Leon Katz (born July 10, 1919)[1] is professor emeritus of drama at Yale University. He is a playwright, dramaturg, and scholar.
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As a scholar, Katz is primarily known for his interviews with Alice B. Toklas, the companion of Gertrude Stein, over four months in 1952-53. Although the interviews and their interpretations have served as the basis for much Stein scholarship over the years, Katz's original notes have yet to be shared with other scholars, and the dissertation based on the notes remains unpublished, as noted by Stein biographer Janet Malcolm.[2] In October 2007, Katz gave a public lecture and performance based on his time spent with Toklas in her Paris apartment. Titled "An Evening With Leon Katz," the performance was staged using reproductions of art and some original furniture from Stein and Toklas's apartment.[3]
Besides his association with Toklas, Katz is known for his body of plays, which have been adapted and performed both in the United States and internationally. His plays include The Three Cuckolds, Sonya, Dracula: Sabbat, Son of Arlecchino, GBS in Love, Beds, Pinocchio, Finnegan's Wake, The Marquis de Sade’s Justine, Amerika, The Odyssey, Swellfoot’s Tears, The Dybbuk, Remembrance of Things Past, and The Making of Americans (an opera based on Stein’s novel, with music by composer Al Carmines). [3]
Katz has also had a long career as a dramaturg and professor, contributing to the development of numerous prominent theatre, film, and television professionals throughout the United States. In addition to Yale (where he was co-chairman of the School of Drama's Department of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism), he has taught at UCLA, Cornell, Stanford, Columbia University, Vassar College, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Giessen in Germany, and the Rhodopi International Theatre Laboratory in Bulgaria, of which he is a founding member (and which was renamed in his honor in 2008). He was most recently a Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Katz was a contributing dramaturg to Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-Prize winning play, Angels in America.[4]