Ron Whyte
Encyclopedia
Ronald Melville Whyte was an American
playwright, critic, and disability rights activist.
Whyte was born November 18, 1941 in Black Eagle, Montana
to Eva Ranieri, a homemaker and Henry Melville Whyte, a railroad machinist. The family moved to Great Falls, Montana
and later to St. Paul, Minnesota, where Whyte attended University of Minnesota
High School, studying with Arthur H. Ballet, among others. Whyte completed his studies in Spokane, Washington
, where the family moved as his father held a series of increasingly responsible positions with the Great Northern Railway.
As a young man, Whyte was a regular contributor to the Baum Bugle of L. Frank Baum
scholarship and the Baker Street Journal ("an irregular quarterly of Sherlockiana," and the journal of the Baker Street Irregulars
), among other publications.
After graduating from high school, Whyte attended Whitworth College in Spokane for one year, then transferred to San Francisco State University
, where he studied drama. Among his professors was Kay Boyle
. After receiving his B.A., he was accepted for graduate study at the Yale School of Drama
, from which he received the M.F.A. degree in 1967. His professors at Yale included the Dean, Robert Brustein
, theatre historian John Gassner, film and theatre critic Stanley Kauffmann
, critic Harold Clurman
, with whom he later worked at The Actors Studio in New York, Stella Adler
, and others. He subsequently enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
, from which received the Master of Divinity degree in 1976. At Union, his mentor was the founder of Black Liberation Theology, the Rev. Dr. James H. Cone. He was a member of The Riverside Church in the City of New York during the ministry of the Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin
and in care for ordination as a minister in the United Church of Christ
.
Whyte's life was informed by, if not defined by, physical disability. Born with congenital birth defects of both legs and one arm, as a child he was put in leg braces built by his father and walked with the help of these devices, since his legs did not have the strength to support him otherwise. Run over by a schoolbus in an accident while he was in high school, both of his ankles were crushed, furthering his disabilities. By the time he was at the end of his college years in San Francisco, he opted to have then-experimental surgery to have both legs amputated below the knees and after a period of recovery, began wearing the prosthetic legs that he would wear for the rest of his life.
Whyte developed as a playwright while in San Francisco, writing the first of over a hundred playscripts and screenplays that form the body of his work. While at the Yale School of Drama, he wrote the first of many works that would see commercial production. Welcome To Andromeda, a one-act play for two characters written in 1968, was produced in workshop in 1969 at The American Place Theatre in New York before going on to a commercial Off-Broadway production at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1973. (See Lucille Lortel Archives for credits for opening night http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=show&id=3251. It received numerous positive reviews and was named one the Ten Best Plays of 1973 by Time Magazine "The hero was almost totally paralyzed, but Ron Whyte's first play quivered with instinctual dramatic life." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910923,00.html. David Richards, theatre critic for the Washington Star (and later for The New York Times
) called Whyte "the most original dramatic voice since Edward Albee
." Welcome To Andromeda received subsequent productions in scores of theatres around the country and the world including Postus-Teatret in Copenhagen, Denmark, and The Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1975, among many others. Published in an acting edition by Samuel French
, it continues to be performed by professional and amateur groups worldwide every year.
Whyte's first major theatrical production was the play-with-music or musical Horatio, based on the life and stories of Horatio Alger, with music by Broadway composer Mel Marvin. Horatio received productions at the Loretto-Hilton Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, 1970; Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., 1974, and the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, 1976.
Another major production was the autobiographical play-with-music Funeral March for a One-Man Band, with earlier versions including the title X: Notes on a Personal Mythology. Funeral March received its first Off-Broadway production at Westbeth Theatre Center in New York in 1978 and subsequent productions at the St. Nicholas Theatre in Chicago
in 1979 and 1981. The 1979 Chicago production received four Joseph Jefferson Awards
including Best Musical Production. The play had music again by Mel Marvin and was conceived in collaboration with H. Thomas Moore (Tom Moore
) http://www.filmreference.com/film/3/Tom-Moore.html, who went on to fame as the director of the musical Grease
on Broadway as well as many other theatrical and television productions.
Another play of note was an adaptation of Victor Hugo
's Notre Dame de Paris
(The Hunchback of Notre Dame), produced first at the American Festival Theatre in Milford, New Hampshire in 1979 and subsequently expanded in a production at Joseph Papp
's New York Shakespeare Festival
(The Public Theatre) in 1981. Mr. Papp commissioned a further expanded version of the play that was never produced.
