Sol Stein - Playwright

Playwright

In 1952 Stein was granted a leave of absence from the Voice of America to accept back-to-back fellowships at Yaddo, an artists’ colony, and the MacDowell Colony. At MacDowell, Stein completed his first play, Napoleon, under the watchful eye of Thornton Wilder, a fellow at the same time. The verse drama was produced the following year by the New Dramatists organization at the ANTA Theater in New York and was chosen by the Dramatists Alliance as “the best full length play of 1953”.

Stein completed a second play, A Shadow of My Enemy, originally intended as an adaptation of Whittaker Chambers' best-selling memoir, Witness (1952), but, when denied rights, based on public record and published in 1957. The play, whose synopsis runs "A senior editor of Time magazine accuses his closest friend of being a Communist", was originally commissioned by the Theater Guild and subsequently produced on Broadway by Roger Stevens, Alfred deLiagre Jr., and Hume Cronyn. The cast starred Ed Begley and Gene Raymond.

In the early 1950s, Stein and Elia Kazan formed a friendship that was cemented in 1955 when Stein served as the production observer from first reading to opening night of the Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama that year. Stein’s play A Shadow of My Enemy was produced in 1957 by Roger Stevens, Alfred deLiagre, Jr. and Hume Cronyn at the National Theater in Washington and the ANTA theatre on Broadway in New York starring Ed Begley and Gene Raymond. In 1957 Stein was one of 10 founding members of the Playwrights Group at the Actors Studio in New York with William Inge, Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, and others.

From 1957-1959 Stein served for two and a half years as Managing Editor of the Executive Membership Division of the Research Institute of America.