Romulus Linney

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Linney_(playwright)

Romulus Zachariah Linney IV (September 21, 1930 – January 15, 2011) was an American playwright and professor.

Life and career

Linney was born in Philadelphia, the son of Maitland Clabaugh (née Thompson) and Romulus Zachariah Linney III. His great-grandfather was Republican Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney. Linney was raised in Boone, North Carolina and Madison, Tennessee. He was the author of three novels, thirteen plays and twenty-two short plays that have been produced in the United States, Europe and Asia. Several of his plays dealt with Appalachian themes (Tennessee, Holy Ghosts, Sand Mountain, Gint and Heathen Valley), while others focused on European and military stories (The Sorrows of Frederick, 2, The Love Suicides at the Schofield Barracks) His romantic tale of Lord Byron, Childe Byron, premiered at the Leslie Cheek Theater|Virginia Museum Theater (VMT) in 1977, directed by Keith Fowler, and was for a time considered scandalous when Fowler, with Linney's support, resigned rather than remove homosexual content as demanded by VMT's trustees. Judith Tingley wrote of his novel, Slowly, by thy Hand Unfurled, "This is a strange and disturbing work," and Thomas M. Disch described his novel Jesus Tales as "a delight."

He earned a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Linney received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as Guggenheim, Rockefeller, National Endowment for the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts grants, two Obie awards,[8] a Yukio Mishima Prize for Fiction, and the Award for Literature, Award of Merit and Gold Medal for Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He received an honorary doctorates from Oberlin in 1994, from Appalachian State University in 1995, and from Wake Forest University in 1998. He was a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, National Theatre Conference, College of Fellows of the American Theatre, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Corporation of Yaddo.

Linney had been chair of the MFA Playwriting program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and Professor of Playwriting in the Actors Studio MFA. Program at The New School in New York. An interview with Linney (both the original audio and a transcript) appears in Blackbird In February 2012, a performance space in the Signature Theater Company's new Frank Gehry-designed building on Manhattan's West 42nd Street, a group he had been associated with since its first season in 1991, will be named in Linney's honor.

Death

Romulus Linney died on January 15, 2011, aged 80, from lung cancer.

Family

He was the father of actress Laura Linney.

Works

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Linney_(playwright)#Works.5B12.5D

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Playwright, Novelist. Born Romulus Zachariah Linney, IV, in Philadelphia, the son of a doctor and the great-grandson of former North Carolina congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney, he lived in Boone, North Carolina and Madison, Tennessee; after his father's death he moved with his mother to Washington. He was educated at Oberlin College (Ohio), and following a stint in the US Army earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama. During the 1960s, he initiated his career writing prose fiction and penned his first novel "Heathen Valley" (1962), followed by "Slowly by Thy Hand Unfurled" (1965). In the course of his career he wrote over thirty plays, drawing from his experiences of being raised in the South which were mainly the basis of his stories. His work "The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks" (1972) became a short-lived Broadway production, but he would garner his most success with a string of off-Broadway plays, among them "Old Man Joseph and His Family" (1978), "The Captivity of Pixie Shedman" (1981), "The Sorrows of Frederick" (1991), "Ambrosio" (1992) and "A Lesson Before Dying" (2000); he earned two OBIE Awards, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the latter from where he was recipient of its Award in Literature and Award of Merit Medal for Drama. In 1983, he published his third novel "Jesus Tales". In addition to writing, Linney served as a professor at Columbia, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. Married three-times, he was the father of actress Laura Linney (from his first marriage). He died from lung cancer.* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: May 1 2020, 16:23:42 UTC