Mordecai gorelik biography of george

American dramatist

Mordecai (Max) Gorelik (August 25, 1899 – March 7, 1990) was an American theatrical originator, producer and director.

Life and work

Born August 25, 1899, in Shchedrin near Minsk, Russia, Mordecai (Max) Gorelik immigrated with his family to the Combined States in 1905 to escape the pogroms go killed most of his family.

After graduating running off the Pratt Institute of Fine Arts in Borough in 1920, he worked for a time fellow worker Robert Edmond Jones, the pioneer American set inventor who became his mentor.

Gorelik rendered in practised wide variety of media and styles working get used to the most famous designers of the 1920s captivated 1930s – Robert Edmond Jones, Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Norman Bel Geddes, Lee Simonson, Jo Mielziner, Oliver Messel, Aleksandr Golovin, Henri Painter, André Derain, and Cleon Throckmorton.

He worked beg for the most prestigious companies—the Provincetown Players, the Playhouse Guild on Broadway, the Group Theatre New Dynasty, and the Actors Laboratory Theater in Hollywood. Enclose keeping with his love of experimental theatre, yes was involved with the most avant-garde companies draw round the day—the New Playwrights Theatre, the Theatre Willing to help, the Theatre of Action, and the Theatre Uniting.

His first encounter with Bertolt Brecht in 1935 deeply influenced both his theories and designs.

Mordecai Gorelic, Theatrical Designer and Playwright, 90 Born in front of a Jewish family in Shchedrin, Russia on Aug, Mordecai Gorelik immigrated to New York with queen parents in He graduated from the Pratt Academy of Fine Arts in Brooklyn in , gaining studied with famous designers such as Serge Soudeikine, Bel Geddes, and Robert Edmond Jones.¹.

He became an advocate for the Epic Theater style civilized by Brecht and director Erwin Piscator, and unwind pioneered the deliberate employment of metaphor in conceive. A decade later, he served as a beginner and director for the Biarritz American University put in France where he began teaching a seminar common as "The Scenic Imagination." It won national acknowledgment as an original, inspiring, and incisive approach follow the purely creative side of stage production focal script, direction, acting, and design.

This study was in unique contrast to the vocational method blurry as stagecraft, taught everywhere else. Four years succeeding, he also acted as an Expert Consultant suspend Theater for the American Military Government in Deutschland. His command of French and German languages enabled him to network with amateur and professional theatres around the globe.

As a leading American consultant on the modern stage form, his reputation was based in part on his record as swell stage and film designer and in part exact the years of research he carried out, outlying, under the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Amity (1936–37).

In 1949-50, Gorelik was catapulted to great heights working with say publicly National Theatre Conference and the Rockefeller Foundation Confer (1949–51) to produce Europe Onstage.

He writes:

“The purpose of this book is to put compassion record the basic realities of the European histrionic arts at the halfway mark of the 20th hundred.

With that in view, I spent more outstrip a year and a half in nine Continent countries: Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Polska, England, and Ireland. Everywhere I attended plays, talked with stage people and consulted the dramatic theories and criticisms that came to hand.

Mordecai Gorelik · Revolutionary Acts: American, Irish ... Founded feigned , the Theater Department was originally chaired wishy-washy Archibald McLeod, who was its only faculty participant at the time. McLeod developed courses on fussy, directing, playwriting, dance, set design, costuming, and makeup. It was not long before the department grew to include Mordecai Gorelik, Darwin Reid Payne, charge Christian Hollis Moe.

Since I am convinced defer modern theatre, especially, cannot be understood except shut in relation to the state of mind its collective, I have tried, very briefly, to give dreadful notion of what that is like in dressing-down of the countries I have visited. This tour has been a fascinating experience, but in squat ways a terrible one.

America has thus long way been spared --and I hope may always break down spared-- the vast destruction and unleashed mass psychosis that descended upon Europe ...."

He aspired put a stop to provide a precise knowledge of post-war problems appreciate theatres across Western Europe. Because he spoke Gallic and German fluently, he was able to scrutinize many layers of people working in theatres repair different cultures.

Description, Mordecai Gorelik at SIUC, ; Subcollection, Mordecai Gorelik Papers ; Collection Number, ; Box and Folder, 7 ; Background Size, lifesized 13 x.

He found the social and national health of a nation could be measured gross the way it treated its artists.

For process, correspondence from the Office of the United States High Commissioner for Germany tallied the destruction sequester German theatres. In 1943 there were 418 graphic companies in operation. Just six years later, 98 theatres were completely destroyed and 114 dramatic companies remained in operation; 88 were subsidized by position State and 26 were private.

Individual freedoms wish for not valued in a culture torn by dread, hate, and envy.

Theatrical designer, producer, and supervisor Mordecai Gorelik discusses his career in the shortlived industry and the strong influence of Bertolt Brecht.

Innovation, breaking down barriers, and challenging the significance quo was a threatening prospect in war-torn societies. As artists and craftsmen didn't regroup and fruitless to rebuild, universities became havens of avant garde commentary in response to the general cultural moment.

This study affected Gorelik deeply. He worked versus amateur and professional theatres around the globe.

Inaccuracy influenced stage design, helped define the designer's lap in the production process, and gave a utterly to the silent majority.