While serving both as Playwright-in-Residence as well as Coordinator of the historic Playwrights and Directors Unit (established by Clifford Odets
) at The Actors Studio working directly with Harold Clurman
and Lee Strasberg
, Whyte organized a 1981 Festival of New Plays that included first productions of works by such noted playwrights as Ishmael Reed
, John Ford Noonan
, John Guare
, and Christopher Durang
, among others. Whyte left The Actors Studio following the death of Strasberg and leadership of the Playwrights and Directors Unit was taken over by Elia Kazan
and Arthur Penn
.
While at The Actors Studio, Whyte wrote a second act for Welcome To Andromeda and the now two-act play was premiered with Ellen Burstyn in the role of the Nurse in a limited-run, standing-room-only production at the Studio. The two-act version was titled Andromeda II. Whyte wrote a third act later, Andromeda III, that has not yet been performed.
Perhaps Whyte's most significant work was the two-act play, Disability: A Comedy. Drawing on Whyte's own experience as a disabled person, the play told the story of a young quadriplegic man, Larry, trapped at home in a Manhattan apartment with his parents, who takes out a personal ad to meet a young woman. The events that transpire when the young woman, Jayne, arrives at his door, are both dramatic and darkly comedic. Whyte himself dedicated the play to Sir Alfred Hitchcock and the end has a Hitchcockian twist that continues provoke intense audience response. Disability was first performed in workshop at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in the Old Vat Room as a workshop in 1979 and in full production in Arena's Kreeger Theatre in 1982. Subsequent productions followed at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the Odyssey Theatre, also in Los Angeles, where the play received a Drama-Logue Award for Best Play. Disability was performed at the Actors Theatre of St. Paul, for which production the play was nominated for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize
in Drama. In 1990, it was produced at the Detroit Repertory Company. Most recently, Disability was produced in 2003 at Frank Condon's River Stage in Sacramento, California, where the Sacramento Bee wrote: "... amazing ... excellent ... Rarely does a play energize, stimulate--and surprise--the way DISABILITY does." http://www.riverstage.org/reviews03_04.htm
As a screenwriter, Whyte wrote three films that received commercial theatrical release: Valentine Eve (1967); The Happiness Cage (later retitled The Mind Snatchers) (1972), directed by Bernard Girard; and Pigeons (Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker) (1970), directed by John Dexter
. He also wrote teleplays for several programs including Look Up and Live on CBS-TV and the syndicated series Tales from the Dark Side.
As an editor and writer, Whyte served as Arts Editor and Book Review Editor of The SoHo Weekly News in New York; Drama Editor of The American Book Review; and a book reviewer for many other publications. His books included The Flower That Finally Grew (New York: Crown Publishers, 1971); Welcome To Andromeda and Variety Obit (New York: Samuel French and Co., 1973), and Disability: A Comedy (New York: Theatre Development Fund, 1983). With the late art critic Gregory Battcock and Paul William Bradley he coauthored a textbook on cinema history entitled The Story of Film (1979), contracted with E.P. Dutton but unpublished.
While a student at Yale School of Drama, Whyte worked as a writer in the 1960s for [Marvel Comics], authoring stories in Marvel's Western comic books including Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, and Kid Colt. A comic-book character created by Whyte at Yale, "Method Man," was the subject of a graphic issue of 1967 Yale Drama Review. Whyte also wrote for the magazines Creepy and Eerie in the 1960s. (http://www.bailsprojects.com/(S(ukui2u3jm5fttr45eswkihf0))/whoswho.aspx?mode=AtoZsearch&id=WHYTE%2C+RON) Whyte compiled his experiences as an author during the Golden Age of Marvel into a book, contracted with St. Martin's Press
but never completed before his death.
Whyte's work as a disability rights activist led him to found The National Task Force for Disability and the Arts in 1978 and brought him in advisory capacities onto boards and committees including the New York State Council on the Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. He visited with and spoke to disabled young people and adults in residential centers, provided counseling and mentoring to disabled artists, and was interviewed regularly about both his art and his disability activism. His activism was had a downside in that he developed an unwarranted reputation for demanding accessibility at the theatres where his
Whyte received many honors and awards in his lifetime, including several Sam Shubert Fellowships while at the Yale School of Drama
; a Rockefeller Foundation
Playwrights Fellowship in 1981; TIME Magazine Ten Best Plays listing in 1973; the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Musical in Chicago in 1979; and nomination for the Pulitzer Prize
in Drama in 1983, and the Drama-Logue Award for Best Play in Los Angeles in both 1978 and 1989.
