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Introduction
For over two decades, Fred Newman has been a unique voice in the American
theatre. In 30 highly original and entertaining plays and musicals, Newman’s
plays are deeply philosophical and accessible, sharply political and
non-didactic. Read
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Links
• allstars.org |
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Fred
Newman, Playwright, Director
For over two decades, Fred Newman has been a unique voice in
the American theatre. Newman’s 30 highly original and entertaining
plays and musicals are deeply philosophical
and accessible, sharply political and non-didactic.
Frequently, characters in Newman’s plays (for example Mr. Hirsch Died Yesterday, Lenin’s Breakdown, Outing
Wittgenstein, Risky Revolutionary, What Is To Be Dead, and
The Story of Truth: A Whodunit) find themselves uprooted suddenly
from all that they know – their time and place in history,
their race or sex, indeed, their very identities – and
must cope with the existential/developmental task of having
to become someone new. This is where the drama – and
quite often, the comedy – lies in a Newman production.
The audience follows Newman’s characters on their intensely
philosophical journeys, and, with them, are asked to radically
reconsider the fixity of everyday life and language; and to
challenge the “ready-made” meanings we apply to
our experiences.
Newman draws his work from a broad range of theatre and performance
genres including the avant-garde, the realist melodrama, the
Broadway musical, the classic TV variety show, the opera, and
the old-style vaudevillian revues and routines. He often writes
about historical figures – among them Jackie Robinson,
Thomas Jefferson, Billie Holiday, Sally Hemings, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
V.I. Lenin, Che Guevara, Jesus and Bertolt Brecht – characters
whose “larger-than-life” personalities serve as
a springboard for Newman’s rich and adventurous philosophical
investigations.
Newman has designed and directed most of his work at the Castillo
Theatre in New York City, which he founded, and where he served
as artistic director and playwright-in-residence from 1989
to 2005. In addition to being staged at Castillo, Newman’s
plays have been produced by The New Federal Theatre, at both the Philadelphia and San Francisco
Fringe Festivals and at six of the annual meetings of the American
Psychological Association. Newman has collaborated with several
creative artists. He has worked with Grammy-Award winning songwriter
Annie Roboff to write several musicals, among them Sally and
Tom (The American Way); Off-Broadway Melodies of 1592; Still
On the Corner; Kansas On My Mind; Coming of Age in Korea; and
Mantle, Maris, and Mom. In 1993 Newman collaborated with dancer/choreographer
Amy Pivar and Social Therapist Freda Rosen to write and produce Requiem for Communism, a dance theatre piece that featured
renowned dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones, performed at Dance
Theatre Workshop. More recently, in 2004, working with choreographer
David Parsons, Newman wrote and directed the dance theatre
piece License to Dream, featuring young performers from the
All Stars Project together with members of the Parsons Dance
Company.
Newman has produced and directed the work of many leading playwrights
and performance artists. He is one of the foremost American
directors of the plays of the late Heiner Müller, one
of the most important playwrights of the late 20th century. Since
1992 Newman has directed nine productions of Muller’s
texts, including the American premiere of Germania 3 Ghosts
at Dead Man in 2001.
In 1995 Newman directed Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo, later chosen for presentation at the
international SERMAC theatre festival, held in Fort de France,
Martinique, 1996. Newman’s 2000 production of Peter Weiss’ masterpiece Marat/Sade was nominated for the “Best of the Fest” at
the Midtown International Theatre Festival. In 1993, the play Billie & Malcolm: A Demonstration written and directed
by Newman, was nominated for five AUDELCO awards (celebrating
excellence in Black Theatre), including nominations for best
play and best director.
Newman’s first feature film, Nothing Really Happens (Memories
of Aging Strippers), which he both wrote and directed, stars
Living Theatre founder Judith Malina. It was released in 2003
and has garnered four film festival awards.
Since retiring from the Castillo Theatre in 2005, Newman continues
to write plays and direct diverse performance projects. |
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