The ETC is proud to help support a very special live performance and cinematic event occurring in the Kresge Theatre the evening of Saturday, October 6, 2007.
AN EVENING WITH LEON KATZ will evolve around Leon recalling and reminiscing about his months residing with Alice B. Toklas. Professor Katz spent from November 1952 to February 1953 with Alice B. Toklas in her Paris apartment deciphering Gertrude Stein’s famous notebooks.
The set on the Kresge stage will include reproductions of some of the incredible paintings that adorned Gertrude Stein’s Paris apartment, along with six pieces of the original furniture from her famous Paris apartment. AN EVENING WITH LEON KATZ is the first public lecture of his 60-year life journey, and CMU Alumnus Kenny Love will direct and film a documentary based on the evening.
Leon Katz 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. Mr. 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.