Beth Henley
Beth Henley | |
---|---|
Born | Elizabeth Becker Henley May 8, 1952 Jackson, Mississippi |
Education | Southern Methodist University (BFA) |
Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1981) |
Elizabeth Becker Henley (born May 8, 1952) is an American
Biography
Henley was born in 1952 in
In 1976 Henley moved to Los Angeles and began work on her play Crimes of the Heart.[1]
For many years, Henley dated actor, writer and director Stephen Tobolowsky, whom she met while they were students at Southern Methodist University. Their relationship ended in 1988.[3]
Playwright and screenwriter
Henley's first six plays are set in the Deep South: two in Louisiana and four in Mississippi, where she grew up.[8]
Henley adapted her 1984 play The Miss Firecracker Contest into a 1989 film starring Holly Hunter entitled Miss Firecracker. Henley's play Ridiculous Fraud was produced at the McCarter Theatre, Princeton, New Jersey in 2006. Her play Family Week was produced at MCC Theater, New York City in 2010, directed by Jonathan Demme.
Criticism
The themes in her plays often consider the importance of love, the contrast between family love and romantic love,[9] how family and society define and confine her female characters,[8] and the alienation and suffering of the human condition. Characters in her plays may seek happiness but are betrayed by modern civilization.[10] Henley's work suggests the influence of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Her Southern sense of the grotesque and absurd experienced in daily existence have caused her to be compared to other Southern writers such as Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, or to be considered part of the Southern Gothic tradition.[10]
Her plays written in the 1980s have been characterized as naturalistic portrayals of the relationship between the inner self and the world,[11] and her characters often are outsiders and nonconformists unable to share their feelings and experiences.[1] Her plays of the 1990s, including Abundance, the first play not set in the South, are considered more experimental than her earlier work.[12] Henley applies new techniques and styles in these plays.[13] Her play Revelers employs some older and traditional theatre techniques.[1]
Bibliography
- Am I Blue (1972)
- Crimes of the Heart (1978)
- The Miss Firecracker Contest (1979)
- The Wake of Jamey Foster (1981)
- The Debutante Ball (1985)
- The Lucky Spot (1986)
- Abundance (1990)
- Control Freaks (1992)
- Signature (1995)
- L-play (1996)
- Revelers (1996)
- Impossible Marriage (1998)
- Family Week (2000)
- Sisters of the Winter Madrigal (2003)
- Ridiculous Fraud (2007)
- The Jacksonian (2013)[14]
Filmography
- Swing Shift (1984), actress
- True Stories (1986), co-screenwriter
- Nobody's Fool (1986), screenwriter
- Crimes of the Heart (1986), screenwriter
- Trying Times; "A Family Tree" (1987), screenwriter
- Miss Firecracker (1989), screenwriter
- It Must Be Love (2004), screenwriter
References
- ^ ISBN 1-57003-639-X.
- ISBN 1-57003-639-X. page 8.
- ISBN 978-1-4516-3315-3
- ISBN 1-57003-639-X. page 1.
- ^ ISBN 0-8386-3996-8.
- ISBN 0-8386-3996-8. p. 27
- ISBN 0-8386-3996-8. p. 23
- ^ a b Karen L. Laughlin. Perry, Carolyn (ed.). "The History of Southern Women's Literature". Southern Literary Studies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press: 588–593.
- ISBN 1-57003-639-X.
- ^ .
- ISBN 1-57003-639-X. page 10.
- ISBN 1-57003-639-X. page 53.
- ^ Hucheon, Linda. "The Politics of Parody", The Politics of Postmodernism, New York: Routledge, 1989. pp. 93–117
- ^ "The Sweet Smell of Decay Pervades a Whodunit". The New York Times. 8 November 2013. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
Sources
- Andreach, Robert (2006). Understanding Beth Henley. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina. ISBN 1-57003-639-X.
- McTague, Sylvia Skaggs, ed. (2004). The Muse upon My Shoulder: Discussions of the Creative Process. Cranbury, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 0-8386-3996-8.
Further reading
- John B. Padgett (June 1999). "MWP: Beth Henley". The Mississippi Writers Page. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
- Department of Archives and Special Collections (2008). "The Beth Henley collection (MUM00228)". J.D. Williams Library, The University of Mississippi. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
- Beth Henley: A Casebook
- The Plays of Beth Henley: A Critical Study
External links
- Beth Henley at the Internet Broadway Database
- Beth Henley at IMDb
- Beth Henley at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Beth Henley topic at The New York Times
- Beth Henley Archived 2012-08-23 at the Wayback Machine list of works and biography