Life & Work Of Terrence McNally Essay

Terrence McNally is a famous American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Also some of his plays have been turned into worldwide successful movies.

Many works of playwright open gay themes and he is convinced that theater plays an important role in the recognition of gay as equal members by modern society. Since 1970 McNally is also a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild, and from 1981 to 2001 he was its vice-president. McNally was partnered to Thomas Kirdahy following a civil union ceremony in Vermont in 2003, and they subsequently married in Washington, D.C. on April 6, 2010 (Oregonian, 2005).

Terrence McNally was born on November 3, 1939 in St. Petersburg (FL), but most of his youth he spent in Corpus Christi (Texas). In 1960 he graduated from Columbia University. A year later, McNally sent his first works to the writer Molly Kazan, and she offered him a job in the “Hector – Studio” as a director. 1963 was a year of Broadway debut of McNally: he wrote for Franco Zeffirelli new script for Dumas drama “The Lady of the Camellias” (Sid Smith, 2001).

Thanks to the grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1964, McNally staged his first play in “Tyrone Guthrie Theater” in Minnesota: absurdist farce “Things That Go Bump in the Night”. It caused a mixed reaction, which follow his new works ever since.

In 1966, McNally received a scholarship of the Guggenheim Foundation. During that period he wrote mostly one-act plays for theater and television. Among them – “Journey” (1966), “Botticelli” (1966, broadcast on Channel 13 on New York television in 1968), “Noon” (1967), “Cuba si!” (1968), “Witness” (1968) and “Sweet Eros” (1968). The biggest success of those years was gained with the play “Next”, set by Elaine May. The first “full-length” McNally’s work was the play “Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?” (1971).

Comedy “The Ritz” (1975) had a resounding success and brought Rita Moreno a Tony Award in 1975 for Best Supporting Actress. In 1976, Moreno starred in the film adaptation of the play, directed by Richard Lester.

Career of the playwright had a pause after failure of the play “Broadway” (1978). Only in the mid 1980s he wrote a musical “The Rink” (1984), a play “The Lisbon Traviata” (1985), and a new version of the play “Broadway” (1986) (Piepenburg, 2013).

In 1987, a play “Frankie and Johnny” was staged and received universal recognition. It tells about two elderly lonely people, their relationship, romantic and bitter at the same time. 1990 can be considered to start a kind of “McNally decades”, he won Emmy award for “Mother Andre”. His play “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” (1991) began to conquer the stage with the off- Broadway premiere and was later staged in more than 50 theaters in the USA. A play “Perfect Ganesh” (1993), which at the time many considered “the most multi-valued play” of McNally, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1993, playwright won “Tony” in the nomination “Best Screenplay Musical” for the musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman”. His next play “Love! Valour! Compassion!” (1994) had a huge success with audiences and in 1995 brought another Tony Award to McNally. McNally mixes light comedy with more somber themes of relationships. His characters are primarily, but not exclusively, homosexual. Terrence McNally is the most fashionable and prolific American playwright of the 90s, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Guild of playwrights.

 

Works Cited:

Oregonian, F. (2005). Terrence McNally: Sunrise edition. The Oregonian, D.01. Print.

Piepenburg, E. (2013). Terrence McNally play will star tyne daly. The New York Times, C3(L)-C3(L2. Print.

Sid Smith, T. (2001). Terrence McNally speeds ahead: Chicagoland final edition. Chicago Tribune, 13. Print.

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]
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