Theatre Career
Horovitz has written more than 70 produced plays, many of which have been translated and performed in more than 30 languages worldwide. Among Horovitz's best-known plays are Line (a revival of which opened in 1974 and is NYC's longest-running play still running, now in its 38th year of continuous performance at off-off-Broadway's 13th Street Repertory Theatre), Park Your Car in Harvard Yard, The Primary English Class, The Widow's Blind Date, What Strong Fences Make, and The Indian Wants the Bronx, for which he won the Obie Award for Best Play, and which featured two yet-undiscovered future film stars: John Cazale and Al Pacino.
Horovitz divides his time between the USA and France, where he often directs French-language productions of his plays. On his 70th birthday, Horovitz was decorated by the French government as Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The 70/70 Horovitz Project was created by NYC Barefoot Theatre Company to celebrate Horovitz's 70th birthday. During the year following March 31, 2009, 70 of Horovitz's plays had productions and/or reading by theatre companies around the globe, including the national theatres of Nigeria, Benin, Greece and Ghana. He is the most-produced American playwright in French theatre history.
Horovitz is Founding Artistic Director of the Gloucester Stage Company in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a theatre he created in 1979 and served as its Artistic Director for 28 years. He also founded The New York Playwrights Lab in 1975, and still serves as the NYPL's Artistic Director. In addition, Horovitz is one of a select group of non-actors awarded membership in The Actors Studio.
Horovitz had a long-term friendship with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and often found in Beckett a thematic and stylistic model and inspiration for his own work. Horovitz has recently been working with The Byre Theatre of St Andrews, Scotland.
Read more about this topic: Israel Horovitz
Famous quotes containing the words theatre and/or career:
“For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)