Beat Generation is a play

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 written by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

 upon returning home to Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 after his seminal work On the Road

On the Road

On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...

had been published in 1957. Gerald Nicosia

Gerald Nicosia

Gerald Nicosia, born November 18, 1949 in Berwyn, Illinois, is a freelance journalist, interviewer, and literary critic.He received a B.A. and an M.A...

, a Kerouac biographer and family friend has said that theatre producer Leo Gavin suggested that Kerouac should write a play; the outcome being Beat Generation.

After being written it was rejected by theatre companies and was shelved in warehouse storage until being re-discovered in a New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 warehouse

Warehouse

A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They usually have loading docks to load and unload...

 in 2005.

A part of Beat Generation went on to provide the script for the 1959 film Pull My Daisy

Pull My Daisy

Pull My Daisy is a short film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation; Kerouac also provided improvised narration...

, which starred Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

 and was named after the poem "Pull My Daisy

Pull My Daisy (poem)

"Pull My Daisy" is a poem by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. It was written in the late 1940s in a similar way to the Surrealist “exquisite corpse” game, with one person writing the first line, the other writing the second, and so on sequentially with each person only being shown the...

" by Kerouac, Ginsberg and Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady

Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....

. Kerouac provided improvised narration to the film.

Since then excerpts have appeared in Best Life Magazine (July 2005), and the play has been published by OneWorld Classics.

External links

• Guardian Newspaper article on 'Beat Generation's' re-emergence