Israel Horovitz


Israel Horovitz is an American playwright, director, actor and co-founder of the Gloucester Stage Company in 1979. He served as artistic director until 2006 and later served on the board, ex officio and as artistic director emeritus until his resignation in November 2017 after The New York Times reported allegations of sexual misconduct.

Early life and career

Horovitz was born to a Jewish family in Wakefield, Massachusetts, the son of Hazel Rose and Julius Charles Horovitz, a lawyer. At age 13, he wrote his first novel, which was rejected by Simon & Schuster but complimented for its "wonderful, childlike qualities." At age 17, he wrote his first play, entitled The Comeback, which was performed at nearby Suffolk University. In 2014 he published a collection of poems, Heaven and Other Poems, through Three Rooms Press.

Theatre career

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, 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 US 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.
In 1979 Horovitz founded the Gloucester Stage Company in Gloucester, Massachusetts, continuing to serve 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. He is co-director of Compagnia Horovitz-Paciotto, an Italian theatre-company that produces Horovitz's plays, exclusively. In addition, Horovitz is one of a select group of non-actors awarded membership in The Actors Studio.
Horovitz had a long-term friendship with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and often found in Beckett a thematic and stylistic model and inspiration for his own work. Horovitz has also worked with The Byre Theatre of St Andrews, Scotland.

Film career

His screenplay for the 1982 film Author! Author!, starring Al Pacino, is a largely autobiographical account of a playwright dealing with the stress of having his play produced on Broadway while trying to raise a large family. Other Horovitz-penned films include the award-winning Sunshine, co-written with Istvan Szabo, 3 Weeks After Paradise, James Dean, an award-winning biography of the actor, and The Strawberry Statement, a movie adapted from a journalistic novel by James Simon Kunen that deals with the student political unrest of the 1960s. Horovitz adapted his stage play My Old Lady for the screen, which he directed in summer, 2013, starring Maggie Smith, Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Dominique Pinon. The film was released in cinemas worldwide in fall 2014.

Awards

He has won numerous awards for his work, including two Obies, the Drama Desk Award, The European Academy Award – Best Screenplay, and The Sony Radio Academy Award. He also won an Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters; The Governor of Massachusetts' Leadership Award; The Prix de Plaisir du Theatre; The Prix Italia ; The Writers Guild of Canada Best Screenwriter Award; The Christopher Award; the Elliot Norton Prize; a Lifetime Achievement Award from B'nai B'rith; the Literature Prize of Washington College; an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Salem State College; Boston Public Library's Literary Lights Award; the Walker Hancock Prize, and many others.

Sexual assault accusations

On November 30, 2017, a New York Times article stated that nine women said that Horovitz had sexually assaulted or harassed them between 1986 and 2016. Some of the women were under the age of legal consent at the time. As a result, Horovitz left the Gloucester Stage Company, the theater company he had founded. His son Adam Horovitz said, "I believe the allegations against my father are true, and I stand behind the women that made them."
In 1993, The Boston Phoenix published an article which covered a series of accusations against Horovitz by six different women associated with the GSC. The actresses and staff members alleged that the playwright used offensive language, kissed, and/or fondled them. In response, Horovitz said, "it's rubbish. Someone was fired, and this is their revenge." At the time, no charges or lawsuits were filed against Horovitz, nor was any disciplinary action taken by the GSC's board.
The February 5, 2018 episode of the Hidden Brain podcast features in-depth interviews with women who have accused Horovitz of sexual assault. On February 19, actress Heather Graham, who briefly dated Horovitz's son Adam, appeared on Marc Maron's podcast WTF and said that the elder Horovitz made predatory advances toward her following an audition for one of his plays in 1989.

Personal life

He has been married three times:

Writer-film