Murray Mednick (born 1939) is an American playwright and poet. He is best known as founder of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival, where he served as artistic director from 1978 to 1995. He has received numerous awards for his plays, including two Rockefeller Grants and an OBIE.

Life and career

Born in 1939 to a family with Jewish roots, Mednick attended

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls nearly 14,000 students on a campus in the Midwood and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn as of fall ...

and became involved with New York's off-off-Broadway company

Theatre Genesis Theatre Genesis was an off-off-Broadway theater founded in 1964 by Ralph Cook. Located in the historic St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village of Manhattan, it produced the work of new American playwrights, including Lanford Wilson, ...

, where much of his early work was staged. He was eventually appointed to the post of artistic co-director in 1970. In 1974, Mednick moved to Los Angeles after being evicted from his apartment while on a trip to the Yucatán on a Guggenheim grant. Mednick founded the long-running summer workshop Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival in 1978 with funding from LaVerne University, where he was teaching at the time. The workshop was meant to be an extension of his collaborations with Ralph Cook, his mentor and founder of Theatre Genesis. In his teachings at Padua, Mednick stressed a strong grounding in theater and literary history, specifically the

Ancient Greeks Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically re ...

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 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 Beckett. Language was especially important. In a 2001 interview, Mednick said that Padua's teaching was "based in a literary knowledge, with a seriousness of purpose that isn't necessarily commercial. Both the writing and the acting are like realism-plus. Ordinary exchanges of life are put in an occasion that heightens them. The dialogue is really the action; it has a life of its own. The story is reflected by the dialogue." Notable participants in the Workshop/Festival included

Maria Irene Fornes Maria may refer to: People * Mary, mother of Jesus * Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages Place names Extraterrestrial * 170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877 * Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, ...

Sam Shepard Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, ...

, John Steppling, John O'Keefe, Jon Robin Baitz and Kelly Stuart". Padua ceased operation in 1995 and reemerged in 2001, premiering three Mednick works as part of a tribute series honoring influential local playwrights. Mednick has been mentioned as influencing other playwrights, including

, Eduardo Machado, and David Scott Milton. Murray Mednick met Sam Sheppard in 1965, they went on to start a band called "The Heavy Metal Kid." Murray Mednick directed

's play ''Action'' starring

Patti Smith Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, author, and photographer. Her 1975 debut album '' Horses'' made her an influential member of the New York City-based punk rock movement. Smith has fu ...

. Mednick and Sheppard were a part of the Off- Off broadway movement in NY.

Works

Mednick's current productions include '' Mayakovsky and

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

'', which premiered in Los Angeles starting in October 2018, and will move to the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, 201

''The Gary Plays'' (8 separate works/ premiered in Los Angeles 201

'' François Villon, Villon (''premiered in Los Angeles, 2014). Past productions include; Scar (starring actor

Ed Harris Edward Allen Harris (born November 28, 1950) is an American actor and filmmaker. His performances in '' Apollo 13'' (1995), '' The Truman Show'' (1998), '' Pollock'' (2000), and '' The Hours'' (2002) earned him critical acclaim and Academy Awa ...

), an autobiographical series ''16 Routines'', ''Joe and Betty'' (concerning his parents' difficult marriage, starring

John Diehl John Henry Diehl (born May 1, 1950) is an American character actor. Noted for his work in avant-garde theater, Diehl has performed in more than 140 films and television shows, including '' Land of Plenty'', '' Stripes'', ''City Limits'', '' Nix ...

and Annabel Gurwitch, which performed in New York starting in June 2002), and ''Mrs. Feuerstein,'' ''as'' well as ''Sand'', ''The Hawk'', Fedunn (produced by the Audrey Skirball-Kenis theatre), ''The Coyote Cycle'', a series of one-act plays performed outdoors from twilight till dawn, involving four characters such as Spider Grandmother drawn from traditional Native American folklore. The Coyote character was also featured in ''Destruction of the Fourth World'', part of the 2009 series performed by

Padua Playwrights Padua Playwrights Productions, or Padua, is a Los Angeles-based theater company founded in 1978 by playwright and poet Murray Mednick and John Woodruff. The company ceased operation in 1995 and re-emerged in 2001, under the direction of Guy Zimm ...

. His published plays include ''VILLON and other plays (2016)'', ''Hipsters in Distress'' (2005), ''Three Plays (2003), The Coyote Cycle (1993),'' by Padua Hills Press. His play ''Switchback'' was published in 1997 by (Sun and Moon Press). Anthologized plays include ''Freeze'', ''The Deer Kill'', ''Willie the Germ'', ''The Hawk'', ''Sand'', ''Switchback'', ''Taxes'', and others.

Awards and recognition

Mednick is the recipient of two

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

grants, a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

, an OBIE (''The Deer Kill''), several Bay Area Critics Awards, two ''LA Weekly'' Playwriting Awards (for ''Dictator'' and'' Fedunn''), the American Theater Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Citation (for ''Joe and Betty''), an Ovation Lifetime Achievement Award from Theatre LA for outstanding contributions to Los Angeles Theatre, a Local Hero Garland Award from Back Stage West for a Distinguished Body of Work, a Career Achievement Award from the ''LA Weekly'', and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s most prestigious honor, the Margaret Harford Award for “Sustained Excellence in Theater.”

References

External links

Awards information noted on Barnes & Noble synopsis of Three Plays

IMDB

More biographical details from official site for A Girl on a Bed

New Works By Murray Mednick
* Lortel Archives {{DEFAULTSORT:Mednick, Murray Living people 1939 births Brooklyn College alumni