Tina Howe
Encyclopedia
Tina Howe is an American
playwright
. She is the daughter of journalist Quincy Howe
and was raised in a literary family. Over a career spanning more than three decades, Howe's best-known works are Painting Churches
, Coastal Disturbances
and Pride's Crossing
.
Her works have won numerous awards, including the 1998 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play (Pride’s Crossing). Coastal Disturbances was nominated for the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play
.
, a CBS news
commentator, and Mary Post Howe, an artist. She is the granddaughter of biographer Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe and the great-granddaughter of the first Episcopal Bishop of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
. Howe’s parents and grandmother were essential to her success as a writer. Howe told interviewer Mike Wood
that her family’s focus was on reading and writing: "Thanksgivings and family occasions were always about, 'What are you reading, what are you writing, what are you working on, what poetry are you interested in?'" Her grandfather, Mark DeWolfe Howe was a poet who lived to be 96; and her uncle, Mark Howe, was a law professor at Harvard. Her grandfather passed his love of literature on to his sons and daughters, and they did the same. When Howe was ill with hepatitis, her father visited her every day in the hospital, reading James Joyce
's Ulysses
to her during his lunch break.
Howe graduated from Sarah Lawrence College
in Bronxville, New York
, in 1959, where she wrote her first play.
, which is where she says she learned her craft through running the drama department, a position she agreed to take on the terms that only her plays would be produced. Her first professionally produced play was The Nest in 1970.
Howe is noted as an innovative and experimental writer, with a strong affinity for absurdism, exploring the absurd in a more realistic setting. She wrote The Art of Dining
, in 1979. Her play Painting Churches
is one of her most critically successful works, winning the Outer Critics Circle Award
for best Off-Broadway
play in 1984. It was also produced by PBS's American Playhouse series in 1986. She won an Obie Award
in 1983 for distinguished playwriting and was nominated for a Tony Award for Coastal Disturbances
in 1987. This was followed by Approaching Zanzibar (1989) and One Shoe Off (1993). She received the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award for Best Play in 1998 for Pride’s Crossing (1997). In 2004, Howe penned English translations of Eugene Ionesco
's The Bald Soprano
and The Lesson, the latter of which was produced at the Atlantic Theater Company
. The same company produced her play "Birth After Birth" as part of its 2006–2007 mainstage season at the Linda Gross Theater.
Howe's plays have been produced around the United States, as well as abroad. Her plays have premiered in venues such as the Los Angeles Actor’s Theatre, the New York Shakespeare Festival
, the Kennedy Center, and the Second Stage. She received a Rockefeller Grant (1984), two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a Guggenheim fellowship (1990), an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature (1993), as well as honorary degrees from Whittier College (1997) and Bowdoin College (1998).
She has also taught master classes at NYU, UCLA, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon, she currently teaches playwrighting at Hunter College
in New York City, and she has been a member of the council of the Dramatists Guild of America
since 1990. Several of her works can be read in the volumes Coastal Disturbances: Four Plays by Tina Howe and Approaching Zanzibar and Other Plays.
.
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...
. She is the daughter of journalist Quincy Howe
Quincy Howe
Quincy Howe was an American journalist, best known for his CBS radio broadcasts during World War II. He was the son of Mark Anthony De Wolfe Howe....
and was raised in a literary family. Over a career spanning more than three decades, Howe's best-known works are Painting Churches
Painting Churches
Painting Churches is a play written by Tina Howe, first produced Off-Broadway in 1976. It was a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play concerns the relationship between an artist daughter and her aging parents.-Plot:...
, Coastal Disturbances
Coastal Disturbances
Coastal Disturbances is a play by Tina Howe, which premiered Off-Broadway in 1986 and transferred to Broadway. It received a Tony Award nomination as Best Play.-Production history:...
and Pride's Crossing
Pride's Crossing
Pride's Crossing is a play by Tina Howe. It received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play and was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Drama....
.
Her works have won numerous awards, including the 1998 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play (Pride’s Crossing). Coastal Disturbances was nominated for the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play
Tony Award for Best Play
The Tony Award for Best Play is an annual award celebrating achievements in live American theatre, including musical theatre, honoring productions on Broadway in New York. It currently takes place in mid-June each year.There was no award in the Tony's first year...
