Mabel Davis "Tina" Howe (November 21, 1937 – August 28, 2023) was an American playwright. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Howe's best-known works include Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, and Pride's Crossing.
Her plays won numerous awards, including the 1998 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play for Pride's Crossing,"'Pride's Crossing' Listing, 1997" lortel.org, accessed September 6, 2015 which was also a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Drama."Pulitzer Prize for Drama" Pulitzer.org, accessed September 5, 2015 Coastal Disturbances was nominated for the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play."Tina Howe Broadway (Awards)" Internet Broadway Database, accessed August 26, 2015
Early life Mabel Davis Howe was born in Manhattan on November 21, 1937. Howe came from a literary family. Her grandfather, Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe, published over 50 books and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1925. Her father Quincy Howe wrote and broadcast the evening news on CBS Radio from 1942 to 1947, and then on ABC television. He was the author of the three-volume history, A World History of Our Own Times. Her uncle, Mark DeWolfe Howe, taught constitutional law at Harvard Law School and was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s law clerk and biographer. Her aunt, Helen Howe, was a successful monologist and novelist. Howe was called Tina since her childhood, so when she was eighteen, she changed her name from Mabel Howe to Tina Howe.
Howe's family placed an emphasis on its members' reading and writing: "Thanksgivings and family occasions were always about, 'What are you reading, what are you writing, what are you working on, what poetry are you interested in?'" When Howe was ill with hepatitis, her father visited her every day in the hospital, reading James Joyce's Ulysses to her during his lunch break."Theater. Review and Interview. 'The Bald Soprano'" The Villager, September 22–28, 2004
Howe graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, in 1959. As an undergraduate, she wrote her first play, Closing Time; her classmate, Jane Alexander, later directed and acted in it.
After graduation, she and Alexander traveled to Europe; Alexander to act and study mathematics at the University of Edinburgh and Howe to study philosophy at Sorbonne University and write. When Howe saw Eugène Ionesco's La Cantatrice Chauve at the Théâtre de la Huchette, "It changed my life", she said. "It was like a bolt of lightning going through my head."
Following her return from Europe, Howe did graduate work at Columbia University Teacher's College and Chicago Teachers College.Jackson R. Bryer, Mary C. Hartig (ed.), Tina Howe, Encyclopedia of American Drama, Infobase Learning, 2015, (no page number) She started teaching high school in Monona Grove, Wisconsin, while her husband (teacher and writer Norman Levy) was doing graduate workWorland, Gayle. "Gift From The Heart Acclaimed Playwright Returns To Work With Madison Rep On 'Rembrandt's Gift'" madison.com, September 10, 2005 and then in Bath, Maine, which is where she said she learned her craft through running the school's drama department, a position she agreed to take if they would produce her plays.
Career
Themes and style Literary critic and novelist C. W. E. Bigsby wrote that "art is plainly a central point of reference" for Howe, noting those themes in Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances, and added that "food and consumption" are also important themes in her work. In his book Contemporary American Playwrights, Bigsby wrote that she had a "commitment to experimentation" and quotes Howe as saying said that she is "firmly entrenched in the Absurdist tradition."Bigsby, C. W. E., "Tina Howe", Contemporary American Playwrights, Cambridge University Press, 1999, , pp. 47, 50, 57 Frank Rich, in his New York Times review of Painting Churches commented that the play "is in the dreamiest impressionistic spirit."Rich, Frank. "Theater: Bostonian Life In 'Painting Churches' ", The New York Times, February 9, 1983, p.C16 The Variety reviewer of Painting Churches also noted that the play is a "group portrait painted in a soft, impressionistic style."Stasio, Marilyn. "Review. 'Painting Churches' " Variety, March 6, 2012
The CurtainUp reviewer of Coastal Disturbances wrote of Howe's work: "Like all of Howe's work, the play's charm stems from its quirky characters. In this case joie de vie, despair, love, lust, anger and fear come and go like the waves hitting the shore in foamy bursts or gentle ripples."Sommer, Elyse. "A CurtainUp Berkshires Review. Coastal Disturbances" curtainup.com, July 14, 2006 Writing in the Sarah Lawrence Magazine, Celia McGerr Regan described Howe's authorial voice: "Howe developed a voice that has been variously described as farcical and absurd, impressionistic and airy, graceful and perceptive, lyric and literate, vivid and language-driven, whimsical and demented. Odd things happen in the face of the recognizable: Trees grow up inside and through a New York State farmhouse (One Shoe Off)..."Regan, Celia McGerr. "Throwing Kisses, Throwing Pies" sarahlawrence.edu, accessed August 26, 2015
Ben Brantley in reviewing Birth and After Birth for The New York Times, observed "The suggestion is of a natural world that thwarts and ultimately devours the ambitions and pretensions of the civilized. This is a theme that Ms. Howe would develop in later works, sometimes artfully (Coastal Disturbances), sometimes clumsily (One Shoe Off), but always in a style that was distinctively her own."Brantley, Ben. "The Art of Bringing Up Baby, With All Its Thrill and Terror" The New York Times, October 4, 2006
Howe noted about her time in Paris: "The most profound thing that happened to me that year ... was seeing The Bald Soprano by Ionesco. That exploded me all over the place." Ionesco, Beckett and Pirandello continued to be her heroes.Brenson, Michael. "Art Given A Role In Tina Howe's Play" The New York Times, February 18, 1983
Howe was a great admirer of Glenn Gould, saying, "I write my plays to Glenn Gould. I cook the kids' spaghetti dinners to Glenn Gould. I pay the bills to Glenn Gould."Hafner, Katie, A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2010, , pp. 222–223
Full-length plays Howe's first full-length play to receive a professional production was The Nest, which premiered in summer 1969 at the Act IV Theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was directed by Larry Arrick and the cast included Sally Kirkland and Richard Jordan among others. From Provincetown, the show was transferred Off-Broadway to New York's Mercury Theater, opening on April 9, 1970.
