Hero #126: Tom Stoppard … (01/28/16)
Tom Stoppard is a British playwright who has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Themes of human rights, censorship and political freedom pervade his work along with exploration of linguistics and philosophy.
In April of 1967, the opening of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead made Stoppard an overnight success. The work tells the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the viewpoint of the two minor-player courtiers mentioned in its title. Its genius rests not only in its structure (with Hamlet playing within Hamlet, ultimately playing within Hamlet again), but also its insightful use of existential themes and brilliant language play. Indeed, it was such a phenomenal piece, that the word “Stoppardian” became a term one can use to describe works that employ wit and comedy while addressing deeper philosophical concepts …
More importantly, from 1977 onward Stoppard became personally involved with human rights issues, in particular with the situation of political dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe. In February of that year he visited the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries with a member of Amnesty International. In June, Stoppard then travelled to Czechoslovakia (then under communist control), where he met dissident playwright and future president Václav Havel, whose writing he still greatly admires. Stoppard then became involved with Index on Censorship, Amnesty International, and the Committee Against Psychiatric Abuse, and wrote began writing numerous newspaper articles and letters championing human rights … In July of 2013, Stoppard was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize for a “determination to tell things as they truly are.”
“I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has never been in a play. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture – remembering that it’s no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.” ~ via Tom Stoppard
;