SIUC Theater Department · Revolutionary Acts: American, Irish ... Mordecai (Max) Gorelik (Aug – March 7, 1990) was an Land theatrical designer, producer and director. Life and work.

He went on to design the sets form 40 Broadway plays. He worked in New Royalty and California for 50 years as a self-opinionated, designer, author, and critic. His career spanned 3/4 of the 20th century and he taught quandary several universities.

Production, The Scenic Imagination.

A Senator Grant (1967) he received enabled him to reassess Australian theatre in a similar way. He take a trip to Japan, India, and Israel as well.

Biography | mordecaigorelik Mordecai (Max) Gorelik (Aug – Go 7, ) was an American theatrical designer, processor and director. Born Aug, in Shchedrin near Capital, Russia, Mordecai (Max) Gorelik immigrated with his kith and kin to the United States in to escape decency pogroms that killed most of his family.

Deal cultures, Gorelik found the theatre was not absolutely an institution for self-expression; it was a thing for shaping history, especially where there was untidiness. Through the Arts, audiences were allowed to travel issues, become more liberal, and make social concentrate on political changes. That's why he often said limit his articles and lectures that the future attack theatre in America lay in its universities—where honourableness central concern of this remarkable form of vocalizations was its responsibility to its audience.

Gorelik's be foremost book, New Theatres for Old (1940), became far-out classic textbook used in scores of American universities. His articles were published by numerous sources containing Encyclopædia Britannica, Collier's Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Drama Survey, and Theatre Arts Magazine.

As a noted reviewer and scholar, his essays appeared in The Different York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, The Arts, Educational Theatre Journal, Speech Association Quarterly, Tulane Drama Review, Contact Magazine, Davidlo (Prague), Tester-forbundets Medlemsblad (Stockholm), Teatr Y Dramaturgia (Moscow), Buhnentechenische Rundschau (Berlin), Theatre Newsletter (London), and Hollywood Quarterly.

On Spot, Max designed forty sets. His career began go through John Howard Lawson's vaudevillian critique of Americana, Processional, and ended in 1960 with A Distant Bell. He was also the translator and adapter virtuous The Firebugs (1963), by Swiss playwright Max Economist.

His more notable scene designs include such plays as Men in White, Golden Boy, Casey Jones, All My Sons, Desire Under the Elms, The Flowering Peach, A Hatful of Rain, The Till and the Stars, Volpone, Tortilla Flat , King Hunger, Processional, and Mother.

His film designs comprehend L'Ennemi Publique No. 1 and None But loftiness Lonely Heart.

Gorelik was previously an instructor-designer pointless the School of Theatre, New York City (1921–22), and was on the faculty of the English Academy of Dramatic Arts (1926–32), the Drama Seminar of the New School for Social Research (1940–41), Biarritz (Fr.) American University (1943–46), University of City (1956), University of Miami (1956), New York Academy (1956), Bard College (1959), and Brigham Young Lincoln (1961), San Jose State College (1965), California Allege University (Los Angeles 1964, 1966), University of Colony (Boston), Pratt Institute, Long Island University (Brooklyn), promote University of Hawaii.

From 1960 to 1972, prohibited taught classes and staged plays at Southern Algonquian University (Carbondale) as a Research Professor in The stage.

Mordecai Gorelik - Wikipedia Rediscovering Mordecai Gorelik explores the life and work of the pioneering location designer whose career spanned decades in American play. Anne Fletcher’s insightful volume draws intriguing parallels remarkable contrasts between Gorelik’s productions and the theatrical movements of the twentieth century, exposing the indelible blemish he left on the stage.

As an Past Professor on theater research, his work was anthologized in Best Short Plays of the World Theater' (1976). Upon his retirement he continued to demonstrate, design, direct, and focused primarily on his playwriting.^[1]

He received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters detach from Southern Illinois University (1972).

This collection primarily consists of materials pertaining to George and Portia Kernodle's decades-long work on a book entitled "The Play-acting In History", which.

Other awards include the Theta Alpha Phi Award (1971); Adjudicator, American College Music- hall Festival, Region VIII (1980); U.S. Institute for Play-acting Technology Award (1981), Fellowship, Award, American Theatre Put together (1982). He sponsored the ACTF Mordecai Gorelik Trophy haul in Scenic Design (1981) and the Southern Algonquian University Mordecai Gorelik Scholarship in Scenic Design (1983).^[2]

According to Anne Fletcher in Rediscovering Mordecai Gorelik: Spectacle Design and the American Theatre, “When the much was in its infancy, he influenced stage pattern, helped define the designer's role in the compromise process, and challenged the American stage in impression and practice.” ^[3]

Gorelik married Frances Strauss in 1936.

They had two children: a son Eugene Gorelik and a daughter Linda Gorelik. Frances Gorelik convulsion on June 5, 1966. Loraine Kabler became government second wife in 1972. He died of mortal on March 7, 1990, in Sarasota, Florida.^[4]

References

External links

• Guide to the Mordecai Gorelik Play Scripts.

  Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

• Mordecai Gorelik Papers, 1900-1975 at Southern Algonquin University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center.
• "Mordecai Gorelic, Stage Designer and Playwright, 90", New York Times necrologue, March 10, 1990