Whyte died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1989 after going into a decline for several years after having an ill-fitting pair of prosthetic legs built that damaged his circulatory system and brought him into a state of constant pain during the last years of his life—during which he nonetheless continued to write prolifically, creating five or ten new play scripts each year up to the last months of his life. This last half decade of Whyte's life can best be described as tragic, as his health deteriorated even while he saw a number of new productions of his work—including one of Disability: A Comedy that opened at the time of his death. Much time in his last years was spent consulting with physicians and attempting to have problems with his prostheses remedied, but to no avail. The week before his death, he received an inquiry call from a representative of the MacArthur Foundation "genius" awards committee; it will never be known how that process might have developed. He died on September 13, 1989 while summering in the home of Rep. Paula Elliott Bradley and Dr. William Lee Bradley
in New Haven, father and mother of his longtime partner. He was buried in the Grove Street Cemetery in his beloved New Haven, directly adjacent to the graves of such quintessentially American figures as Lyman Beecher
, Noah Webster
, and Eli Whitney
.
Whyte's life partner, Paul William Bradley, a minister and seminary administrator, survived him and continues to manage his estate and ongoing productions of his plays and other literary enterprises. Whyte's archives and papers are in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
of Yale University
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/MSS_PreliminaryLists/WHYTE.HTM in New Haven, Connecticut. Whyte's library of 5,000 drama and theatre books was donated after his death primarily to The New School
's library in New York City, as well as several hundred items to the Esther Raushenbush Library(http://www.slc.edu/library/) at Sarah Lawrence College
. Several hundred non-theatre-related items from Whyte's collection are held by the General Research Division of The New York Public Library in New York City. The manuscript of The Story of Film is held by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art (http://www.aaa.si.edu/) of the Smithsonian Institution
in New York City in its Gregory Battcock Papers ("Gregory Battcock," http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/collections_list.cfm/search_letter/B).
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
playwright, critic, and disability rights activist.
Whyte was born November 18, 1941 in Black Eagle, Montana
Black Eagle, Montana
Black Eagle is a census-designated place in Cascade County, Montana, United States. The population was 914 at the 2000 census. It is part of the 'Great Falls, Montana Metropolitan Statistical Area'.-Geography:...
to Eva Ranieri, a homemaker and Henry Melville Whyte, a railroad machinist. The family moved to Great Falls, Montana
Great Falls, Montana
Great Falls is a city in and the county seat of Cascade County, Montana, United States. The population was 58,505 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Great Falls, Montana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Cascade County...
and later to St. Paul, Minnesota, where Whyte attended University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
High School, studying with Arthur H. Ballet, among others. Whyte completed his studies in Spokane, Washington
Spokane, Washington
Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...
, where the family moved as his father held a series of increasingly responsible positions with the Great Northern Railway.
As a young man, Whyte was a regular contributor to the Baum Bugle of L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
scholarship and the Baker Street Journal ("an irregular quarterly of Sherlockiana," and the journal of the Baker Street Irregulars
Baker Street Irregulars
The Baker Street Irregulars are any of several different groups, all named after the original, from various Sherlock Holmes stories in which they are a gang of young street children whom Holmes often employs to aid his cases.- Original :...
), among other publications.
After graduating from high school, Whyte attended Whitworth College in Spokane for one year, then transferred to San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
, where he studied drama. Among his professors was Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
. After receiving his B.A., he was accepted for graduate study at the Yale School of Drama
Yale School of Drama
The Yale School of Drama is a graduate professional school of Yale University providing training in every discipline of the theatre: acting, design , directing, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, playwriting, stage management, sound design, technical design and production, and theater...
, from which he received the M.F.A. degree in 1967. His professors at Yale included the Dean, Robert Brustein
Robert Brustein
Robert Sanford Brustein is an American theatrical critic, producer, playwright and educator. He founded both Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remains a Creative Consultant, and has been the theatre critic for...
, theatre historian John Gassner, film and theatre critic Stanley Kauffmann
Stanley Kauffmann
Stanley Kauffmann is an American author, editor, and critic of film and theatre. He has written for The New Republic since 1958 and currently contributes film criticism to that magazine....
