Professor Leon Katz is America’s greatest dramaturg. His revelatory and comprehensive understanding of theatre has inspired thousands of theatre artists, and now, for the first time, he has made his lectures available to everyone.
In these 44 one-hour lectures, Professor Katz shares the origins of western drama from Aeschylus to the Theatre of the Absurd, revealing the essence of theatre and its relevance and impact on our lives today. In his entertaining, witty and conversational style, Professor Katz will give you “aha!” moments in every lecture and deepen your understanding of our culture and yourself.
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Who is Leon Katz?
Leon Katz is Professor Emeritus of Drama, Yale University, and has been Resident Dramaturg at the Mark Taper Forum. Until 1989, before official retirement, he was co-chairman of the Department of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at the Yale School of Drama. In a long teaching career, he has also taught at Cornell, Stanford, Columbia, Vassar, Carnegie-
Mellon, University of Pittsburgh, Manhattanville, Barnard, San Francisco State, USC, UCLA, and the University of Giessen, Germany. Leon is the author of several dozen original plays and adaptations produced in the U.S. and abroad. Among them are The Three Cuckolds (about 400 productions in 11 countries, most recently, in L.A., at Theatre 40,) Sonya (most recent production with Julie Harris,) Dracula: Sabbat, Son of Arlecchino, GBS in Love, Beds, Pinocchio, Finnegan’s Wake, The Marquis de Sade’s Justine, Amerika, The Odyssey, Swellfoot’s Tears, The Dybbuk, Remembrance of Things Past, and The Making of Americans (an opera based on Gertrude Stein’s monumental novel, with composer Al Carmines). He has also done translations for various productions and new stage versions of plays by Aeschylus (Agamemnon), Schiller (The Robbers), Ibsen (Love’s Comedy), Claudel (The Satin Slipper), Strindberg (The Road to Damascus), Gide-Barrault (The Trial), and others. A collection of his plays is published under the title Midnight Plays. Individual play publications, separately and in anthologies, include The Three Cuckolds, Son of Arlecchino, Swellfoot’s Tears, The Making of Americans, and Dracula:Sabbat.