ADDITIONAL WRITING POSITIONS

(12) : Passport photo, New Orleans, 1989

Since Ronald Tavel is known as an innovator, it should not come as a surprise that a number of the positions to which he was appointed were actually created for him.  What is surprising are some of the institutions that welcomed him.  For instance, The Actors’ Studio, which developed the Method style of acting (Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, etc.)   The reason is that, the 1971-72 Creative Artists Public Service Grant gave funds to both the playwright and the institution at which he chose to work.  Evidently in need of such funds, the Actors’ Studio took on Tavel (who developed SCREEN TEST # 4 there).  Nevertheless, some of the finest performances in Tavel plays were delivered by Method-trained actors: as Academy Award nominee Grayson Hall, who played the difficult lead in SECRETS OF THE CITIZENS CORRECTION COMMITTEE; Catherine Squire and Doris Roberts in BOY ON THE STRAIGHT-BACK CHAIR; Jimmy Smitts in THE UNDERSTUDY; Stephen Collins in THE LAST DAYS OF BRITISH HONDURAS, etc. 

           1965-67: First Resident Writer: Play-House of the Ridiculous, NYC.
           1971-73: First Playwright in Residence, Theatre of The Lost Continent, NYC.
           1972: First Playwright in Residence, The Actors Studio (under Lee Strasberg)
NYC.
           1977: Resident Writer, Williamstown Theater Second Company, Massachusetts.
           1978-79: Resident Writer, New Playwrights Theater of Washington, D.C.
           1980-81: First Playwright in Residence, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
           1981: Resident Writer, The Centrum Foundation, Ft Worden, Washington State.
           1986-87: Distinguished Visiting Associate Professor in Creative Writing, The
                           University of Colorado at Boulder.
           1990: Publishing Workshop, New Orleans Writers Conference, Louisiana.
           1996: Lecturer in Graduate Studies, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena,
                      California.

STAGE PLAY PUBLICATIONS

            Despite listings on the Internet and elsewhere, there has never been a book of Ronald Tavel’s collected stage plays or his collected screenplays.  Here is a list of those stage plays which were published and which might still be located in libraries or through dealers:

            THE LIFE OF JUANITA CASTRO, (unchanged from the film-script of the same name)  TriQuarterly Magazine, No.6, 1966
            KITCHENETTE, (adapted from the film, KITCHEN) Partisan Review, Spring 1967
            SHOWER, The Young American Writers, ed. Richard Kostelanetz, (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967)
            THE LIFE OF LADY GODIVA, The New Underground Theatre, ed. Robert Schroeder (Bantam Books, 1968)
            GORILLA QUEEN, The Best of Off-Off Broadway, ed. Michael Smith (E.P. Dutton & Co., 1969); The Off-Off Broadway Book, ed. Mailman & Poland (Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1972)
            VINYL, Clyde, Vol. 2, No. 2 (available now only in the Library of Congress and Boston Archives)
            ARENAS OF LUTETIA, Experiments in Prose, ed. Eugene Wildman (Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1969)
             BOY ON THE STRAIGHT-BACK CHAIR, Word Plays: An anthology of New American Drama, ed. Marranca & Dasgupta (Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1980); From the Other Side of the Century II: A New American Drama 1960-1995, ed. Messerli & Wellman, Sun & Moon Press, 1998)
            VINYL VISITS AN FM STATION, TDR, The Drama Review, Vol. 14, No. 4 (T48) 1970
            SECRETS OF THE CITIZENS CORRECTION COMMITTEE, Scripts, No. 3, January 1972
            BIGFOOT, Brooklyn Literary Review, No. 5, (CUNY-Brooklyn College Alumni Association, 1984)
            MY FOETUS LIVED ON AMBOY STREET (radio play), The Brooklyn College Alumni Literary Review, Vol. 2, Fall-Winter 1981-82); and, starring Harvey Fierstein playing all the roles, produced and recorded by the ZBS Foundation, Ft Edwards, NY, Nov. 22-26, 1976
            THE UNDERSTUDY, Stiletto, No. 2, ed. Michael Annis (Denver, Colorado: Howling Dog Press, 1992); Chung Wai Literary Monthly, Vol. 22, No. 9, February 1994 (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press; in Mandarin)

ESSAYS

Editors radically altered most of Ronald Tavel’s published essays, and others are dated by now.  Here are three exceptions:

            LA METHODOLOGIE CHEZ LE CINE DE WARHOL, Cine-Warhol, ed. Maggie Gilchrist (Paris: Editions Carre, 1990)
           DECO-DENSE ON THE TAMSUI OR, THE PLEASURES OF MERELY CYCLING, Free China Review, Vol. 45, No. 5, (Taipei: Kwang Hwa Publishing Co. May 1995)
           DISPUTING THE CANON OF AMERICAN DRAMATIC LITERATURE, New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 49, February 1997 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press); SIRS Renaissance Electronic Database & CD-Rom 1997)

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