Mac Wellman
Encyclopedia
Mac Wellman is an American
playwright
, author
, and poet
. Wellman is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether. His plays frequently resemble a moving collage of events which has more in common with an avant-garde dance production than Broadway-style theater. Helen Shaw writes, “Since a 1984 essay, ‘The Theatre of Good Intentions,’ [Wellman] has been the cynosure in a heaven full of experimental playwrights who rail against what Jonathan Lear, in his book Open Minded, called a ‘tyranny’ of ‘the already known’” (vii).
Discussing his style with BOMB Magazine
, Wellman said that he uses words as objects in his writing. "I found if you try to write totally in cliches and things that don't sound right," Wellman clarified, "you deal with a language that frankly is 98% of what people speak, think, and hear. So it's enormously enjoyable." This type of language has been positively characterized as "an untrammeled flow of logorrhea: plain words, fancy words, space-age words, Victorian words and words that defy the dictionary" by New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley
.
, New York City
, and in 2010 he became a CUNY Distinguished Professor. Wellman is author to more than forty plays, including Harm's Way (1978), The Self-Begotten (1982), The Bad Infinity (1983), Dracula (1987), Whirligig (1988), Crowbar (1989), 7 Blowjobs (1991), Terminal Hip (1984), Murder of Crows and Description Beggared or the Allegory of WHITENESS (2000). He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts
, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation
, McNight and a Guggenheim Fellowship
. In 1990 he received an Obie award
for Best New American Play (for Bad Penny, Terminal Hip, and Crowbar). In 1991 he received another Obie award for Sincerity Forever. He has received a Lila Wallace-Readers’ Digest Writers Award, and most recently the 2003 Obie award
for Lifetime Achievement as well as a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts
that same year. He is a co-founder of The Flea Theater
in New York City.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. Wellman is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether. His plays frequently resemble a moving collage of events which has more in common with an avant-garde dance production than Broadway-style theater. Helen Shaw writes, “Since a 1984 essay, ‘The Theatre of Good Intentions,’ [Wellman] has been the cynosure in a heaven full of experimental playwrights who rail against what Jonathan Lear, in his book Open Minded, called a ‘tyranny’ of ‘the already known’” (vii).
Discussing his style with BOMB Magazine
Bomb Magazine
BOMB is a quarterly magazine edited by artists and writers. It is composed, primarily, of interviews between creative people working in a variety of disciplines — visual art, literature, music, film, theater and architecture....
, Wellman said that he uses words as objects in his writing. "I found if you try to write totally in cliches and things that don't sound right," Wellman clarified, "you deal with a language that frankly is 98% of what people speak, think, and hear. So it's enormously enjoyable." This type of language has been positively characterized as "an untrammeled flow of logorrhea: plain words, fancy words, space-age words, Victorian words and words that defy the dictionary" by New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley
Ben Brantley
Benjamin D. "Ben" Brantley is an American journalist and the chief theater critic of The New York Times.-Life and career:...
.
Professional Credits
Wellman is the Donald I. Fine Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn CollegeBrooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and in 2010 he became a CUNY Distinguished Professor. Wellman is author to more than forty plays, including Harm's Way (1978), The Self-Begotten (1982), The Bad Infinity (1983), Dracula (1987), Whirligig (1988), Crowbar (1989), 7 Blowjobs (1991), Terminal Hip (1984), Murder of Crows and Description Beggared or the Allegory of WHITENESS (2000). He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, McNight and a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
. In 1990 he received an Obie award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
for Best New American Play (for Bad Penny, Terminal Hip, and Crowbar). In 1991 he received another Obie award for Sincerity Forever. He has received a Lila Wallace-Readers’ Digest Writers Award, and most recently the 2003 Obie award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
for Lifetime Achievement as well as a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Foundation for Contemporary Arts , originally known as Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City founded by artists Jasper Johns , John Cage, Elaine de Kooning and others in 1963. FCA offers financial support and recognition to contemporary...
that same year. He is a co-founder of The Flea Theater
The Flea Theater
The Flea Theater, founded in 1996, is a theatre in the TriBeCa section of New York City. It presents primarily new American theatre, and provides a venue for film stars to act on a very small stage. It is the home of "The Bat Theater Company", an Obie Award winning resident acting troupe of...
in New York City.
See also
- Speculations: An Essay on the TheaterSpeculations: An Essay on the TheaterSpeculations: An Essay on the Theater is a treatise by one of today's major experimental playwrights: Mac Wellman. It was published with the collection of plays entitled The Difficulty of Crossing a Field...
- The Flea TheaterThe Flea TheaterThe Flea Theater, founded in 1996, is a theatre in the TriBeCa section of New York City. It presents primarily new American theatre, and provides a venue for film stars to act on a very small stage. It is the home of "The Bat Theater Company", an Obie Award winning resident acting troupe of...
- Performance artPerformance artIn art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
- Performing GaragePerforming GarageThe Performing Garage is an off-Broadway theater in SoHo, New York City. Established in 1968, it is the permanent home of the experimental theater company originally named The Performance Group that morphed in 1980 into The Wooster Group , and their primary performance venue.Since 1978, it also...
- Elizabeth LeCompteElizabeth LeCompteElizabeth LeCompte is a founding member and the theater director of experimental theater collective The Wooster Group .-Biography:...
- The Wooster GroupThe Wooster GroupThe Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged during 1975-1980 from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group and took its name in 1980...
- Ontological-Hysteric TheaterOntological-Hysteric TheaterThe Ontological-Hysteric Theater was founded in 1968 by Richard Foreman. According to his website, his aim was-Total Theater:According to his website,-Production history:...
- Richard ForemanRichard ForemanRichard Foreman is an American playwright and avant-garde theater pioneer. He is the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.-Life :...
- Richard SchechnerRichard SchechnerRichard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University , editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. His BA is from Cornell University , MA from the University of Iowa , and PhD from Tulane University...
- HappeningHappeningA happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
s - Allan KaprowAllan KaprowAllan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
- FluxusFluxusFluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
- IntermediaIntermediaIntermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s. Thus, the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or between painting...
- Dick HigginsDick HigginsDick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...
- Marina AbramovićMarina AbramovicMarina Abramović is a Belgrade-born New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and...
- Experimental theatreExperimental theatreExperimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
- Avant-gardeAvant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
External links
- MacWellman.com official site
- The Flea Theater http://www.theflea.org/