Sarah Schulman

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Sarah Schulman
Born	July 28, 1958 (1958-07-28) (age 49) New York City, United States
Occupation	novelist, historian, playwright
Nationality	American

Sarah Miriam Schulman (born July 28, 1958, in New York City) is an American novelist, historian and playwright. An early chronicler of the AIDS crisis, she was one of the first to write on AIDS and social issues, publishing in The Village Voice in the early 1980s,^{[citation needed]} and writing the first piece on AIDS and the homeless, which appeared in The Nation.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Career 1.1 Writer 1.2 Activism 1.3 Downtown Theater 1979-1994 1.4 Unpublished Books 1.5 "Uptown" theater 2 Teaching 3 Notes 4 References

[edit] Career

[edit] Writer

Sarah Schulman is the author of twelve published works: nine novels, two nonfiction books, and a play.

Schulman's early novels were set in the artistic, bohemian, lesbian subculture of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.^{[citation needed]} Books such as The Sophie Horowitz Story, Girls, Visions and Everything were published by small presses.^{[citation needed]} After Delores was published by E. P. Dutton in 1988, and received a favorable review in The New York Times,^[1], was translated into 8 languages, and was awarded a American Library Association Stonewall Book Award in 1989.^[2]

Schulman's subsequent novel, 1990's People in Trouble described the life of AIDS activists.^{[citation needed]} In 1992, Empathy was released, an experimental novel about lesbian existence. The 1995 novel Rat Bohemia was listed as one of the 100 best lesbian and gay novels by The Publishing Triangle.^{[citation needed]} Her 1998 historical novel, Shimmer was set in New York City during the McCarthy era features a black male protagonist and a white lesbian protagonist.

Her two nonfiction books are: My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During The Reagan/Bush Years (Routledge, 1995) - a collection of journalism that begins before Reagan's election in 1980 and provides on-going coverage as the AIDS crisis began, includes some very rare information about the early days of the AIDS crisis, which Schulman covered for a range of newspapers and magazines.

In her 1998 book Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, which also won the Stonewall Book Award, Schulman shows that significant plot elements of the successful 1996 musical Rent were lifted from People In Trouble. The heterosexual plot of Rent is based on the opera La Bohème, while the gay plot is similar to the plot of Schulman's novel.^[3] However, both parties agree that Larson used her "settings, themes, characters, plot, and ideas" but that these are not copyrightable. Though a separate plagiarism charge brought by Rent's dramaturge was settled out of court, Schulman never sued, but critiqued the way the musical depicted AIDS and gay people in Stagestruck,^[4].

In 1999 she completed her 8th novel, The Child which was published by Carroll & Graf in 2007. One week after the novel appeared, Carroll & Graf was purchased by Perseus Books, and the imprint was folded. The paperback edition of The Child will be published in Fall 2009.^{[citation needed]}

A new edition of Rat Bohemia was published in Spring, 2008 with a cover by Nan Goldin.^[5]

The Mere Future will be published in hardcover in Spring, 2009.^{[citation needed]} This novel is a futuristic dystopia set in a New York City where the only job left is Marketing.

[edit] Activism

From 1979-1982, Schulman was a member of CARASA (Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse),^[6] and participated in a notorious act of early direct action, where she and five others (called The Women's Liberation Zap Action Brigade) disrupted an anti-abortion hearing in Congress that was being broadcast on live TV.^{[citation needed]}

In 1987, Schulman and filmmaker Jim Hubbard founded "The New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival", now called MIXand in its twentieth year.

In 1987, Schulman joined ACT UP, and was an active member for five years. She participated in many small and key actions including "Seize Control of the FDA", "Stop The Church", "Storm The NIH" and participated in the founding of Housing Works. She was arrested during "The Day of Desperation" when ACT UP occupied Grand Central Station protesting the First Gulf War "Money for AIDS, Not for War."

In 1992, Schulman and five others co-founded the Lesbian Avengers, a direct action organization.^[7] On her 1992 book tour for Empathy, Schulman visited gay bookstores in the South to start chapters. The organization's high points included sending groups of young organizers to Maine and Idaho to assist local fights against anti-gay ballot initiatives that were being funded by national right wing organizations.^[8] They also founded the first "Dyke March" which is now an international tradition.

From the late 1980s through the early 1990s, Schulman was a principle organizer for the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization's efforts to march in the Saint Patrick's Day Parade. She was arrested five times, but never convicted. The organization collapsed, and to this day, Irish Gays and Lesbians are not allowed to march in the parade under their own banner.

