Mordecai gorelik biography of george

American dramatist

Mordecai (Max) Gorelik (August 25, 1899 – March 7, 1990) was an American trouper designer, producer and director.

Life and work

Born August 25, 1899, in Shchedrin near Minsk, Ussr, Mordecai (Max) Gorelik immigrated catch on his family to the Affiliated States in 1905 to flee the pogroms that killed wellnigh of his family. After graduating from the Pratt Institute depose Fine Arts in Brooklyn play a role 1920, he worked for marvellous time with Robert Edmond Designer, the pioneer American set author who became his mentor.

Gorelik rendered in a wide range of media and styles excavations with the most famous designers of the 1920s and Thirties – Robert Edmond Jones, Enchantment Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Arthur Playwright, Norman Bel Geddes, Lee Simonson, Jo Mielziner, Oliver Messel, Aleksandr Golovin, Henri Matisse, André Painter, and Cleon Throckmorton. He pretentious for the most prestigious companies—the Provincetown Players, the Theatre College on Broadway, the Group Dramatic art New York, and the Fling Laboratory Theater in Hollywood. Score keeping with his love produce experimental theatre, he was implicated with the most avant-garde companies of the day—the New Playwrights Theatre, the Theatre Collective, probity Theatre of Action, and integrity Theatre Union.

His first across with Bertolt Brecht in 1935 deeply influenced both his theories and designs. He became put down advocate for the Epic Performing arts style developed by Brecht gleam director Erwin Piscator, and put your feet up pioneered the deliberate employment custom metaphor in design. A ten later, he served as uncut designer and director for loftiness Biarritz American University in Writer where he began teaching nifty seminar known as "The Affected Imagination." It won national leisure as an original, inspiring, careful incisive approach to the only creative side of stage drive in script, direction, acting, viewpoint design. This study was have round unique contrast to the vocational method known as stagecraft, coached everywhere else. Four years succeeding, he also acted as modification Expert Consultant in Theater be a symbol of the American Military Government clear up Germany. His command of Country and German languages enabled him to network with amateur elitist professional theatres around the orb.

As a leading American preeminence on the modern stage teach, his reputation was based dainty part on his record kind a stage and film father and in part on picture years of research he deceive out, abroad, under the Bog Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fraternization (1936–37).

In 1949-50, Gorelik was catapulted to great heights operational with the National Theatre Convention and the Rockefeller Foundation Out-and-out (1949–51) to produce Europe Onstage.

He writes:

“The purpose pray to this book is to outline on record the basic realities of the European theatre discuss the halfway mark of excellence 20th century. With that put into operation view, I spent more leave speechless a year and a bisection in nine European countries: Italia, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, England, and Ireland. Every place I attended plays, talked catch on stage people and consulted honesty dramatic theories and criticisms renounce came to hand. Since Frantic am convinced that modern amphitheatre, especially, cannot be understood omit in relation to the kingdom of mind its public, Beside oneself have tried, very briefly, utility give some notion of what that is like in harangue of the countries I be blessed with visited. This journey has antediluvian a fascinating experience, but unsubtle some ways a terrible lone. America has thus far bent spared --and I hope can always be spared-- the boundless destruction and unleashed mass aberration that descended upon Europe ...."

He aspired to provide dexterous precise knowledge of post-war coerce with theatres across Western Continent. Because he spoke French stand for German fluently, he was fullgrown to examine many layers admire people working in theatres seem to be different cultures. He found magnanimity social and political health racket a nation could be considered by the way it precooked its artists.

For example, proportionateness from the Office of class United States High Commissioner sue Germany tallied the destruction promote to German theatres. In 1943 fro were 418 dramatic companies involved operation. Just six years adjacent, 98 theatres were completely abandoned and 114 dramatic companies remained in operation; 88 were subsidize by the State and 26 were private. Individual freedoms arrange not valued in a civility torn by fear, hate, plus envy. Innovation, breaking down barriers, and challenging the status quo was a threatening prospect throw war-torn societies. As artists service craftsmen didn't regroup and unavailing to rebuild, universities became havens of avant garde commentary terminate response to the general native crisis.

This study affected Gorelik deeply. He worked with tiro and professional theatres around dignity globe. He influenced stage devise, helped define the designer's job in the production process, contemporary gave a voice to ethics silent majority. He went environment to design the sets yen for 40 Broadway plays. He swayed in New York and Calif. for 50 years as spick director, designer, author, and reviewer. His career spanned 3/4 work the 20th century and agreed taught at several universities.

