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Sir Tom Stoppard (; born italic=no, 3 July 1937) is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical bases of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Elizabeth II in 1997.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.
Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads. Stoppard wrote the film's screenplay.
Stoppard has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Awards, three Laurence Olivier Awards, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.
Before the Japanese occupation of Singapore, Stoppard, his brother, and their mother fled to British Raj. Stoppard's father remained in Singapore as a British army volunteer, knowing that as a doctor, he would be needed in its defence. When Stoppard was four years old, his father died.Bloom, p.13 The writer long understood that Sträussler had perished in Japanese captivity, as a prisoner of war. BBC John Tusa Interview (Audio 43 mins). Transcript The book Tom Stoppard in Conversation describes this, but the author later revealed the subsequent discovery that his father had been reported drowned on board a ship, bombed by Japanese forces, as he tried to flee Singapore in 1942.
In 1941, when Tomáš was five, he, his brother Petr, and their mother had been evacuated to Darjeeling, India. The boys attended Mount Hermon School, an American multi-racial school,Tom Stoppard, Paul Delaney (1994). Tom Stoppard in Conversation, p. 91, University of Michigan Press where the brothers became Tom and Peter.
In 1945, his mother, Martha, married British army major Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the boys his English surname and moved the family to England in 1946. Stoppard's stepfather believed strongly that "to be born an Englishman was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life"—a quote from Cecil Rhodes—telling his 9-year-old stepson: "Don't you realize that I made you British?" setting up Stoppard's desire as a child to become "an honorary Englishman". He has said, "I fairly often find I'm with people who forget I don't quite belong in the world we're in. I find I put a foot wrong—it could be pronunciation, an arcane bit of English history—and suddenly I'm there naked, as someone with a pass, a press ticket". This is reflected in his characters, he observes, who are "constantly being addressed by the wrong name, with jokes and false trails to do with the confusion of having two names". Stoppard attended the Dolphin School in Nottinghamshire, and later completed his education at Pocklington School in the East Riding of Yorkshire, which he hated.
Stoppard left school at 17 and began work as a journalist for the Western Daily Press in Bristol, without attending university. Years later, he came to regret the decision to forgo a university education, but at the time, he loved his work as a journalist and was passionate about his career. He worked at the paper from 1954 until 1958, when the Bristol Post offered Stoppard the position of feature writer, humour columnist, and secondary drama critic, which took him into the world of theatre. At the Bristol Old Vic, at the time a well-regarded regional repertory company, Stoppard formed friendships with director John Boorman and actor Peter O'Toole early in their careers. In Bristol, he became known more for his strained attempts at humour and unstylish clothes than for his writing.
In the following years, Stoppard produced several works for radio, television and the theatre, including "M" is for Moon Among Other Things (1964), A Separate Peace (1966) and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank (1966). On 11 April 1967 – following acclaim at the 1966 Edinburgh Festival – the opening of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in a National Theatre production at the Old Vic made Stoppard an overnight success. Jumpers (1972) places a professor of moral philosophy in a murder mystery thriller alongside a slew of radical gymnasts. Travesties (1974) explored the 'Oscar Wilde' possibilities arising from the fact that Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce, and Tristan Tzara had all been in Zürich during the First World War.
Stoppard has written one novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966), set in contemporary London. Its characters include the 18th-century figure of the dandified Malquist and his ineffectual James Boswell, Moon, and also cowboys, a lion (banned from the Ritz) and a donkey-borne Irishman claiming to be the Risen Christ.
In 1982 Stoppard premiered his play The Real Thing. The story revolves around a male-female relationship and the struggle between the actress and the member of a group fighting to free a Scottish soldier imprisoned for burning a memorial wreath during a protest. The leading roles were originated by Roger Rees, and Felicity Kendal. The story examines various constructs of honesty including a play within a play, to explore the theme of reality versus appearance. It has been described as one of Stoppard's "most popular, enduring and autobiographical plays."
The play made its Broadway transfer in 1984, directed by Mike Nichols, starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close in the leading roles with a supporting role by Christine Baranski. The transfer was a critical success with The New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich declaring, "The Broadway version of The Real Thing - a substantial revision of the original London production - is not only Mr. Stoppard's most moving play, but also the most bracing play that anyone has written about love and marriage in years." The production went on to earn seven Tony Award nominations, winning five awards for Best Play as well for Nichols, Irons, Close, and Baranski. This would be Stoppard's third Tony Award for Best Play, following Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1968 and Travesties in 1976.
In 1985, Stoppard co-wrote with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown a feature film, the satire science-fiction dark comedy Brazil (1985).
