Jack Gelber, playwright of "The Connection" dead

[The Mule]

Playwright Jack Gelber dies at age of 71

May 10, 2003, 8:16 PM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) _ Jack Gelber, whose realistic play "The Connection" examined the life of drug addicts, has died at the age of 71, according to his wife.

Gelber, who lived in Manhattan, died Friday of Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia, a cancer of the blood, said his wife, Carol.

"The Connection," written when Gelber was 26, opened Off Broadway at the Living Theater in 1959, polarizing both theatergoers and critics. It was soon appreciated for its innovations in style, language and substance, and won three Obie awards.

Gelber also wrote a dozen other plays, worked as a theater director and spent years teaching and encouraging young playwrights, actors and directors.

"The Connection" is a play within a play, with actors playing the director and the author, who the audience is told have been living among drug addicts. When it begins, the addicts are waiting for their dealer named Cowboy, playing jazz to pass the time.

The actors solicited money from the audience during intermission, and a man in the audience interrupted the performance during the second act _ all scripted details designed to accentuate the play's improvisational feel.

"I was so affected and energized by `The Connection,"' playwright Edward Albee told The New York Times. "It was exciting, dangerous, instructive and terrifying, all things theater should be."

Gelber was born in Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois before moving to New York in the mid-1950's.

He became involved with a small theater company and befriended many jazz musicians, which prompted him to write a play combining both interests.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, a daughter and two brothers.

Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

[Chuck Nessa]

In 1962, as a college freshman, I saw a "workshop" production of the Connection. It was a depiction of a world I did not know at the time. I did come to know it quickly. Thankfully, H was not my drug of choice.

Edited June 25, 2009 by Chuck Nessa

[Niko]

to lazy to start a new thread... anybody got an idea what this is? can't even find the name of a single musician...

Detroit Jazz All Stars - Music from the Connection

hard to decribe, definitely more danceable than the other versions i've heard... there's some sort of directness/smoothness in it which i found a bit irritating at first... but then somehow this has more hard bop credibility to be than many more authentic recent albums i've heard

can be streamed here (should work even from the US for this album...)

http://www.deezer.com/#music/album/171592

they also have the mcghee/brooks version btw...

http://www.deezer.com/#music/album/176960

Edited June 25, 2009 by Niko