STOPPARD, TOM

born July 3, 1937, Zln, Czech. [now in Czech Republic] original name Tomas Straussler Czech-born British playwright whose work is marked by verbal brilliance, ingenious action, and structural dexterity. Stoppard's father, Eugene Straussler, was a company physician whose Czech company sent him (with his family) to a branch factory in Singapore in 1938/39. After the Japanese invasion, his father stayed on (and was killed), but Mrs. Straussler and her two sons escaped to India, where in 1946 she married a British officer, Kenneth Stoppard. Soon afterward the family went to live in England. Tom Stoppard (he had assumed his stepfather's surname) quit school and started his career as a journalist in Bristol in 1954. He began to write plays in 1960 after moving to London. In 1965 Stoppard was one of five new writers whose short stories were anthologized in Introduction 2 (1964). His first play, A Walk on the Water (1960), was televised in 1963. A stage version was produced in Berlin and Vienna in 1964; and, with some additions and a new title, Enter a Free Man, it reached London in 1968. His play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (196465) was given an amateur performance at the Edinburgh Festival (1966), then entered the repertory of Britain's National Theatre in 1967. The irony and brilliance of this work derive from placing two minor characters of Hamlet into the centre of dramatic action, driving home Stoppard's theme that man is but a minor character in the greater scheme of things, controlled by incomprehensible forces. It became a sensational success, appearing on Broadway and in theatres as far apart as Tokyo and Buenos Aires. Jumpers, a witty view of the academic world in crisis, was a popular and critical success of the 197273 London season, as was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, with music by Andr Previn, in 197879. Night and Day was produced in 1978, and Undiscovered Country (1980), an adaptation of a play by Arthur Schnitzler, was produced in 1979. The Real Thing (1982), Stoppard's first romantic comedy, deals with art and reality and features a playwright as protagonist. Arcadia, set in a Derbyshire country house, premiered in 1993. Stoppard also wrote a number of radio plays and screenplays: among the latter were The Romantic Englishwoman (1975), Despair (1978), and Brazil (1985). He directed the film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1991), for which he also wrote the screenplay.