.
Early life
Howe was born in New York City to Quincy HoweQuincy Howe
Quincy Howe was an American journalist, best known for his CBS radio broadcasts during World War II. He was the son of Mark Anthony De Wolfe Howe....
, a CBS news
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
commentator, and Mary Post Howe, an artist. She is the granddaughter of biographer Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe and the great-granddaughter of the first Episcopal Bishop of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Bethlehem is a city in Lehigh and Northampton Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 74,982, making it the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie,...
. Howe’s parents and grandmother were essential to her success as a writer. Howe told interviewer Mike Wood
Mike Wood
Michael Roy Wood is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Batley and Spen since 1997. He is a member of the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group, and is considered one of the more independently minded Labour MPs.-Early life:He is the son of Rowland Wood, a foundry...
that her family’s focus was on reading and writing: "Thanksgivings and family occasions were always about, 'What are you reading, what are you writing, what are you working on, what poetry are you interested in?'" Her grandfather, Mark DeWolfe Howe was a poet who lived to be 96; and her uncle, Mark Howe, was a law professor at Harvard. Her grandfather passed his love of literature on to his sons and daughters, and they did the same. When Howe was ill with hepatitis, her father visited her every day in the hospital, reading James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Ulysses
Ulysses
Ulysses is derived from Ulixes, the Latin name for Odysseus, a character in ancient Greek literature. For more on the name Ulysses, see Ulysses .Ulysses may also refer to:- Literature and film :...
to her during his lunch break.
Howe graduated from Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
in Bronxville, New York
Bronxville, New York
Bronxville is an affluent village within the town of Eastchester, New York, in the United States. It is a suburb of New York City, located approximately north of midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County. At the 2010 census, Bronxville had a population of 6,323...
, in 1959, where she wrote her first play.
Career
After college, Howe spent a year in Paris, where she continued to write, and after returning to New York she earned her teaching credentials at Columbia University Teacher’s College and Chicago Teachers College. She started teaching high school in Monona Grove, Wisconsin, and then in Bath, MaineBath, Maine
Bath is a city in Sagadahoc County, Maine, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 9,266. It is the county seat of Sagadahoc County. Located on the Kennebec River, Bath is a port of entry with a good harbor. The city is popular with tourists, many drawn by its...
, which is where she says she learned her craft through running the drama department, a position she agreed to take on the terms that only her plays would be produced. Her first professionally produced play was The Nest in 1970.
Howe is noted as an innovative and experimental writer, with a strong affinity for absurdism, exploring the absurd in a more realistic setting. She wrote The Art of Dining
The Art of Dining
The Art Of Dining, a play written by Tina Howe in 1979, showcases the bizarre relationships three groups of characters have with food. The play is set during November in a New Jersey restaurant, newly opened by couple Ellen and Cal, who have everything riding on each night's cash flow...
, in 1979. Her play Painting Churches
Painting Churches
Painting Churches is a play written by Tina Howe, first produced Off-Broadway in 1976. It was a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play concerns the relationship between an artist daughter and her aging parents.-Plot:...
is one of her most critically successful works, winning the Outer Critics Circle Award
Outer Critics Circle Award
The Outer Critics Circle Awards are presented annually for theatrical achievements both on and Off-Broadway and were begun during the 1949-1950 theater season. The awards are decided upon by theater critics who review for out-of-town newspapers, national publications, and other media outlets...
for best Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
play in 1984. It was also produced by PBS's American Playhouse series in 1986. She won 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...
in 1983 for distinguished playwriting and was nominated for a Tony Award for Coastal Disturbances
Coastal Disturbances
Coastal Disturbances is a play by Tina Howe, which premiered Off-Broadway in 1986 and transferred to Broadway. It received a Tony Award nomination as Best Play.-Production history:...
in 1987. This was followed by Approaching Zanzibar (1989) and One Shoe Off (1993). She received the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award for Best Play in 1998 for Pride’s Crossing (1997). In 2004, Howe penned English translations of Eugene Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
's The Bald Soprano
The Bald Soprano
La Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris...
and The Lesson, the latter of which was produced at the Atlantic Theater Company
Atlantic Theater Company
Atlantic Theater Company is an Off-Broadway non-profit theater, whose mission is to produce great plays "simply and truthfully utilizing an artistic ensemble." The company was founded in 1985 by David Mamet, William H. Macy, and 30 of their acting students from New York University, inspired by the...