Since 2001, Sarah and Jim Hubbard have been creating the ACT UP Oral History Project (www.actuporalhistory.org) and are now producing a feature documentary, "United In Anger: The History of ACT UP"^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Downtown Theater 1979-1994

At the same time, Schulman pursued an active career in the theater. From 1979-1994 she had 15 plays produced in the context of the avant garde "Downtown Arts Movement" based in New York City's East Village. Collaborators included : Robin Epstein, Dorothy Cantwell, Jennifer Monson, Zeena Parkins, Scott Heron, Jennifer Miller, John Bernd, Susan Seizer, Mark Owen, Maggie Moore, Holiday Reinhorn, Melinda Wade, Bina Sharif, Mark Ameen. Venues included: The University of the Streets, PS 122, La Mama, King Tut Wah-Wah Hut, The Pyramid Club, 8BC, Franklin Furnace, The Kitchen, Ela Toryano and Uzi Parness' Club Chandelier, Here, The Performing Garage and others. ^[9] However, by 1994, gentrification, AIDS, marketing and a new culture of young artists produced by the spread of MFA graduate programs destroyed the cultural context for her work.^{[citation needed]} At that point she began to see herself as an "uptown" playwright, trying to bring her content overtly or subtextually into the formats required for mainstream theater in New York and the regional theater circuit.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Unpublished Books

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She is currently working on The Twist: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, a book establishing Familial Homophobia (a phrase she coined) as a fundamental social dynamic in the lives of everyone who lives in a family.

[edit] "Uptown" theater

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For two years Craig Lucas and Schulman developed a play version of The Child. It had many readings and workshops but artistic directors objected to the content and the point of view, and the play was never produced.

She was admitted into The Sundance Theater Lab in 2001 with the play Carson McCullers. The workshop starred Angelina Phillips and Bill Camp and was directed by Craig Lucas. The play has its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2002,^[10] directed by Marion McClinton, starring Jenny Bacon with Rick Stears, Michi Barall, Leland Gantt, Barbara Eda-Young, Tim Hopper, Rosalyn Coleman. Carson McCullers has been published by Playscripts Inc.

This was followed by a commission from South Coast Repertory for which she wrote two plays: Made in Korea, based on the memoirs of Mi Ok Bruining and Mercy. Mercy has three readings with the actress Jessica Hecht at Rattlestick (directed by Michael Mayer), The Vineyard (directed by Jo Bonney) and at Women's Expresive Theater, and one reading at Michael Imperioli's Studio Dante with Elisabeth Marvel. Made In Korea had a workshop at The Cleveland Playhouse, directed by Seth Gordon, and a reading at New York Theater Workshop, directed by Leigh Silverman.

In 2001 Schulman won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwrighting.^[11] Through the efforts of actress Roberta Maxwell, Schulman won a commission from the La Jolla Playhouse to do the play The Burning Deck. By the time the Playhouse was ready to develop a workshop of the play, Maxwell was no longer available and Diane Venora performed 28 public workshop performances in the summer of 2003. It has not yet received a world premiere.

In 2003, her play Conjugation had readings at Playwrights Horizons and Rattlestick theater, both directed by Michael Greif, the director of Rent. The play has not yet been produced.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, Tim Sanford, artistic director of Playwrights Horizons, produced Manic Flight Reaction. Director Trip Cullman developed the work at New York Stage and Film and it opened at Playwrights that winter, starring Deirdre O'Connell with Molly Price, Jessica Collins, Austin Lysy, ichael Esper and Agel Desai.

In collaboration with lyricist Michael Korie, and composer Anthony Davis, Schulman has been developing her novel Shimmer for the musical stage. This project has been on-going for eight years. With significant support from The MacDowell Colony, the trio have been able to prepare full book/lyrics and score, and recorded a demo of six songs.

Schulman received the rights, wrote an adaptation, and received a world premiere for her version of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Enemies, A Love Story, which premiered at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia in February 2007, directed by Jiri Ziska, starring Elisabeth Rich, Morgan Spector, with Laura Flanagan, Katie Brazda, Barbara Spiegel, Bob Ari, Tom Teti.

She is currently working on two new plays: "Choice" about the plaintiff and the attorney in the Roe V Wade case, and The Lady Hamlet- a 1920's backstage comedy about two great female stage divas competing to play the role of Hamlet on Broadway.

She is the author of two screenplays: Alaska, based on the unpublished novel The Hunts by Harry Dodge, and Carson McCullers, about the 1940s southern writer.

[edit] Teaching

Schulman is a Professor of English at The City University of New York, College of Staten Islandand a Fellow at The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU. She is openly lesbian.^[12]

[edit] Notes

^ a: Published in June 1999,^[13] The Publishing Triangle's list of the 100 best lesbian and gay novels was selected by a panel of 14 notable gay and lesbian writers, including Schulman, Barbara Smith, Dorothy Allison, David Bergman, M.E. Kerr, Lillian Faderman, Samuel Delany, Christopher Bram, Michael Bronski, Jaime Manrique, Anthony Heilbut, Mariana Romo-Carmona, John Loughery, and Jenifer Levin.^[14]

[edit] References