- Davi Napoleon
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Davi Napoleon, aka Davida Skurnick (born 1946) is an American theater historian and critic. She is a theater columnist for The Faster Times,[1] an online newspaper, and a regular contributor to Live Design,[2] a monthly magazine about entertainment design and designers. She is an expert on the not-for-profit theater in America and author of Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater. She has written on social and political issues occasionally as well.
She was born in New York City to Jack Skurnick and Fay Kleinman. She currently lives in Ann Arbor MI. She is married to Greg Napoleon, a software engineer. They have two sons, Brian and Randy Napoleon.
Napoleon was educated at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she earned a BA and an MA in psychology while studying playwriting with Kenneth Thorpe Rowe. She went on to New York University, and graduated with an MA in drama and a Ph.D. in performance studies.
She was a columnist for TheaterWeek magazine and has been a contributing editor for Theater Crafts, which became Theatre Crafts International, then Entertainment Design, then Live Design. She has also written for American Theatre, American Film, InTheatre, Playbill, ScriptWriter News, Stages and assorted general interest magazines. These include children's magazines, teen magazines Seventeen and others, and a range of general magazines, such as New York Magazine and Weight Watchers. She was a stringer for the Detroit Free Press and for the Ann Arbor News in the 1980s. She was the theater reviewer for the Ann Arbor News from 1987-1988.
Napoleon honed her critical skills at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Critics Institute in Waterford, CT, in the summer of 1977, which she attended on a National Endowment for the Arts grant.[3]
Napoleon has written extensively about the history and issues surrounding the not-for-profit theater in America. Her book about Robert Kalfin and the Chelsea Theater Center is an in-depth history of the life of a theater in the 1960s and 70s. Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater (1991) describes on and off stage dramas, detailing internal conflicts when a theater that was the darling of critics and audiences was forced to downsize because of changes in funding to the arts. Hal Prince wrote the foreword to the book that found a readership among working artists both because it is one of the first complex studies of regional theater and because of its dramatic structure and narrative.[4][5]
She has also written many articles about producer/critic Robert Brustein and interviewed critic John Simon for The Paris Review.[6]
Napoleon has written several plays, including Four's Company, produced at the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York City in 1974.[7] She was awarded two University of Michigan Hopwood Awards in 1965 and 1966 for plays she wrote as an undergraduate. She later served as a judge for this creative writing contest.[8]
References
- ^ http://thefastertimes.com/theatertalk/ | Theater Talk, Napoleon column at The Faster Times
- ^ http://livedesignonline.com/searchresults/?terms=Davi+Napoleon&rp= | Articles about entertainment design by Napoleon in Live Design
- ^ Napoleon, Davi (June 3, 2010). "At the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Critics Institute 5Q4 Dan Sullivan". The Faster Times (New York City). http://thefastertimes.com/theatertalk/2010/06/03/at-the-eugene-oneill-theater-centers-critics-institute-5q4-dan-sullivan/. Retrieved June 20, 2010.
- ^ Cambridge Guide to American Theater Edited by Don B Wilmeth and Tice L Miller, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p.105-6
- ^ Davi Napoleon, Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater, Iowa State University Press, 1991
- ^ http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1282/the-art-of-criticism-no-4-john-simon. The Paris Review, Spring 1977, Issue 142, pp 300-320
- ^ Burns Mantle Theater Yearbook: The Best Plays of 1973-1974, edited by Otis L. Guernsey Jr. (Dodd, Mead). Some details on Napoleon's play, Four's Company, produced at the Greenwich Mews Theater.
- ^ The Hopwood Awards: 75 Years of Prized Writing, Edited by Nicholas Delbanco, Andrea Beauchamp, and Michael Barrett; University of Michigan Press, 2006, p 222. Napoleon is referenced under her maiden name, Davida Skurnick.
External links
- Davi Napoleon's columns at The Faster Times
- partial list of articles by Davi Napoleon for Live Design
- partial list of articles by Davi Napoleon for University of Michigan publications
Categories
Categories:- American theater critics
- American journalists
- American writers
- American columnists
- American historians
- 1946 births
- Living people
- University of Michigan alumni
- New York University alumni
- People from Ann Arbor, Michigan
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