerly of ...
.
In 1968, Chaiken invited her to attend workshops at which The Open Theater was developing a performance piece on the topic of mortality. Unbeknownst to Yankowitz, she was actually one of three playwrights attending the workshops, who might be selected to write the text.
[Oral History Project.] She was eventually chosen to write the text for the play which was titled ''Terminal.'' The play opened in repertory in May 1970. Yankowitz received a Drama Desk Award for most promising playwright. In 1996, ''Terminal'' was revived as ''1969 Terminal 1996'' and revised to address the
AIDS epidemic
The global epidemic of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 2021, HIV/AI ...
.
Based upon her success with The Open Theater, Yankowitz was recognized as a collaborative playwright, and she worked with various other theatrical troupes in that capacity.
However, she found that none of these collaborations had the depth of her experience with The Open Theater.
[Oral History Project] As a result, she began writing her first novel, ''
Silent Witness
''Silent Witness'' is a British crime drama television series produced by the BBC, which focuses on a team of forensic pathology experts and their investigations into various crimes. First broadcast in 1996, the series was created by Nigel McC ...
'', and declined an opportunity to collaborate with
Peter Brooks, in order to complete it.
According to Yankowitz, she has increasingly had difficulty in having her plays produced because she writes in an expressionistic style, rather than a naturalistic style.
She has written plays about such topics as motherhood of a mass murderer (''A Knife in the Heart''), the
Jonestown massacre
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, a U.S.–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationa ...
(Slain In The Spirit'') and aphasia (''
Night Sky
The night sky is the nighttime appearance of celestial objects like stars, planets, and the Moon, which are visible in a clear sky between sunset and sunrise, when the Sun is below the horizon.
Natural light sources in a night sky include ...
'').
In 2007, Yankowitz collaborated with six other women playwrights, including ''
Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is known for her roles as National Security Advisor Dr. Nancy McNally in ''The West Wing'' (2000–06), hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime series ''Nur ...
'', to write the documentary play ''
Seven
7 is a number, numeral, and glyph.
7 or seven may also refer to:
* AD 7, the seventh year of the AD era
* 7 BC, the seventh year before the AD era
* The month of
July
Music Artists
* Seven (Swiss singer) (born 1978), a Swiss recording artist ...
''
Each playwright conducted interviews with a woman who had overcome obstacles in her homeland and had made important contributions to her community.
[susanyankowitz.com, accessed April 24, 2020.] Yankowitz interviewed Mukjar Mai and wrote the segment about her experience.
Mai had been raped by a gang in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
, and she successfully had her attackers prosecuted.
The opera ''Cheri'' is based upon the
Colette
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her ...
novel,
''Cheri''. The musical ''Slain In The Spirit'' recounts the Jamestown massacre and the opera ''
Thumbprint
A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfac ...
'' tells the story of Mai.
According to Yankowitz, the topsy turvy world of a playwright is best illustrated by her aborted efforts to collaborate on the book for the 1983 Broadway musical ''
Baby
An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...
''.
Yankowitz and her co-writer had a divisive dispute about certain language proposed to be used in the script.
Since they were both represented by the same agent, they agreed to have the agent mediate the dispute.
The dispute was resolved by Yankowitz withdrawing but being accorded with the billing “based upon a story developed with Susan Yankowitz.”
She was also accorded .5% royalty.
Yankowitz has reported that she has earned more money from that small royalty than she has earned from all of the royalties from her other plays combined.
Yankowitz has announced that she has completed the last play that she will ever write: ''The Crazy But True Tragical-Farcical Trial of Madame P, A Theatrical Bestiary Inspired by Trials of the Middle Ages wherein a Pig and Various 4-Legged and Winged Creatures Are Prosecuted for Theft, Murder, Bestiality and Diverse Crimes against Humankind''.
The play explores the trial of a 200-pound sow, who has devoured a baby, and is narrated by the sow's defense attorney.
The play has not yet been produced.
Yankowitz's papers are held in the
Kent State University
Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in As ...
Special Collections.
The papers cover Yankowitz's full career, and she submits additional items to the collection biannually.
Awards
Joseph E. Levine Fellowship in Screenwriting
Drama Desk Award for most promising playwright 1970
Massachusetts Circle Award for best play 2016 for ''Night Sky''
Selected plays
(the dates are those of production and/or publication)
*''Rats’ Alley''
*''That Old Rock-a-Bye''
*''The Ha-Ha Play''
*''The Lamb''
*''Terminal'' (1970)
*''Slaughterhouse Play'' (1971)
*''Wooden Nickels'' (1973)
*''Boxes'' (later revised as *''A Z Boxes'') (1973)
*''True Romances'' (1977) musical with music by
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein ( '; April 4, 1922August 18, 2004) was an American composer and conductor. In a career that spanned over five decades, he composed "some of the most recognizable and memorable themes in Hollywood history", including over 150 origi ...
*''A Knife in the Heart'' (1982)
*''Alarms'' (1986)
*''Night Sky'' (1991)
*''Real Life'' (1993)
*''Under The Skin'' (1996)
*''1969 Terminal 1996'' (1996)
*''Phaedra In Delirium'' (1998)
*''Cheri'' (2000) an opera with music by
Michael Dellaira
Michael Dellaira (born August 5, 1949) is an American composer. He is a citizen of the United States and Italy and resides in New York City with his wife, the writer Brenda Wineapple.
Early life and career
Dellaira was born Michael Dellario in S ...
*''Slain In The Heart'' musical with music by
Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal (; ) is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1631 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan () to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mu ...
*''Seven'' (2008) the segment on Muhkjar Mai
*''Night Sky'' (revised) (2009)
*''Thumbprint'' (2014) an opera with music by
Kamala Sankaram
Kamala Sankaram (born 1978) is an American composer, vocalist, playwright and actress. Based in New York City, she is best known for chamber operas about women who find themselves in situations where they are forced to confront patriarchal struct ...
*''Gun'' published in ''The Methuen Drama Anthology of American Playwrights 1970-2020'' (2020) Wesley Brown & Aimee K. Michel, editors, Bloomsbury Publishing
*''The Crazy But True Tragical-Farcical Trial of Madame P.''
Other literary works
*''Silent Witness'', novel about a deafmute, 1976
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yankowitz, Susan
Living people
1941 births
American women novelists
American women dramatists and playwrights
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
20th-century American women writers
Writers from Newark, New Jersey
Novelists from New Jersey
21st-century American dramatists and playwrights
21st-century American women writers
American librettists
Women librettists
Sarah Lawrence College alumni
David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University alumni