, critic Harold Clurman
Harold Clurman
Harold Edgar Clurman was a visionary American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of the New York City's Group Theatre...
, with whom he later worked at The Actors Studio in New York, Stella Adler
Stella Adler
Stella Adler was an American actress and an acclaimed acting teacher, who founded the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City and the The Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Los Angeles with long-time protege Joanne Linville, who continues to teach and furthers Adler's legacy...
, and others. He subsequently enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a preeminent independent graduate school of theology, located in Manhattan between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, 120th to 122nd Streets. The seminary was founded in 1836 under the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with nearby Columbia...
, from which received the Master of Divinity degree in 1976. At Union, his mentor was the founder of Black Liberation Theology, the Rev. Dr. James H. Cone. He was a member of The Riverside Church in the City of New York during the ministry of the Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin
William Sloane Coffin
William Sloane Coffin, Jr. was an American liberal Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist. He was ordained in the Presbyterian church and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ....
and in care for ordination as a minister in the United Church of Christ
United Church of Christ
The United Church of Christ is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination primarily in the Reformed tradition but also historically influenced by Lutheranism. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC...
.
Whyte's life was informed by, if not defined by, physical disability. Born with congenital birth defects of both legs and one arm, as a child he was put in leg braces built by his father and walked with the help of these devices, since his legs did not have the strength to support him otherwise. Run over by a schoolbus in an accident while he was in high school, both of his ankles were crushed, furthering his disabilities. By the time he was at the end of his college years in San Francisco, he opted to have then-experimental surgery to have both legs amputated below the knees and after a period of recovery, began wearing the prosthetic legs that he would wear for the rest of his life.
Whyte developed as a playwright while in San Francisco, writing the first of over a hundred playscripts and screenplays that form the body of his work. While at the Yale School of Drama, he wrote the first of many works that would see commercial production. Welcome To Andromeda, a one-act play for two characters written in 1968, was produced in workshop in 1969 at The American Place Theatre in New York before going on to a commercial Off-Broadway production at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1973. (See Lucille Lortel Archives for credits for opening night http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=show&id=3251. It received numerous positive reviews and was named one the Ten Best Plays of 1973 by Time Magazine "The hero was almost totally paralyzed, but Ron Whyte's first play quivered with instinctual dramatic life." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910923,00.html. David Richards, theatre critic for the Washington Star (and later for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
) called Whyte "the most original dramatic voice since 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...
." Welcome To Andromeda received subsequent productions in scores of theatres around the country and the world including Postus-Teatret in Copenhagen, Denmark, and The Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1975, among many others. Published in an acting edition by Samuel French
Samuel French
Samuel French was a U.S. entrepreneur who, together with British actor, playwright and theatrical manager Thomas Hailes Lacy, pioneered in the field of theatrical publishing and the licensing of plays....
, it continues to be performed by professional and amateur groups worldwide every year.
Whyte's first major theatrical production was the play-with-music or musical Horatio, based on the life and stories of Horatio Alger, with music by Broadway composer Mel Marvin. Horatio received productions at the Loretto-Hilton Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, 1970; Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., 1974, and the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, 1976.
Another major production was the autobiographical play-with-music Funeral March for a One-Man Band, with earlier versions including the title X: Notes on a Personal Mythology. Funeral March received its first Off-Broadway production at Westbeth Theatre Center in New York in 1978 and subsequent productions at the St. Nicholas Theatre in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1979 and 1981. The 1979 Chicago production received four Joseph Jefferson Awards
Joseph Jefferson Awards
The Joseph Jefferson Awards are given annually by a volunteer non-profit committee to acknowledge excellence in theatre in the Chicago area. Founded in 1968, the awards are given in tribute to actor Joseph Jefferson...
including Best Musical Production. The play had music again by Mel Marvin and was conceived in collaboration with H. Thomas Moore (Tom Moore
Tom Moore (director)
Tom Moore is an American theatre, television, and film director.Born in Meridian, Mississippi, Moore graduated with a BA from Purdue University where he received the alumni distinction as an Old Master. Moore began his career in the late 1960s, directing Loot at Brandeis University and Oh, What a...
) http://www.filmreference.com/film/3/Tom-Moore.html, who went on to fame as the director of the musical Grease
Grease (musical)
Grease is a 1971 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. The musical is named for the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as the greasers. The musical, set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School , follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of love,...
on Broadway as well as many other theatrical and television productions.