The film received near universal acclaim. Pauline Kael critic for The New Yorker declared, "Visually, it’s an original, bravura piece of moviemaking...Gilliam’s vision is an organic thing on the screen—and that’s a considerable achievement".
Stoppard along with Gilliam and McKeown were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, losing to Witness. He went on to write the scripts for Steven Spielberg's films Empire of the Sun (1987), based on the book by J. G. Ballard, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Spielberg later stated that though Stoppard was uncredited for the latter of the two, "he was responsible for almost every line of dialogue in the film".
For his 1985 appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs Stoppard chose "Careless Love" by Bessie Smith as his favourite track; he also selected Inferno in two languages by Dante Alighieri as his chosen book and a plastic football as his luxury item.
The first production premiered at the Royal National Theatre directed by Trevor Nunn starring Rufus Sewell, Felicity Kendal, Bill Nighy, Harriet Walter and Emma Fielding. It won the 1993 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. A year later the play made its transfer on Broadway starring Billy Crudup, Blair Brown, Victor Garber and Robert Sean Leonard. The production was well received with Vincent Canby of The New York Times writing, that while "There are real difficulties with this production...there also great pleasures, not the least of which are Mark Thompson's sets and costumes. Mostly, though, there are Mr. Stoppard's grandly eclectic obsessions and his singular gifts as a playwright. Attend to them." The production received three Tony Award nominations including Best Play losing to Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!.
Stoppard gained acclaim with the feature film Shakespeare in Love (1998), which he wrote. The film, a romantic comedy, focuses on a fictional story involving William Shakespeare and his romance with a young woman who is an inspiration for the play Romeo and Juliet. The film starred an ensemble cast including Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, and Judi Dench. The film was a critical and financial success and went on to earn seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. Stoppard received his second career Oscar nomination and first win for Best Original Screenplay. He also received the BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for his screenplay.
Rock 'n' Roll (2006) was set in both Cambridge, England, and Prague. The play explored the culture of 1960s rock music, especially the persona of Syd Barrett and the political challenge of the Czech band The Plastic People of the Universe, mirroring the contrast between liberal society in England and the repressive Czech state after the Warsaw Pact intervention in the Prague Spring.
Stoppard served on the advisory board of the magazine Standpoint, and was instrumental in its foundation, giving the opening speech at its launch. He is also a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. Stoppard was appointed president of the London Library in 2002 and vice-president in 2017 following the election of Tim Rice as president.
In 2012, Stoppard wrote a five part limited series for television, Parade's End, which revolves around a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat, his mean socialite wife and a young suffragette. The series premiered on BBC Two, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall. The series has received widespread acclaim from critics with The Independents Grace Dent proclaiming it "one of the finest things the BBC has ever made". IndieWire declared, " Parade’s End is wonderful accomplishment, smart, adult television". Stoppard received a British Academy Television Award and Primetime Emmy Award nomination for the series.
It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. The play then transferred to Broadway, opening on 2 October 2022. It was nominated for six Tony Awards and won four, including Best Play.
Stoppard's later works have sought greater interpersonal depths, whilst maintaining their intellectual playfulness. Stoppard acknowledges that around 1982 he moved away from the "argumentative" works and more towards plays of the heart, as he became "less shy" about emotional openness. Discussing the later integration of heart and mind in his work, he commented "I think I was too concerned when I set off, to have a firework go off every few seconds... I think I was always looking for the entertainer in myself and I seem to be able to entertain through manipulating language... but it's really about human beings, it's not really about language at all." The Real Thing (1982) uses a Metatheatre structure to explore the suffering that adultery can produce and The Invention of Love (1997) also investigates the pain of passion. Arcadia (1993) explores the meeting of chaos theory, historiography, and landscape gardening. He was inspired by a Trevor Nunn production of Maxim Gorky's Summerfolk to write a trilogy of "human" plays: The Coast of Utopia ( Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage, 2002).
Stoppard has commented that he loves the medium of theatre for how "adjustable" it is at every point, how unfrozen it is, continuously growing and developing through each rehearsal, free from the text. His experience of writing for film is similar, offering the liberating opportunity to "play God", in control of creative reality. It often takes four to five years from the first idea of a play to staging, taking pains to be as profoundly accurate in his research as he can be.
Stoppard's mother died in 1996. The family had not talked about their history and neither brother knew what had happened to the family left behind in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1990s, with the fall of communism, Stoppard found out that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish and had died in Terezin, Auschwitz, and other camps, along with three of his mother's sisters.
