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Drama
Terrence McNally
Terrence McNally (1939- ) was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, the son of a beer distributor. While
McNally was a child, his father moved the family to Corpus Christi, Texas,
where he grew up and was educated in Catholic schools. During his childhood,
he became an avid listener of the Metropolitan Opera broadcast every Saturday
on the radio, and his parents occasionally took him to New York to see such
musicals as Annie Get Your Gun and The King and I. Music, particularly
opera, reappears in many of his plays, particularly The Lisbon Traviata
(1989) and Master Class (1996), the central character of which
is opera diva Maria Callas, which won a Tony Award and others for Best Play
of the Year. Throughout high school and particularly at Columbia University,
McNally also studied drama: Ibsen, Chekhov, and Shakespeare.
During the summers of his college
years at Columbia, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1960 with a degree
in journalism, McNally returned to Texas to work as a reporter for the Corpus
Christi Caller-Times. That same year, McNally sent the manuscript of
a play he had written to the Actors Studio, where he would eventually find
work as a stage manager. Throughout the early 1960s, he wrote plays, several
of which were produced in New York on and off Broadway. He also worked for
a time as a film critic and editor, winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in both
1966 and 1969 for his playwriting.
McNally is one of a number of
contemporary American playwrights—Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner, and Paul Rudnick—who
addresses such issues as AIDS, the lives of gay men, and life in an America
not always eager to embrace or understand such topics. In particular, the
1989 production of The Lisbon Traviata by the Manhattan Theatre Club
propelled McNally into the public spotlight, as did his even more controversial
1997 play Corpus Christi, which speculates about the homosexuality
of Jesus and his apostles. Productions of the play both in New York and London,
but also throughout America, have sparked protest, even death threats against
McNally. The Lisbon Traviata was controversial, but for very different
reasons. Written originally in 1985, the play exists in several different
versions, some more violent than others, but all of them concern a triangle
of gay men. It sparked criticism of its violence, of its structure, and of
its depiction of gay men.
These objections aside, few critics
could deny the importance of McNally's prolific career over the past forty
years. Especially in the past twenty years, much of which has been in theatrical
collaboration with the Manhattan Theatre Club, McNally has written significant
dramas for the American stage, plays which, like André's Mother, have
broadened our shared understanding of the lives of gay men in America in the
age of the AIDS crisis. In the process, he has won four Tony Awards, an
Emmy, a Pulitzer Prize, and many other prestigious awards.
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Selected Bibliography of McNally's Work
Plays
And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1962)
Tour (1967)
Noon (1968)
Sweet Eros (1968)
Witness (1968)
Bringing it All Back Home (1969)
Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? (1971)
Whiskey (1973)
Bad Habits (1974)
The Ritz (1975)
Broadway, Broadway (1978), revised as It's Only a Play (1985)
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (1987); screenplay, 1991
Andre's Mother (1988); teleplay 1990
The Lisbon Traviata (1989, originally staged 1985 and revised)
Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991)
A Perfect Ganesh (1993)
Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994); screenplay, 1995
Master Class (1995)
Corpus Christi (1997)
Books for Musicals
Here's Where I Belong (1968)
The Rink (1984)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992)—Tony Award
Ragtime (1996-97)
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Further Reading About McNally's Work
DiGaetani, John L. "Terrence McNally." A Search for a Postmodern Theater: Interviewswith Contemporary Playwrights. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Drukman, Steven. "Terrence McNally." Speaking on the Stage: Interviews with Contemporary American Playwrights. Eds. Philip Kolin and Colby Kullman Birmingham: U of Alabama P, 1996.
Gilbert, Reed. "That's Why I Go to the Gym: Sexual Identity and the Body of the Male Performer." Theatre Journal 46 (1994): 477-88.
Koestenbaum, Wayne. The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire. New York: Poseidon Press, 1993.
Roman, David. "‘It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want To!': Gay Men, AIDS, and the Circulation of Camp in U.S. Theatre." Theatre Journal 44 (October 1992): 305-28.
Savran, David. The Playwright's Voice: American Dramatists on Memory, Writing and the Politics of Culture. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1999.
Zinman, Toby Silverman, ed. Terrence McNally: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1997.
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