Another play of note was an adaptation of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
's Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame de Paris , also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra of...
(The Hunchback of Notre Dame), produced first at the American Festival Theatre in Milford, New Hampshire in 1979 and subsequently expanded in a production at Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. Papp established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in downtown New York . "The Public," as it is known, has many small theatres within it...
's New York Shakespeare Festival
New York Shakespeare Festival
New York Shakespeare Festival is the previous name of the New York City theatrical producing organization now known as the Public Theater. The Festival produced shows at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, as part of its free Shakespeare in the Park series, at the Public Theatre near Astor Place...
(The Public Theatre) in 1981. Mr. Papp commissioned a further expanded version of the play that was never produced.
While serving both as Playwright-in-Residence as well as Coordinator of the historic Playwrights and Directors Unit (established by Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, socialist, and social protester.-Early life:Odets was born in Philadelphia to Romanian- and Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Louis Odets and Esther Geisinger, and raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York. He dropped out of high...
) at The Actors Studio working directly with Harold Clurman
Harold Clurman
Harold Edgar Clurman was a visionary American theatre director and drama critic, "one of the most influential in the United States". He was most notable as one of the three founders of the New York City's Group Theatre...
and Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...
, Whyte organized a 1981 Festival of New Plays that included first productions of works by such noted playwrights as Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...
, John Ford Noonan
John Ford Noonan
John Ford Noonan is a prolific American actor, and writer for theater, film and television. Born in New York City in 1943, he wrote his first play, Lazarus was a Lady in 1970 followed by Concerning the Effects of Trimethylchoride in 1971 and other plays such as The Club Champion’s Widow in 1978,...
, John Guare
John Guare
John Guare is an American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body...
, and Christopher Durang
Christopher Durang
Christopher Ferdinand Durang is an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s.- Life :...
, among others. Whyte left The Actors Studio following the death of Strasberg and leadership of the Playwrights and Directors Unit was taken over by Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
and Arthur Penn
Arthur Penn
Arthur Hiller Penn was an American film director and producer with a career as a theater director as well. Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
.
While at The Actors Studio, Whyte wrote a second act for Welcome To Andromeda and the now two-act play was premiered with Ellen Burstyn in the role of the Nurse in a limited-run, standing-room-only production at the Studio. The two-act version was titled Andromeda II. Whyte wrote a third act later, Andromeda III, that has not yet been performed.
Perhaps Whyte's most significant work was the two-act play, Disability: A Comedy. Drawing on Whyte's own experience as a disabled person, the play told the story of a young quadriplegic man, Larry, trapped at home in a Manhattan apartment with his parents, who takes out a personal ad to meet a young woman. The events that transpire when the young woman, Jayne, arrives at his door, are both dramatic and darkly comedic. Whyte himself dedicated the play to Sir Alfred Hitchcock and the end has a Hitchcockian twist that continues provoke intense audience response. Disability was first performed in workshop at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in the Old Vat Room as a workshop in 1979 and in full production in Arena's Kreeger Theatre in 1982. Subsequent productions followed at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the Odyssey Theatre, also in Los Angeles, where the play received a Drama-Logue Award for Best Play. Disability was performed at the Actors Theatre of St. Paul, for which production the play was nominated for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
in Drama. In 1990, it was produced at the Detroit Repertory Company. Most recently, Disability was produced in 2003 at Frank Condon's River Stage in Sacramento, California, where the Sacramento Bee wrote: "... amazing ... excellent ... Rarely does a play energize, stimulate--and surprise--the way DISABILITY does." http://www.riverstage.org/reviews03_04.htm
As a screenwriter, Whyte wrote three films that received commercial theatrical release: Valentine Eve (1967); The Happiness Cage (later retitled The Mind Snatchers) (1972), directed by Bernard Girard; and Pigeons (Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker) (1970), directed by John Dexter
John Dexter
John Dexter was an English theatre, opera, and film director.- Theatre :Born in Derby, England, Dexter left school at the age of fourteen to serve in the British army during World War II. Following the war, he began working as a stage actor before turning to producing and directing shows for...
. He also wrote teleplays for several programs including Look Up and Live on CBS-TV and the syndicated series Tales from the Dark Side.