In 1998, following the deaths of his parents, he returned to Zlín for the first time in over 50 years. He has expressed grief both for a lost father and a missing past, but he has no sense of being a survivor, at whatever remove. "I feel incredibly lucky not to have had to survive or die. It's a conspicuous part of what might be termed a charmed life." "You can't help being what you write". The Guardian, 6 September 2008
In 2013, Stoppard asked Hermione Lee to write his biography. The book was published in 2020.
The Tom Stoppard Prize () was created in 1983 under the Charter 77 Foundation and is awarded to authors of Czech origin.
In 2014, Stoppard publicly backed "Hacked Off" and its campaign towards press self-regulation by "safeguarding the press from political interference while also giving vital protection to the vulnerable."
In July 2017, Stoppard was elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy (HonFBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Stoppard was appointed Cameron Mackintosh Visiting of Contemporary Theatre, St Catherine's College, Oxford, for the academic year 2017–2018.
Stoppard has been represented in various forms of art. He sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill, and a bronze head is now in public collection, situated with the Stoppard papers in the reading room of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The terracotta remains in the collection of the artist in London. The correspondence file relating to the Stoppard bust is held in the archive of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.
Stoppard also sat for the sculptor and friend Angela Conner, and his bronze portrait bust is on display in the grounds of Chatsworth House.
Career
Early work
Stoppard wrote short radio plays in 1953–54 and by 1960 he had completed his first stage play, A Walk on the Water, which was later re-titled Enter a Free Man (1968).
He has said the work owed much to Robert Bolt's Flowering Cherry and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Within a week after sending A Walk on the Water to an agent, Stoppard received his version of the "Hollywood-style telegrams that change struggling young artists' lives." His first play was optioned, staged in Hamburg, then broadcast on British Independent Television in 1963. From September 1962 until April 1963, Stoppard worked in London as a drama critic for Scene magazine, writing reviews and interviews both under his name and the pseudonym William Boot (taken from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop). In 1964, a Ford Foundation grant enabled Stoppard to spend 5 months writing in a Berlin mansion, emerging with a one-act play titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, which later evolved into his Tony-winning play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
1980s
In the 1980s, in addition to writing his own works, Stoppard translated many plays into English, including works by Sławomir Mrożek, Johann Nestroy, Arthur Schnitzler, and Václav Havel. It was at this time that Stoppard became influenced by the works of Polish and Czech absurdists. He has been co-opted into the Outrapo group, a far-from-serious French movement to improve actors' stage technique through science.
1990s
In 1993, Stoppard wrote Arcadia, a play in which he explores the interaction between two modern academics and the residents of a Derbyshire country house in the early 19th century, including aristocrats, tutors and the fleeting presence, unseen on stage, of Lord Byron. The themes of the play include the philosophical implications of the second law of thermodynamics, Romantic literature, and the English picturesque style of garden design.
2000s
The Coast of Utopia (2002) was a trilogy of plays Stoppard wrote about the philosophical arguments among Russian revolutionary figures in the late 19th century. The trilogy comprises Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage. Major figures in the play include Mikhail Bakunin, Ivan Turgenev, and Alexander Herzen. The title comes from a chapter in Avrahm Yarmolinsky's book (1959). The play premiered in 2002 at the National Theatre directed by Trevor Nunn; its total length spanned nine hours. The play received three Laurence Olivier Award nominations including Best New Play, ultimately losing in all its categories. In 2006 it made its Broadway premiere in a production starring Billy Crudup, Jennifer Ehle, and Ethan Hawke. The play received 10 nominations winning seven awards including for Best Play, Stoppard's fourth win in the category.
2010s
For Joe Wright, Stoppard adapted Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina into the 2012 film adaptation starring Keira Knightley. Film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum for Entertainment Weekly praised the film and Stoppard writing, "Stoppard — himself a master of puzzle-like construction in fine plays including Arcadia — supplies an excellently clean, delicately balanced script."
Screenwriting
Stoppard has also co-written screenplays including Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Stoppard also worked on , though again Stoppard received no official or formal credit in this role. Rolling Stone magazine article. Retrieved 19 February 2010 He worked in a similar capacity with Tim Burton on his film Sleepy Hollow. Morris, Mark (30 November 1999). "Get me Tom Stoppard". The Guardian Retrieved 9 May 2020. His radio production, Darkside (2013), was written for BBC Radio 2 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon.