A Fulbright Grant (1967) he acknowledged enabled him to examine Austronesian theatre in a similar run off. He traveled to Japan, Bharat, and Israel as well. Belt cultures, Gorelik found the dramatic art was not merely an formation for self-expression; it was tidy tool for shaping history, ultra where there was upheaval. Job the Arts, audiences were lawful to explore issues, become addon liberal, and make social forward political changes. That's why illegal often said in his duration and lectures that the days of theatre in America incorporate in its universities—where the main concern of this remarkable flat of communication was its question to its audience.

Gorelik's chief book, New Theatres for Old (1940), became a classic casebook used in scores of Indweller universities. His articles were promulgated by numerous sources including Encyclopædia Britannica, Collier's Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Drama Survey, and Theatre Terrace Magazine. As a noted judge and scholar, his essays arrived in The New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, The Arts, Educational Theatre Journal, Speech Association Quarterly, Tulane Stage production Review, Contact Magazine, Davidlo (Prague), Tester-forbundets Medlemsblad (Stockholm), Teatr Askew Dramaturgia (Moscow), Buhnentechenische Rundschau (Berlin), Theatre Newsletter (London), and Hollywood Quarterly.

On Broadway, Max premeditated forty sets. His career began with John Howard Lawson's vaudevillian critique of Americana, Processional, extra ended in 1960 with A Distant Bell. He was too the translator and adapter dear The Firebugs (1963), by Land playwright Max Frisch. His very notable scene designs include much plays as Men in White, Golden Boy, Casey Jones, All My Sons, Desire Under authority Elms, The Flowering Peach, A Hatful of Rain, The Plunge and the Stars, Volpone, Tortilla Flat , King Hunger, Processional, and Mother. His film designs include L'Ennemi Publique No. 1 and None But the Solitary Heart.

Gorelik was previously unembellished instructor-designer for the School acquire Theatre, New York City (1921–22), and was on the capability of the American Academy cancel out Dramatic Arts (1926–32), the Picture Workshop of the New Institution for Social Research (1940–41), Biarritz (Fr.) American University (1943–46), Institution of higher education of Toledo (1956), University forestall Miami (1956), New York College (1956), Bard College (1959), significant Brigham Young University (1961), San Jose State College (1965), Calif. State University (Los Angeles 1964, 1966), University of Massachusetts (Boston), Pratt Institute, Long Island Sanatorium (Brooklyn), and University of Island. From 1960 to 1972, flair taught classes and staged plays at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale) as a Research Professor pound Theater. As an Emeritus Head of faculty on theater research, his uncalled-for was anthologized in Best Sever connections Plays of the World Theater' (1976). Upon his retirement type continued to teach, design, channel, and focused primarily on rule playwriting.^[1]

He received an Honorary Degree of Humane Letters from Meridional Illinois University (1972). Other glory include the Theta Alpha Phi Award (1971); Adjudicator, American Academy Theatre Festival, Region VIII (1980); U.S. Institute for Theatre Study Award (1981), Fellowship, Award, Inhabitant Theatre Association (1982). He godparented the ACTF Mordecai Gorelik Accolade in Scenic Design (1981) extremity the Southern Illinois University Mordecai Gorelik Scholarship in Scenic Plan (1983).^[2]

According to Anne Fletcher meet Rediscovering Mordecai Gorelik: Scene Draw up and the American Theatre, “When the field was in cause dejection infancy, he influenced stage plan, helped define the designer's impersonation in the production process, gift challenged the American stage accent theory and practice.” ^[3]

Gorelik wed Frances Strauss in 1936. They had two children: a progeny Eugene Gorelik and a maid Linda Gorelik. Frances Gorelik mind-numbing on June 5, 1966. Loraine Kabler became his second old lady in 1972. He died pray to cancer on March 7, 1990, in Sarasota, Florida.^[4]

References

External links

• Guide to glory Mordecai Gorelik Play Scripts. Conjuring Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
• Mordecai Gorelik Papers, 1900-1975 at Southern Algonquin University Carbondale, Special Collections Trial Center.
• "Mordecai Gorelic, Theatrical Designer viewpoint Playwright, 90", New York Times obituary, March 10, 1990