Other Literary Forms
In addition to his plays, Mark Medoff wrote the screenplays for the films Children of a Lesser God (1986, with Hesper Anderson), Clara’s Heart (1988), The Majestic Kid (1988), and City of Joy (1992). A story he wrote is anthologized in Prize College Stories (1963), and his first novel, Dreams of Long Lasting, appeared in 1992.
Achievements
Although some of his early works found their way to the Off-Broadway circuit, Mark Medoff’s real achievement rests with his Tony Award-winning Children of a Lesser God, the first major play since The Miracle Worker to depict deafness onstage, but unique in that the play was written to be played by a deaf actress, Phyllis Frelich. Written in a stunning dramaturgical style, in which the speeches are signed in American Sign Language, Medoff explores not only the love story of the two protagonists but also the hidden assumptions about “being different” that can result in prejudices in the “normal” person.
The 1980 Tony Award was added to the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award the same year; it was Medoff’s second Outer Critics Circle Award, the first coming from When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?, which also won an Obie Award and the Jefferson Award. A Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974-1975 allowed Medoff to pursue his writing while holding a faculty position at New Mexico State University. The film version of his play has also garnered many awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress.
However, Medoff should not be categorized as simply the author of a moving, popular play. Throughout his career, he has examined masculinity and the victimization of women, the contemporary state of the American West, and the way people are tempted by ambition and competitiveness even though these drives can more often than not be bad for their character. Medoff pioneered the dramatic exploration of a sort of Western identity that became very much in the air in the 1970’s. This is a vision of the American West inflected by defeat and disillusionment in Vietnam and the contemporaneous social changes taking place on the home front, but that still retains a sense of the old mythic themes of the West, such as the vastness of the landscape, an epic stoicism, and a cleansing violence.
Bibliography
Barnes, Clive. “Children of a Lesser God Flows Like a Symphony.” Review of Children of a Lesser God, by Mark Medoff. New York Post, March 31, 1980. Barnes states that in any season this play would be “a major event, a play of great importance, absorbing and interesting, full of love, understanding and passion.” Finds it to be “a play that opens new concepts of the way of a man with a woman, and even new thoughts on the means and matter of human communication.”
Erben, Rudolf. Mark Medoff. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1995. This fifty-five-page pamphlet by a German scholar is the most comprehensive and authoritative work available so far on Medoff. Though Children of a Lesser God is highlighted, coverage is given of Medoff’s entire career. Erben, a seminal figure in Medoff studies, provides not only plot summaries but also interpretive discussions. Published in a series on Western writers, Erben’s work places Medoff in the context of the reconsideration of Western myths and images that took place in the 1970’s and afterward. Also contains an extensive bibliography listing academic pieces, not just newspaper articles.
Erben, Rudolf. “The Western Holdup Play: The Pilgrimage Continues.” Western American Literature 23 (February, 1989): 311-322. A study of “hold-up” plays, among them The Petrified Forest, the 1935 Robert E. Sherwood play, which introduced the genre.
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, the 1935 Robert E. Sherwood play, which introduced the genre.When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? is almost a sequel to the Sherwood play; like Mantee, “Teddy is a mixture between cowboy and gangster.” Stephen’s and Angel’s sexual reunion, ten years later, is the subject of The Heart Outright. The genre is an offshoot of the “Lifeboat or Snowbound” dramatic convention.
Holden, Stephen. “Mark Medoff Tells of Softness in a Macho World.” The New York Times, May 21, 1989, p. A68. A penetrating analysis of The Heart Outright, “a psychological melodrama in which Stephen’s fighting spirit is severely tested and found wanting.” Holden believes that the “themes of machismo and cowardice in American life” are not fully explored, and the central character is “a gentle soul in a barbaric Cowboys and Indians environment [who] merely wants to do the decent thing.”
Kerr, Walter. “The Stage: Children of a Lesser God.” Review of Children of a Lesser God, by Mark Medoff. The New York Times, March 31, 1980, p. C11. A favorable but reserved review of the Longacre Theater opening on Broadway. Cites the provocative opening of the play, a misdirection by the character, around whom the play is built. “We remain eager to know what last barriers can be broken down,” Kerr states, but “as the committed couple begins to run into difficulties, so does the dramatist.”
Medoff, Mark. The Hero Trilogy. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1989. A collection of When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?, The Heart Outright, and The Majestic Kid, with individual introductions to each play, plus an introductory autobiographical essay, “Adios, Old West,” in which Medoff remarks on his relationship to Western heroes, his views of women, film directors, and other matters.