Gross Indecency

by KAUFMAN, MOISES

• ISBN13: 9780375702327
• ISBN10: 0375702326
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1998-01-27
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

In April 1895 Oscar Wilde brought a libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his youthful lover, who had publicly maligned him as a sodomite. In doing so, England's reigning man of letters set in motion a series of events that would culminate in his ruin and imprisonment. For within a year the bewildered Wilde himself was on trial for acts of "gross indecency" and - implicity - for a vision of art that outraged Victorian propriety. In this work of the theater - a smash hit Off Broadway - Moises Kaufman turns the trials of Oscar Wilde into a riveting human and intellectual drama. Expertly interweaving courtroom testimony with excerpts from Wilde's writings and the words of his contemporaries, Gross Indecency unveils its subject in all his genius and human frailty, his age in all its complacency and repression.

Author Biography

Moisés Kaufman is a Tony and Emmy-nominated director and playwright. He is the co-founder and artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project. Kaufman’s plays Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and The Laramie Project (which he co-wrote with the members of Tectonic Theater) have been among the most performed plays in America over the last decade. He is also the author of the Tony Nominated play 33 Variations; One Arm (his adaptation of the Tennessee Williams screenplay of the same name); and the short play London Mosquitoes. He has directed numerous plays on Broadway including the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright which earned Mr. Kaufman an Obie Award for direction as well as Tony, Outer Critics, Lucille Lortell, Drama Desk Awards nominations. Kaufman directed the film adaptation of The Laramie Project, which aired on HBO and was the opening night selection at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Kaufman is a Guggenheim Fellow.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi	(2)
Author's Introduction	xiii
ACT I	7	(66)
Prologue	9	(2)
The First Trial	11	(62)
ACT II	73	(56)
The Interview with Marvin Taylor	75	(8)
The Second Trial	83	(36)
The Third Trial	119	(10)
Epilogue	129	(2)
Coda	131	(4)
Afterword	135
Tony Kushner