Kenneth Thorpe Rowe (September 19, 1900 – October 27, 1988) was an influential professor of drama and playwriting. For decades, Rowe taught playwriting,
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
and modern
drama
Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...
at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
. There he had an enormous impact on students, from
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are ''All My Sons'' (1947), ''Death of a Salesman'' (19 ...
(''All My Sons,'' ''Death of a Salesman'') to
Lawrence Kasdan
Lawrence Edward Kasdan (born January 14, 1949) is an American filmmaker. He is the co-writer of the ''Star Wars'' films ''The Empire Strikes Back'' (1980), ''Return of the Jedi'' (1983), ''The Force Awakens'' (2015), and '' Solo: A Star Wars Sto ...
(''Star Wars''). His book ''Write That Play'' become a widely used college textbook for the teaching of playwriting.
Rowe earned his undergraduate and master's degrees at Rice University and taught at Rice and the University of Oregon before coming to Michigan in 1928. He was a guest lecturer at many schools, including the University of Washington, the New School Dramatic Workshop, Columbia University, and Yale. During World War II he served as chairman of War Activities for the American Educational Theater Association and as consultant to numerous government agencies, including the Departments of Treasury and War. According to the Bentley Library at Michigan, which holds Rowe's papers from that era, his government consulting focused on "the use of drama as a propaganda tool to raise morale and to define America's goals" during the war.
Works
In 1939, Rowe published ''Write That Play'' which dealt with fundamental topics related to the process of writing a play, including: What A Play Is; Finding Dramatic Material; Building The Play; Analysis of a Great Play; Characterization; Dialogue; and Scenarios and Revisions.
The signature of Rowe's written work was his patient explication of the role and impact of each part of a play's structure; his lucidity and insight were evident in his line-by-line analysis of sample plays such as Ibsen