Living Playwrights

Living Playwrights Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard • Born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937 • Where? Zlin, Czechoslovakia • Parents: EugenStraussler and Martha Beckova • Parents were Jews (just before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia) and were relocated to Singapore by his father’s employer, but his father was captured by the Japanese and died as a prisoner of war

Tom Stoppard • Tom and his brother and mother were then sent to Australia • Mother remarried to Kenneth Stoppard, who adopted the boys and moved the family to England. • Education? • Pocklington School in East Riding of Yorkshire, England

Tom Stoppard • Strove to be an honorary Brit, but often found himself still feeling a little out of place in England • Based many of his characters quirks off some of his own (people always getting their names wrong, characters getting jokes incorrect because they can’t remember them, etc.)

Tom Stoppard • Started writing short radio plays in 1953 • First play: 1960 - A Walk on the Water, which was later renamed as Enter a Free Man in 1968. • Wrote drama critic reviews for Scene magazine for a brief period of time under the penname William Boot. • 1964 – Spent five months writing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet King Lear, which later became his very popular play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Tom Stoppard • Latest work: a piece of radio theatre called, Darkside, which honors musical group Pink Floyd’s 70s album, The Dark Side of the Moon. • Co-wrote Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. • Wrote one novel in 1966: Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon. • Has won over 20 awards for his works.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead • Premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scottland) in 1966 • Produced at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1967 • Came to Broadway later in 1967 • Won Tony Award for Best Play in 1968.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead • Takes characters out of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and creates their own story for them • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are supposedly schoolmates and childhood friends of Prince Hamlet. • Shows all the misadventures of R & G that you don’t get to see in Hamlet. They seem to be drifting away from all society, confusing their own names, talking about things that make sense at first, but lose sense as they go along. For the most part, no one seems to notice their existence… until they too, see themselves as gone.

Living Playwrights