Murray Mednick


Murray Mednick is an American playwright and poet. He is best known as founder of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival, where he served as artistic director from 1978 to 1995. He has received numerous awards for his plays, including two Rockefeller Grants and an OBIE.

Life and Career

Born in 1939 to a family with Jewish roots, Mednick attended Brooklyn College and became involved with New York's off-off-Broadway company Theatre Genesis, where much of his early work was staged. He was eventually appointed to the post of artistic co-director in 1970. In 1974, Mednick moved to Los Angeles after being evicted from his apartment while on a trip to the Yucatán on a Guggenheim grant.
Mednick founded the long-running summer workshop Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival in 1978 with funding from LaVerne University, where he was teaching at the time. The workshop was meant to be an extension of his collaborations with Ralph Cook, his mentor and founder of Theatre Genesis. In his teachings at Padua, Mednick stressed a strong grounding in theater and literary history, specifically the Ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, and Beckett. Language was especially important. In a 2001 interview, Mednick said that Padua's teaching was "based in a literary knowledge, with a seriousness of purpose that isn't necessarily commercial. Both the writing and the acting are like realism-plus. Ordinary exchanges of life are put in an occasion that heightens them. The dialogue is really the action; it has a life of its own. The story is reflected by the dialogue." Notable participants in the Workshop/Festival included Maria Irene Fornes, Sam Shepard, John Steppling, John O'Keefe, Jon Robin Baitz and Kelly Stuart".
Padua ceased operation in 1995 and reemerged in 2001, premiering three Mednick works as part of a tribute series honoring influential local playwrights.
Mednick has been mentioned as influencing other playwrights, including Sam Shepard, Eduardo Machado, and David Scott Milton. Murray Mednick met Sam Sheppard in 1965, they went on to start a band called "The Heavy Metal Kid." Murray Mednick directed Sam Shepard's play Action starring Patti Smith. Mednick and Sheppard were a part of the Off- Off broadway movement in NY.

Works

Mednick's current productions include Mayakovsky and Stalin, which premiered in Los Angeles starting in October 2018, and will move to the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, 2019. The Gary Plays , Villon. Past productions include; Scar, an autobiographical series 16 Routines, Joe and Betty, and Mrs. Feuerstein, as well as Sand, The Hawk, Fedunn, The Coyote Cycle, a series of one-act plays performed outdoors from twilight till dawn, involving four characters such as Spider Grandmother drawn from traditional Native American folklore. The Coyote character was also featured in Destruction of the Fourth World, part of the 2009 series performed by Padua Playwrights.
His published plays include VILLON and other plays , Hipsters in Distress, Three Plays, The Coyote Cycle, by Padua Hills Press. His play Switchback was published in 1997 by. Anthologized plays include Freeze, The Deer Kill, Willie the Germ, The Hawk, Sand, Switchback, Taxes'', and others.

Awards and recognition

Mednick is the recipient of two Rockefeller Foundation grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an OBIE, several Bay Area Critics Awards, two LA Weekly Playwriting Awards, the American Theater Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Citation, an Ovation Lifetime Achievement Award from Theatre LA for outstanding contributions to Los Angeles Theatre, a Local Hero Garland Award from Back Stage West for a Distinguished Body of Work, a Career Achievement Award from the LA Weekly, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s most prestigious honor, the Margaret Harford Award for “Sustained Excellence in Theater.”
TitleYearCity
Sand1968NY
The Hawk1969NY
The Shadow Ripens1969San Diego
Willie The Germa1970NY
The Hunter1970NY
Are You Lookin1972NY
The Deer Kill1972NY
The Coyote Cycle1978-1988LA, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Yogoslavia
Scar1977Los Angeles
The Actors Delicatessen1984NY
Shatter' n Wade1990LA
Skinwalkers1991LA
Heads1991LA
Freeze1995LA
Baby, Jesus!1996LA
Switchback1997LA
Tirade for Three1997LA
Dictator1997LA
G-Nome1997LA
Joe and Betty2001-2002LA, NY, Tel Aviv
Mrs. Feuerstien2001LA, NY
16 Routines2001LA
Fedunn2002LA
Destruction of the 4th World2004LA
Gary's Walk2005LA
Girl On A Bed2005LA
Out of the Blue2007LA
Nightmare Audition2008LA
Charles Story2009LA
Daddy O Dies Well2011LA
The Fool and Red Queen2011LA
Villion2014LA
The Gary Play Series 2015-2017LA
Mayakovsky and Stalin2018-2019LA, NY