Alan Schneider
Encyclopedia
Alan Schneider was an American
theatre director
and mentor responsible for more than 100 theatre
productions. In 1984 he was honored with a Drama Desk Special Award
for serving a wide range of playwrights. He directed the 1956 American premiere
of Samuel Beckett
's Waiting for Godot
, Edward Albee
's Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Tiny Alice
; the American première of Joe Orton
's Entertaining Mr Sloane
, Harold Pinter
's The Birthday Party
, as well as Pinter's The Dumb Waiter
, The Collection
, and a trilogy of Pinter's plays under the title Other Places (including One for the Road, Family Voices
, and A Kind of Alaska
); Bertolt Brecht
's The Caucasian Chalk Circle
; You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running
; and Michael Weller
's Moonchildren
and Loose Ends.
Mr. Schneider also directed Samuel Beckett
's only direct foray into the world of film, entitled "Film (film)
" The short subject starred Buster Keaton
and its direction is often mis-attributed to Samuel Beckett
himself, notably during an exhibit at the Louvre
in November 2006. "Film (film)
" is silent and based around Bishop Berkeley's principle 'esse est percipi' (to be is to be perceived).
Schneider taught at Catholic University
, City College of the City University of New York, The Juilliard School (where he was founding Dean of the theatre program), and the University of California, San Diego
, whose library maintains an archive of his papers. He was associated with Arena Stage
for 30 years. He was also the co-artistic director of The Acting Company
. At the time of his death, he served as president of the board of directors
for Theatre Communications Group
(TCG).
During his lifetime, Schneider was a leading director of Samuel Beckett
's plays, and there was a Beckettian element in Schneider's death. While in London, Schneider attempted to cross a street in order to mail a letter to Beckett's address in Paris
. Stepping off the pavement, the (Russian-born) American director looked to the left for oncoming traffic ... momentarily forgetting that motor vehicles in Britain travel on the left side of the road. He was struck and killed by an oncoming motorcycle. When Beckett learned the circumstances of Schneider's death, he expressed hope that Schneider might have been intending to mail letters to several recipients rather than having stepped into the street solely for Beckett's sake. At the time of his accidental death, Scheider was taking a break from directing Other Places, a trilogy of plays by Harold Pinter
, which was reaching the end of its run in New York City
, where the theatre lobby featured his obituary in its last week of performances.
Following his death, the Alan Schneider Memorial Fund was established by TCG, The Acting Company, and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Proceeds from the Fund go to the Alan Schneider Director Award, which provides national visibility to the recipient as well as a grant
to support activities specifically tied to the development of the craft of directing. Recipients of the Alan Schneider Director Award include: Mark Brokaw, Peter C. Brosius, Kyle Donnelly, Henry Godinez, Nancy Keystone, Roberta Levitow, Charles Newell, Roman Paska, Mary B. Robinson, David Saint and Darko Tresnjak
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
theatre director
Theatre direction
A theatre director or stage director is a practitioner in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production by unifying various endeavours and aspects of production...
and mentor responsible for more than 100 theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
productions. In 1984 he was honored with a Drama Desk Special Award
Drama Desk Special Award
The Drama Desk Special Award is presented by the Drama Desk, a committee comprising New York City theatre critics, writers, and editors. It is a non-competitive award that honors an individual or an organization that has made a significant contribution to Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway,...
for serving a wide range of playwrights. He directed the 1956 American premiere
Premiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...
of Samuel 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...
's Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
, Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
's Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Tiny Alice
Tiny Alice
Tiny Alice, a three act play written by Edward Albee, premiered on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theatre on December 29, 1964.- Billy Rose Theatre production :...
; the American première of Joe Orton
Joe Orton
John Kingsley Orton was an English playwright.In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies...
's Entertaining Mr Sloane
Entertaining Mr Sloane
Entertaining Mr Sloane is a play by the English playwright Joe Orton. It was first produced in London at the New Arts Theatre on 6 May 1964 and transferred to the West End's Wyndham's Theatre on 29 June 1964.-Plot summary:Act 1...
, Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
's The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)
The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays...
, as well as Pinter's The Dumb Waiter
The Dumb Waiter
The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter written in 1957; it premiered at the Hampstead Theatre Club, on 21 January 1960...
, The Collection
The Collection (play)
The Collection is a 1961 play by Harold Pinter featuring two couples, James and Stella and Harry and Bill. It is a comedy laced with typically "Pinteresque" ambiguity and "implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses"...
, and a trilogy of Pinter's plays under the title Other Places (including One for the Road, Family Voices
Family Voices
Family Voices is a radio play by Harold Pinter written in 1980 and first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 22 January 1981.-Summary:Family Voices exposes the story of a mother, son, and dead husband and father through a series of letters that the mother and son have written to one another and that each...
