Ronald Tavel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ronald Tavel (born May 17, 1936 in Brooklyn ; New York City , † March 23, 2009 ) was an American writer , playwright and screenwriter .

biography

In the late 1950s, Tavel was traveling through North Africa. Based on his experiences, he wrote the 800-page novel Street of Stairs from 1960 to 1963 . Some excerpts from this manuscript were first published in 1964/65 in the Chicago Review ; a heavily abridged book edition was published in 1968 by Maurice Girodias in New York. The complete novel has not yet been printed.

Tavel became known primarily for its collaboration with the Multimedia - Pop Art Artists Andy Warhol between November 1964 and March 1967. A total of Tavel wrote at that time 14 screenplays for Warhol films (including the sequences Their Town and Hanoi Hannah in Chelsea Girls ). He had previously worked with the independent filmmaker Jack Smith , with whom he was close friends.

From 1965 to 1967 Tavel was the playwright for the plays of the Theater of the Ridiculous in New York, which he founded. In the following years he worked alongside various other theater engagements with Lee Strasberg in his Actors Studio . Since the mid-1980s, he has been teaching creative writing courses at various American universities.

Tavel's work was clearly shaped by the theater of the absurd and the camp aesthetic.

He died in March 2009 on a flight from Berlin to Bangkok .

Novels

  • Street of Stairs . Olympia Press, New York 1968.
    • German translation: stages . Translated by Otto Wilck. Olympia Press, Darmstadt 1969. (New edition in a revised version: Street of the Steps . Männerschwarm-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86300-030-1 .)

Scripts

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Tavel, Ronald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American novelist, playwright and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 2009
Place of death on a flight from Berlin to Bangkok