. The same company produced her play "Birth After Birth" as part of its 2006–2007 mainstage season at the Linda Gross Theater.
Howe's plays have been produced around the United States, as well as abroad. Her plays have premiered in venues such as the Los Angeles Actor’s Theatre, the New York Shakespeare Festival
New York Shakespeare Festival
New York Shakespeare Festival is the previous name of the New York City theatrical producing organization now known as the Public Theater. The Festival produced shows at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, as part of its free Shakespeare in the Park series, at the Public Theatre near Astor Place...
, the Kennedy Center, and the Second Stage. She received a Rockefeller Grant (1984), two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a Guggenheim fellowship (1990), an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature (1993), as well as honorary degrees from Whittier College (1997) and Bowdoin College (1998).
She has also taught master classes at NYU, UCLA, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon, she currently teaches playwrighting at Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
in New York City, and she has been a member of the council of the Dramatists Guild of America
Dramatists Guild of America
The Dramatists Guild of America is a professional organization for playwrights, composers, and lyricists working in the U.S. theatre market.Membership as an Associate Member is open to any person having written at least one stage play. Active Members are playwrights who have had at least one play...
since 1990. Several of her works can be read in the volumes Coastal Disturbances: Four Plays by Tina Howe and Approaching Zanzibar and Other Plays.
Personal life
Howe is married to historian Norman Levy, and the couple has two children. Her hobbies include water aerobics and Baroque music. For 25 years during her career, Howe wrote her plays while listening only to pianist Glenn GouldGlenn Gould
Glenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach...
.
Plays
- Museum (1976)
- The Art of DiningThe Art of DiningThe Art Of Dining, a play written by Tina Howe in 1979, showcases the bizarre relationships three groups of characters have with food. The play is set during November in a New Jersey restaurant, newly opened by couple Ellen and Cal, who have everything riding on each night's cash flow...
(1979) - Painting ChurchesPainting ChurchesPainting Churches is a play written by Tina Howe, first produced Off-Broadway in 1976. It was a finalist for the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play concerns the relationship between an artist daughter and her aging parents.-Plot:...
(1983) - Coastal DisturbancesCoastal DisturbancesCoastal Disturbances is a play by Tina Howe, which premiered Off-Broadway in 1986 and transferred to Broadway. It received a Tony Award nomination as Best Play.-Production history:...
(1986) - Approaching Zanzibar(1989)
- One Shoe Off (1993)
- Pride's CrossingPride's CrossingPride's Crossing is a play by Tina Howe. It received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play and was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Drama....
(1997) - Rembrandt's Gift (2002)
- The Bald SopranoThe Bald SopranoLa Cantatrice Chauve — translated from French as The Bald Soprano or The Bald Prima Donna — is the first play written by Franco-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco. Nicolas Bataille directed the premiere on May 11, 1950 at the Théâtre des Noctambules, Paris...
(English translation of Eugène Ionesco, 2004) - The Lesson (English translation of Eugène Ionesco, 2004)
- Birth and After Birth (2006)
- Chasing Manet (2009)
Awards and nominations
- 1983 Obie AwardObie AwardThe 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 Distinguished Playwriting (winner) - 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Painting Churches (finalist)
- 1984 Rockefeller Grant for Distinguished Playwriting (winner)
- 1987 Tony AwardTony AwardThe Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
Best Play Coastal Disturbances (nominee) - 1990 Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim 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...
(winner) - 1993 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature (winner)
- 1997 Pulitzer Prize for DramaPulitzer Prize for DramaThe Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
Pride's Crossing (finalist) - 1998 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play (winner)
- 1998 Madge Evans & Sidney S. Kingsley Award (winner)
- 2005 William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater (winner)
External links
- Internet Broadway Database listing for Tina Howe
- Internet Off-Broadway Database listing (Lortel Archives) for Tina Howe
- Complete list of Plays by Tina Howe
- filmreference.com, Tina Howe Biography (1937-)
- Internet Movie Database listing for Tina Howe
- Pulitzer Org. listing for Tina Howe, 1997 and 1984 showing finalist