Джон Гуэр: Американский драматург и сценарист

American playwright and screenwriter (born 1938)

John Guare (/ɡ//ɛ//r/ GERR; born February 5, 1938) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation.

He was raised in Jackson Heights, Queens. In 1949, his father suffered a heart attack and subsequently moved the family to Ellenville, New York while he recovered. In 1960, the Mask and Bauble presented The Thirties Girl, a musical for which Guare did the book, much of the music and the lyrics,

Cop Out premiered on Broadway at the Cort Theatre on April 7, 1969, and closed on April 12, 1969, as part of two one act plays, including Home Fires. Cop Out starred Linda Lavin and Ron Leibman. The House of Blue Leaves, a domestic drama by turns wildly comic and despairingly poignant, premiered Off Broadway in 1971 at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre. It was revived Off Broadway at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1986 before transferring to Broadway later in 1986. The play was revived on Broadway in 2011, starring Ben Stiller, whose mother, Anne Meara, had appeared in the 1971 production. According to Marilyn Stasio writing in Variety the play "sets the bar for smart comic lunacy." Chaucer in Rome, "said to be a sequel of sorts to 'The House of Blue Leaves' and includ[ing] the son of one of the earlier play's characters" received its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in July 1999 and was produced Off Broadway in 2001 at Lincoln Center Theater's Newhouse Theater. Later plays include Marco Polo Sings a Solo, produced at the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival in January to March 1977, with a cast that featured Joel Grey, Anne Jackson, Madeline Kahn, and Sigourney Weaver. Bosoms and Neglect was produced on Broadway in 1979, and revived Off Broadway in 1998 by the Signature Theatre Company. Moon Over Miami was produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1987 and then at the Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven in February 1989. Guare's cycle of plays on nineteenth century America are: Gardenia (1982) Lydie Breeze (1982) and Women and Water (1985). The so called Lydie Breeze series, also called the "Nantucket" series, "follows a group of idealistic 19th century characters and their attempts to create a utopian society. " Six Degrees of Separation was originally produced Off Broadway by Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in June 1990. Six Degrees of Separation is an intricately plotted comedy of manners about an African American confidence man who poses as the son of film star Sidney Poitier. It has been the most highly praised and widely produced of Guare's full length plays. It was made into a film in 1993, starring Stockard Channing and Will Smith. Four Baboons Adoring the Sun was presented on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater from February 22, 1992, to April 19, 1992, and was nominated for the 1992 Tony Award, Best Play. Guare has also been involved with musical theatre. His libretto with Mel Shapiro for the musical Two Gentlemen of Verona was a success when it premiered in 1971 and was revived in 2005 at the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park. It won the two men the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical. He wrote the songs for Landscape of the Body. Guare wrote narration for Psyche, a tone poem by César Franck, which premiered at Avery Fisher Hall in October 1997, conducted by Kurt Masur with the New York Philharmonic. He revised the book (uncredited) of the Cole Porter musical comedy Kiss Me, Kate for its 1999 Broadway revival. He wrote the book for the musical Sweet Smell of Success, which premiered on Broadway in 2002, for which he received a 2002 Tony Award nomination, Book of a Musical. His play A Free Man of Color was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer citation said: "An audacious play spread across a large historical canvas, dealing with serious subjects while retaining a playful intellectual buoyancy." Guare wrote the screenplay for Louis Malle's film Atlantic City (1980), for which he was nominated for an Oscar.

He was an original member in 1965 of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut and Resident Playwright at the New York Shakespeare Festival, during which time he wrote Landscape of the Body, Rich and Famous, and Marco Polo Sings a Solo. He is Co Executive Editor of the Lincoln Center Theater Review, which he founded in 1987. He co produces the New Plays Reading Room Series at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts and teaches in the Playwriting department at the Yale School of Drama.

He is married to Adele Chatfield Taylor, an historic preservationist; she was President and CEO of the American Academy in Rome. They split their time between New York City, Long Island and the historic village of Waterford, Virginia, where his wife grew up.