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Mark Howard Medoff

Born: 1940 in Mount Carmel, Illinois
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Medoff was born in Mt. Carmel, Illinois.

Biography: In 1967, while working as an instructor at the Capitol Radio Engineering Institute in Washington, D.C., he wrote his first play, ''The Wager''. His first play to be staged in New York City was ''When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?,'' which won him the 1974 Drama Desk and Obie Awards for Outstanding New Playwright. Medoff's big breakthrough and most famous work was 1980s ''Children of a Lesser God'', which won him the Tony, Drama Desk, and Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Play. Mark Medoff, has been an actor, director, and playwright and has taught English at New Mexico State University.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Mark Howard Medoff on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=mark+howard+medoff


Selected Titles

Children of a lesser god /
ISBN: 0822202034 OCLC: 7075458

Dramatists Play Service, New York, N.Y. (440 Park Ave. South, New York 10036) : ©1980.

After three years in the Peace Corps, James, a young speech therapist, joins the faculty of a school for the deaf, where he is to teach lip-reading. He meets Sarah, a school dropout, totally deaf from birth, and estranged both from the world of hearing and from those who would compromise to enter that world. Fluent in sign language, James tries, with little success, to help Sarah, but gradually the two fall in love and marry. At first their relationship is a happy and glowing one, as the gulf of silence between them seems to be bridged by their desire to understand each other's needs and feelings, but discord soon develops as Sarah becomes militant for the rights of the deaf and rejects any hint that she is being patronized and pitied. In the end the chasm between the worlds of sound and silence seems almost too great to cross, but love and compassion hold the hope of reconciliation, and a deeper, fuller understanding of differences that, in the final essence, can unite as well as divide.

  Children of a lesser god :
ISBN: 0879052724 OCLC: 14905917

Gibbs M. Smith, Salt Lake City : ©1987.

After three years in the Peace Corps, James, a young speech therapist, joins the faculty of a school for the deaf, where he is to teach lip-reading. He meets Sarah, a school dropout, totally deaf from birth, and estranged both from the world of hearing and from those who would compromise to enter that world. Fluent in sign language, James tries, with little success, to help Sarah, but gradually the two fall in love and marry. At first their relationship is a happy and glowing one, as the gulf of silence between them seems to be bridged by their desire to understand each other's needs and feelings, but discord soon develops as Sarah becomes militant for the rights of the deaf and rejects any hint that she is being patronized and pitied. In the end the chasm between the worlds of sound and silence seems almost too great to cross, but love and compassion hold the hope of reconciliation, and a deeper, fuller understanding of differences that, in the final essence, can unite as well as divide.

City of Joy :
ISBN: 1557041253 OCLC: 25246861

Newmarket Press, New York : ©1992.

Kringle's window /
ISBN: 0822213567 OCLC: 29874025

Dramatists Play Service, New York, N.Y. : ©1994.

The wager :
ISBN: 9780822212140 OCLC: 1378861

Dramatists Play Service, New York, N.Y. : ©1975.

Leeds, a brainy, tart-tongued graduate student, has bet his 'super-jock' roommate, Ward (a Phys-Ed major), that Ward can seduce Honor, the wife of a young professor (Ron). But Leeds has also wagered that if Ward is successful, Ron will make an attempt on his life within forty-eight hours. Thereafter, as can be expected, the situation grows progressively more complex, with fun and fear brilliantly juxtaposed. In the resultant comic mix the acerbic Leeds does his best to manipulate circumstances to his own advantage, while narcissistic Ward, bored Honor and bumbling Ron all fall victim to his stratagems. In the end, the result is not tragedy but pure, bubbling comedy, laced with wit and filled with revealing insights into the natures of our four singular and attractive principals.--Publisher's website.

When you comin back, Red Ryder? /
ISBN: 0822212404 OCLC: 57470482

Dramatists Play Service, New York : [1998?], ©1974.

 

 

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