, and A Kind of Alaska
A Kind of Alaska
A Kind of Alaska is a one-act play written in 1982 by Harold Pinter , the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature.-Summary:A middle-aged woman named Deborah, who has been in a comatose state for thirty years as a result of contracting sleeping sickness, awakes with a mind still that of a sixteen-year-old...
); Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a better mother than its natural parents....
; You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running
You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running
You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running is a collection of four unrelated one-act comedy plays by Robert Anderson.In The Shock of Recognition, playwright Jack Barnstable auditions Richard Pawling for a role that requires nudity and discovers the overeager actor is more than willing to...
; and Michael Weller
Michael Weller
Michael Weller is a Brooklyn-based playwright who is best known for his plays Moonchildren and Loose Ends. Weller is one of the founders of the Cherry Lane Theatre's acclaimed Mentor Project, which pairs pre-eminent playwrights with emerging playwrights for a season-long mentorship...
's Moonchildren
Moonchildren
Moonchildren is a play by Brooklyn-based playwright Michael Weller. The play chronicles a year in the life of the "moonchildren" referred to in the title: eight college students living communally together in an off-campus attic in the mid 1960s.-Performances:The work was first performed in 1971...
and Loose Ends.
Mr. Schneider also directed Samuel 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...
's only direct foray into the world of film, entitled "Film (film)
Film (film)
Film is a film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a forty-leaf shooting script followed thereafter...
" The short subject starred Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
and its direction is often mis-attributed to Samuel 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...
himself, notably during an exhibit at the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
in November 2006. "Film (film)
Film (film)
Film is a film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a forty-leaf shooting script followed thereafter...
" is silent and based around Bishop Berkeley's principle 'esse est percipi' (to be is to be perceived).
Schneider taught at Catholic University
The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America is a private university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by the U.S. Catholic bishops...
, City College of the City University of New York, The Juilliard School (where he was founding Dean of the theatre program), and the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
, whose library maintains an archive of his papers. He was associated with Arena Stage
Arena Stage
Arena Stage is a not-for-profit regional theater based in Southwest Washington, D.C. Its declared mission"is to produce huge plays of all that is passionate, exuberant, profound, deep and dangerous in the American spirit. Arena has broad shoulders and a capacity to produce anything from vast epics...
for 30 years. He was also the co-artistic director of The Acting Company
The Acting Company
The Acting Company is a theatre company associated with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1972 by John Houseman, then a professor of acting at the Juilliard School...
. At the time of his death, he served as president of the board of directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
for Theatre Communications Group
Theatre Communications Group
Theatre Communications Group is an organization dedicated to the promotion of non-profit professional theatre in the United States. TCG has over 450 member theatres located in 47 states; 17,000 individual members; and a growing number of University, Funder, Business and Trustee Affiliates...
(TCG).
During his lifetime, Schneider was a leading director of Samuel 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...
's plays, and there was a Beckettian element in Schneider's death. While in London, Schneider attempted to cross a street in order to mail a letter to Beckett's address in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Stepping off the pavement, the (Russian-born) American director looked to the left for oncoming traffic ... momentarily forgetting that motor vehicles in Britain travel on the left side of the road. He was struck and killed by an oncoming motorcycle. When Beckett learned the circumstances of Schneider's death, he expressed hope that Schneider might have been intending to mail letters to several recipients rather than having stepped into the street solely for Beckett's sake. At the time of his accidental death, Scheider was taking a break from directing Other Places, a trilogy of plays by Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, which was reaching the end of its run in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where the theatre lobby featured his obituary in its last week of performances.
Following his death, the Alan Schneider Memorial Fund was established by TCG, The Acting Company, and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Proceeds from the Fund go to the Alan Schneider Director Award, which provides national visibility to the recipient as well as a grant
Grant (money)
Grants are funds disbursed by one party , often a Government Department, Corporation, Foundation or Trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal...
to support activities specifically tied to the development of the craft of directing. Recipients of the Alan Schneider Director Award include: Mark Brokaw, Peter C. Brosius, Kyle Donnelly, Henry Godinez, Nancy Keystone, Roberta Levitow, Charles Newell, Roman Paska, Mary B. Robinson, David Saint and Darko Tresnjak
Darko Tresnjak
Darko Tresnjak is a prominent American theatre director. He has received the Alan Schneider Award for Directing Excellence, a T.C.G. National Theater Artist Residency Award, a Boris Sagal Directing Fellowship, an NEA New Forms Grant, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist...
.
External links
- Other Places, dir. Alan Schneider, at the Manhattan Theatre ClubManhattan Theatre ClubManhattan Theatre Club is a theater company located in New York City. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, Manhattan Theatre Club has grown since its founding in 1970 from an Off-Off Broadway showcase into one of the country’s most acclaimed...
(opened 17 April 1984).