Park Your Car in Harvard Yard

This week on L.A. Theatre Works, it’s a 2001 performance of Park Your Car in Harvard Yard by playwright Israel Horovitz and starring Jason Robards and Judith Ivey.

About the play:

Jacob Brackish, the toughest, meanest teacher ever to set foot in Gloucester High School is dying at home. His advertisement for a housekeeper to look after him during his final years is answered by a mousy 40-year-old named Kathleen, a woman Jacob has forgotten he flunked years before.

About the playwright:

Israel Horovitz (born March 31, 1939) is a playwright, director, and actor.

Horovitz has written more than 70 produced plays, many of which have been translated and performed in more than 30 languages worldwide.Among Horovitz’s best-known plays are Line (a revival of which opened in 1974 and is NYC’s longest-running play still running, now in its 38th year of continuous performance at off-off-Broadway‘s 13th Street Repertory Theatre),Park Your Car in Harvard Yard, The Primary English Class, The Widow’s Blind Date, What Strong Fences Make, and The Indian Wants the Bronx, for which he won the Obie Award for Best Play, and which featured two yet-undiscovered future film stars: John Cazale and Al Pacino.

Horovitz divides his time between the USA and France, where he often directs French-language productions of his plays. On his 70th birthday, Horovitz was decorated by the French government as Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.The 70/70 Horovitz Project was created by NYC Barefoot Theatre Company to celebrate Horovitz’s 70th birthday. During the year following March 31, 2009, 70 of Horovitz’s plays had productions and/or reading by theatre companies around the globe, including the national theatres of Nigeria, Benin, Greece and Ghana. He is the most-produced American playwright in French theatre history.

Horovitz is Founding Artistic Director of the Gloucester Stage Company in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a theatre he created in 1979 and served as its Artistic Director for 28 years. He also founded The New York Playwrights Lab in 1975, and still serves as the NYPL’s Artistic Director. In addition, Horovitz is one of a select group of non-actors awarded membership in The Actors Studio.


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