The fourth set of off-Broadway playwright Horovitz's plays includes some of his lightest and darkest work. On the light side is the Growing-Up-Jewish Trilogy, a sweet, witty adaptation of
A Good Place to Come From (1973), Morley Torbov's short stories about growing up Jewish in Canada in the 1940s. These three plays--
Today, I Am a Fountain Pen;
A Rosen by Any Other Name; and
The Chopin Playoffsare warmhearted portraits of two families, the Rosens and the Yanovers, and their rival sons, Irving and Stanley, in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. In contrast to the Growing-Up-Jewish Trilogy is the Alfred Trilogy--
Alfred the Great,
Our Father's Failing, and
Alfred Dies. It portrays the tragicomedy of a small town's decline and fall in the 1970s. Besides the two trilogies, the volume includes an essay on the Alfred Trilogy by noted theater scholar Martin Esslin, who worked with Horovitz and director James Hammerstein on the first public reading of
Alfred the Great.
Jack Helbig
About the Author
Israel Horovitz's 50 plus plays have been translated and performed in as many as 30 languages, worldwide. Horovitz has won numerous awards, including the OBIE (twice), The New York Drama Desk Award, the Prix du Jury (Cannes Film Festival), the B'Nai Brith International Heritage Award, and an Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is founder and artistic director of The New York Playwrights Lab and The Gloucester Stage Company.