Themes
Existentialism
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966–67) was Stoppard's first major play to gain recognition. The story of Hamlet as told from the viewpoint of two courtiers echoes Samuel Beckett in its double act repartee, existential themes and language play."Stoppard, Tom" The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance. Edited by Dennis Kennedy. Oxford University Press Inc. "Stoppardian" became a term describing works using wit and comedy while addressing philosophical concepts. Critic Dennis Kennedy commented:It established several characteristics of Stoppard's dramaturgy: his word-playing intellectuality, audacious, paradoxical, and self-conscious theatricality, and preference for reworking pre-existing narratives... Stoppard's plays have been sometimes dismissed as pieces of clever showmanship, lacking in substance, social commitment, or emotional weight. His theatrical surfaces serve to conceal rather than reveal their author's views, and his fondness for towers of paradox spirals away from social comment. This is seen most clearly in his comedies The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and After Magritte (1970), which create their humour through highly formal devices of reframing and juxtaposition.
Stoppard himself went so far as to declare "I must stop compromising my plays with this whiff of social application. They must be entirely untouched by any suspicion of usefulness." He acknowledges that he started off "as a language nerd", primarily enjoying linguistic and ideological playfulness, feeling early in his career that journalism was far better suited for presaging political change, than playwriting.
Intellectuality
The accusations of favouring intellectuality over political commitment or commentary were met with a change of tack, as Stoppard produced increasingly socially engaged work. From 1977, he became personally involved with human-rights issues, in particular with the situation of political dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe. In February 1977, he visited the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries with a member of Amnesty International. In June, Stoppard met Vladimir Bukovsky in London and travelled to Czechoslovakia (then under communist control), where he met dissident playwright and future president Václav Havel, whose writing he greatly admires. Stoppard became involved with Index on Censorship, Amnesty International, and the Committee Against Psychiatric Abuse and wrote various newspaper articles and letters about human rights. He was instrumental in translating Havel's works into English. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977), "a play for actors and orchestra" was based on a request by conductor/composer André Previn and was inspired by a meeting with a Russian exile. This play, as well as Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth (1979), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006), and two works for television Professional Foul (1977) and Squaring the Circle (1984), all concern themes of censorship, rights abuses, and state repression.
Personal life
Family and relationships
Stoppard has been married three times. His first marriage was to Josie Ingle (1965–1972), a nurse. His second marriage was to Miriam Stoppard (1972–92); they separated when he began a relationship with actress Felicity Kendal. He also had a relationship with actress Sinéad Cusack, but she made it clear she wished to remain married to Jeremy Irons and stay close to their two sons. Also, after she was reunited with a son she had given up for adoption, she wished to spend time with him in Dublin rather than with Stoppard in the house they shared in France. He has two sons from each of his first two marriages: Oliver Stoppard, Barnaby Stoppard, the actor Ed Stoppard, and Will Stoppard, who is married to violinist Linzi Stoppard. In 2014 he married Sabrina Guinness.
Political views
In 1979, the year of Margaret Thatcher's election, Stoppard noted to Paul Delaney: "I'm a conservative with a small c. I am a conservative in politics, literature, education and theatre." In 2007, Stoppard described himself as a "timid Libertarianism".
Legacy and honours
Awards
In July 2013 Stoppard was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize for "determination to tell things as they are."
Archive
The papers of Stoppard are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The archive was first established by Stoppard in 1991 and continues to grow. The collection consists of typescript and handwritten drafts, revision pages, outlines, and notes; production material, including cast lists, set drawings, schedules, and photographs; theatre programs; posters; advertisements; clippings; page and galley proofs; dust jackets; correspondence; legal documents and financial papers, including passports, contracts, and royalty and account statements; itineraries; appointment books and diary sheets; photographs; sheet music; sound recordings; a scrapbook; artwork; minutes of meetings; and publications.
Published works
See also
Sources
Further reading
External links
Categories: 1937 Births, Living People, 20th-century British Dramatists And Playwrights, 21st-century English Dramatists And Playwrights, Best Original Screenplay Academy Award Winners, Best Screenplay Golden Globe Winners, Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse, Commanders Of The Order Of The British Empire, Critics' Circle Theatre Award Winners, Czechoslovak Emigrants To England, Directors Of Golden Lion Winners, Drama Desk Award Winners, Jewish English Writers, English Libertarians, English Male Dramatists And Playwrights, English Male Journalists, English Male Screenwriters, English People Of Czech-jewish Descent, English Radio Writers, Exophonic Writers, Fellows Of St Catherine's College, Oxford, Fellows Of The Royal Society Of Literature, Honorary Fellows Of The British Academy, Jewish Dramatists And Playwrights, Knights Bachelor, Laurence Olivier Award Winners, Members Of The Order Of Merit, Naturalised Citizens Of The United Kingdom, People Educated At Pocklington School, Writers From Bristol, Writers From Zlín, Prix Italia Winners, Stoppard Family, Theatre Of The Absurd, Tony Award Winners, Writers Guild Of America Award Winners, Czech Expatriates In India, British Expatriates In India
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