As an editor and writer, Whyte served as Arts Editor and Book Review Editor of The SoHo Weekly News in New York; Drama Editor of The American Book Review; and a book reviewer for many other publications. His books included The Flower That Finally Grew (New York: Crown Publishers, 1971); Welcome To Andromeda and Variety Obit (New York: Samuel French and Co., 1973), and Disability: A Comedy (New York: Theatre Development Fund, 1983). With the late art critic Gregory Battcock and Paul William Bradley he coauthored a textbook on cinema history entitled The Story of Film (1979), contracted with E.P. Dutton but unpublished.
While a student at Yale School of Drama, Whyte worked as a writer in the 1960s for [Marvel Comics], authoring stories in Marvel's Western comic books including Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, and Kid Colt. A comic-book character created by Whyte at Yale, "Method Man," was the subject of a graphic issue of 1967 Yale Drama Review. Whyte also wrote for the magazines Creepy and Eerie in the 1960s. (http://www.bailsprojects.com/(S(ukui2u3jm5fttr45eswkihf0))/whoswho.aspx?mode=AtoZsearch&id=WHYTE%2C+RON) Whyte compiled his experiences as an author during the Golden Age of Marvel into a book, contracted with St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...
but never completed before his death.
Whyte's work as a disability rights activist led him to found The National Task Force for Disability and the Arts in 1978 and brought him in advisory capacities onto boards and committees including the New York State Council on the Arts, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. He visited with and spoke to disabled young people and adults in residential centers, provided counseling and mentoring to disabled artists, and was interviewed regularly about both his art and his disability activism. His activism was had a downside in that he developed an unwarranted reputation for demanding accessibility at the theatres where his
Whyte received many honors and awards in his lifetime, including several Sam Shubert Fellowships while at the Yale School of Drama
Yale School of Drama
The Yale School of Drama is a graduate professional school of Yale University providing training in every discipline of the theatre: acting, design , directing, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, playwriting, stage management, sound design, technical design and production, and theater...
; a Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
Playwrights Fellowship in 1981; TIME Magazine Ten Best Plays listing in 1973; the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Musical in Chicago in 1979; and nomination for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
in Drama in 1983, and the Drama-Logue Award for Best Play in Los Angeles in both 1978 and 1989.
Whyte died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1989 after going into a decline for several years after having an ill-fitting pair of prosthetic legs built that damaged his circulatory system and brought him into a state of constant pain during the last years of his life—during which he nonetheless continued to write prolifically, creating five or ten new play scripts each year up to the last months of his life. This last half decade of Whyte's life can best be described as tragic, as his health deteriorated even while he saw a number of new productions of his work—including one of Disability: A Comedy that opened at the time of his death. Much time in his last years was spent consulting with physicians and attempting to have problems with his prostheses remedied, but to no avail. The week before his death, he received an inquiry call from a representative of the MacArthur Foundation "genius" awards committee; it will never be known how that process might have developed. He died on September 13, 1989 while summering in the home of Rep. Paula Elliott Bradley and Dr. William Lee Bradley
William Lee Bradley
The Reverend Doctor William Lee Bradley , was a scholar of comparative religion, ethics, and theology, as well as a philanthropist.-Biography:...
in New Haven, father and mother of his longtime partner. He was buried in the Grove Street Cemetery in his beloved New Haven, directly adjacent to the graves of such quintessentially American figures as Lyman Beecher
Lyman Beecher
Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, American Temperance Society co-founder and leader, and the father of 13 children, many of whom were noted leaders, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas...
, Noah Webster
Noah Webster
Noah Webster was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author...
, and Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South...
.
Whyte's life partner, Paul William Bradley, a minister and seminary administrator, survived him and continues to manage his estate and ongoing productions of his plays and other literary enterprises. Whyte's archives and papers are in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a 1963 gift of the Beinecke family. The building was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books...
of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/MSS_PreliminaryLists/WHYTE.HTM in New Haven, Connecticut. Whyte's library of 5,000 drama and theatre books was donated after his death primarily to The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
's library in New York City, as well as several hundred items to the Esther Raushenbush Library(http://www.slc.edu/library/) at Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
. Several hundred non-theatre-related items from Whyte's collection are held by the General Research Division of The New York Public Library in New York City. The manuscript of The Story of Film is held by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art (http://www.aaa.si.edu/) of the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
in New York City in its Gregory Battcock Papers ("Gregory Battcock," http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/collections_list.cfm/search_letter/B).