Howe later recalled, "My first play, 'The Nest,' was about courtship and how women compete with each other to land a husband. That play closed [off-Broadway] in one night."Lefkowitz, David. Tina Howe Taking Pride and Visiting 'Museum'" playbill.com, October 14, 1997 The play follows the trials of three young women competing for husbands at a dinner party, and during the course of the play, one of the women takes off her clothes and dives into a huge wedding cake, and is licked clean by one of the male guests. The Nest, Clive Barnes of The New York Times wrote in his review, "must be on any reasonable short list of the worst plays I have ever seen."
Her play Museum, with a cast of 55 characters, premiered at the Los Angeles Actors' Theatre on April 29, 1976, and was then presented Off-Broadway by Joseph Papp at the Public Theater, opening in February 1978, in a production directed by Max Stafford-Clark. A cast of 18 actors played a total of 44 characters. The play takes place at a group art show of three contemporary artists, titled The Broken Silence. The Public Theater production featured Dianne Wiest, Kathryn Grody and Larry Bryggman.Howe, Tina. "Script", Museum: A Play, Samuel French, Inc., 1979, , pp. 3–7"'Museum' Listing, 1978" lortel.org, accessed September 7, 2015 A CurtainUp reviewer noted that Howe "explained in her author's note for the play's premiere at the Shakespeare Festival, her large cast of characters was created to provide directors and producers with endless staging possibilities."Sommers, Elyse. "CurtainUp Review. 'Coastal Disturbances', 2006" curtainup.com, July 14, 2006 In her note in the script (published by Samuel French), Howe wrote: "It is my hope that any group wanting to present Museum use the large cast size as a challenge and not as a restriction. The play was written to serve the versatility of actors."
The play was revived Off-Broadway by the Keen Company in 2002, directed by Carl Forsman. In his Village Voice review, Michael Feingold wrote, "This is the most enchantingly tesserated play ever written … . If Mozart had been a TV producer, this is what a 'Candid Camera' segment on art might have looked like."
The Art of Dining is set in an exclusive restaurant (and home) moving from the kitchen of the chef/owner, to the dining room, where her husband is the maitre d', to the individual tables of the characters, observing their action and interplay while waiting for and eating their meals. The play was first presented Off-Broadway by Joseph Papp at the Public Theater in December 1979, in a production directed by A. J. Antoon with a cast featuring Kathy Bates, Ron Rifkin and Dianne Wiest, who went on to win the 1980 Clarence Derwent Award and Obie Award.The Art of Dining lortel.org, accessed August 26, 2015
Howe herself won an Obie Award in 1983 for distinguished playwriting for her plays The Art of Dining, Museum and Painting Churches.OBIE Awards Presented" The New York Times, May 24, 1983 From New York, The Art of Dining moved to a run at the Kennedy Center.
Howe's next play, Painting Churches, premiered on February 8, 1983, at Second Stage Theater, under the direction of Carole Rothman. The cast included Marian Seldes, Frances Conroy and Donald Moffat. It transferred to the off-Broadway Lambs Theater where it ran from November 22, 1983, through May 20, 1984, playing 206 performances. In this production Marian Seldes was joined by Elizabeth McGovern and George Martin. Painting Churches won several Outer Critics Circle Awards, including Best Off-Broadway Play, Best Actress (Marian Seldes) and the John Gassner Playwriting Award. The play was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
In 1986, Painting Churches was filmed for PBS's American Playhouse, directed by Jack O'Brien. That cast included Sada Thompson, Donald Moffat and Roxanne Hart. It was revived off-Broadway by the Keen Company in March 2012, directed by Carl Forsman, starring Kathleen Chalfant, John Cunningham, and Kate Turnbull.
In November 1986, Howe's next play, Coastal Disturbances premiered at Second Stage, under the direction of Carole Rothman."'Coastal Disturbances' Off-Broadway Listing" The play was set on a private New England beach. Annette Bening and Tim Daly led the cast. The play was transferred to the Circle-in-the-Square Theater on Broadway in March 1987. It was nominated for a Tony award for Best Play along with Carole Rothman for Best Direction and Annette Bening for Best Actress. Frank Rich of The New York Times hailed it as "Hilarious", "erotic" and "intoxicating".