Farewell to the Theatre

Harley Granville Barker, the most influential theatre-maker of his time, finds himself adrift in America during the Great War. Estranged from the theatre, and with his spirit almost broken by an acrimonious divorce, he seeks refuge in the relative obscurity of a quiet, backwater, Williamstown, Massachusetts. He finds comfort in the congeniality of his fellow refugees and in the courtesy of strangers - and gradually begins to regain his faith in humanity and his belief in the central role of Theatre in the civilised community.

Richard Nelson's plays include Farewell to the Theatre, Nikolai and the Others, Sweet and Sad, That Hopey Changey Thing, Conversations in Tusculum, How Shakespeare Won the West, Frank's Home, Rodney's wife, Franny's Way, Madame Melville, Goodnight Children Everywhere, The General From America, New England, Misha's Party (with Alexander Gelman), Columbus or the Discovery of Japan, Two Shakespearean Actors, Some Americans Abroad, Left, Life Sentences, Principia Scriptoriae. He was written the musicals Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano (with Peter Golub), James Joyce's The Dead (with Shaun Davey), My Life With Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon), the screenplays for the films Hyde Park-on-Hudson (Roger Michell director) and Ethan Frome (John Madden director). He has received numerous awards both in America and abroad, including a Tony Award (Best Book of a Musical for James Joyce's The Dead), and Oliver Award (Best Play for Goodnight Children Everywhere), Tony nominations (Best Play for Two Shakespearean Actors; Best Score as co-lyricist for James Joyce's The Dead), an Olivier nomination (Best Comedy for Some Americans Abroad), two Obies, a Lortel Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Writers Award. He is the recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He lives in upstate New York.