Kenneth Thorpe Rowe

Kenneth Thorpe Rowe

Professor Kenneth Thorpe Rowe (born 1900) was an English Literature lecturer and teacher at the University of Michigan. He taught Shakespeare, modern drama, and perhaps most significantly, playwriting. Among his students were Josh Greenfield, Lawrence Kasdan, Dennis McIntyre, Robert McKee, Arthur Miller, Davi Napoleon, then known as Davida Skurnick, Betty Smith, and Milan Stitt.

Professor Rowe began his playwriting seminar each semester by asking his students to read "The Poetics" by Aristotle. He taught them how to see the workings of classic structure, even in modern plays that were not unified in time and place but that built dramatically from an attack through a crisis to a resolution. It was Professor Rowe's contention that even non-realistic plays had this underlying structure. It is said that Professor Rowe helped Arthur Miller in making his first steps in Broadway by connecting Miller with people Rowe knew personally in the show-business industry. It didn't end there. When Josh Greenfield, who wrote the screenplay for "Harry and Tonto" with Paul Mazursky, graduated from Michigan, Professor Rowe told him to look up Arthur Miller.

Published Books

In 1939, Rowe published the book Write That Play""' ', in which he dealt with several fundamental topics that relate to the writing process of a stage play, including:
* What A Play Is
* Finding Dramatic Material
* Building The Play
* Analysis of a Great Play: More about One-Act Plays
* Characterization
* Dialogue
* Analysis Of A Long Play
* Before And After The First Draft, Scenarios And Revisions
* Variety
* Historical Conventions
* Functions And Values.

Regardless of the book's publication time, the troubles in writing a stage play remain the same even in the 21st century. The book was re-published in the United States in 1944, and then again in 1968.

In 1967, Rowe's second book A Theater In Your Head""' ' was first published in hardcover.

External links

* [http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0405/Feb07_05/miller.shtml The University of Michigan RECORD Online - Arthur Miller's life summary]
* [http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1999/feb/02-19-99/news/news18.html The Michigan Daily Online - "It's Miller Time"]
* [http://www.geocities.com/davinapoleon/journalism.html Website of Davi Napoleon (a student of Rowe)]
* [http://web.njit.edu/~cjohnson/tree/bio/writer.htm Biography of Betty Smith (a student of Rowe)]


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