John Herbert (playwright)
John Herbert was the pen name of John Herbert Brundage (13 October 1926 – 22 June 2001), a Canadian playwright and theatre director best known for his 1967 play Fortune and Men's Eyes.[1]
Background
Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario,[2] after completing high school he worked in the advertising department of Eaton's.[1] During this time, he began competing in drag pageants.[1] After being the victim of a robbery in 1947, Herbert himself was arrested for being dressed as a woman in public,[1] and was sentenced to four months in a youth reformatory.[1] His time in jail would later inspire Fortune and Men's Eyes,[1] in which he included the character of Queenie as an authorial self-insertion.[1]
After being released from the reformatory, he spent some time travelling across North America, doing odd jobs to support himself, before returning to Toronto in 1955.[1] He studied at the National Ballet School of Canada and at Dora Mavor Moore's New Play Society,[2] and cofounded the Garret Theatre with his sister Nana Brundage in 1960.[3]
Fortune and Men's Eyes was written in 1964,[4] but faced struggles being staged in Canada. It received a workshop production at the Stratford Festival in 1965, but Herbert was unable to find a theatre company willing to mount a full production.[5] It ultimately premiered in New York City as an off-Broadway production in 1967.[4] Because of the 1947 conviction, however, Herbert frequently faced difficulties entering the United States to attend productions of his work.[3]
Fortune and Men's Eyes remains the most widely-produced play in the history of Canadian theatre, both in Canada and internationally.[2] None of Herbert's other plays were as successful,[2] although Herbert remained active as a dancer, a theatre director, an acting teacher and a theatre lecturer at Ryerson University, Glendon College, York University and the University of Toronto.[1]
He died in 2001.[3] The manual typewriter on which he composed Fortune and Men's Eyes is in the possession of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
Selected works
- Felice (1955)
- Pearl Divers (1956)
- Beer Room (1957)
- Close Friends (1958)
- A Ruby Fell (1959)
- Time To a Waltz (1959)
- Private Club (1960)
- A Household God (1961)
- World of Woyzeck (1963)
- Born of Medusa's Blood (1965)
- Fortune and Men's Eyes (1967)
- Omphale and the Hero (1971)
- The Dinosaurs (1973)
- The Token Star (1976)
- The Power of Paper Dolls (1979)
- Magda (1981)
- The Butterfly and the Nightingale (1984)
- The Biographers (1985)
- Blanche and Rose's Dream Song (1986)
- The Primadonna (1988)
- Broken Antique Dolls (1991)
- Merchants of Bay Street (1993)
- Family of a Monster (1995)
- Marilyn at Seventy (1995)
- Marlene Richdiet (1998)
- One Castle Court (1999)
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 John Herbert at the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia.
- 1 2 3 4 John Herbert at The Canadian Encyclopedia.
- 1 2 3 "John Herbert Dies at 75; Wrote of Prison Life". The New York Times, June 27, 2001.
- 1 2 John Herbert at The Literary Encyclopedia.
- ↑ "That Man's Scope: John Herbert now". The Body Politic, Vol 10 (1973).
External links
- John Herbert at the Internet Movie Database
- John Herbert at the Internet Off Broadway Database
- John Herbert website
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