Background
Ruth Rehrer Wolff was born on December 17, 1932, in Malden, Massachusetts, United States. She is the daughter of Louis K. and Etta B. Wolff.
Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063, United States
Smith College where Ruth Wolff received her Bachelor of Arts degree.
Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, United States
Yale University where Ruth Wolff studied.
(Empress of China is a searing yet sympathetic portrait of...)
Empress of China is a searing yet sympathetic portrait of the extraordinary Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi as she rises to power then finds herself, at the dawn of the twentieth century, fighting new forces of opposition from the suddenly rebellious people of China and from foreign powers eager to seize her land and destroy her civilization.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881450391/?tag=2022091-20
1985
(In a house poised between land and sea, a husband and wif...)
In a house poised between land and sea, a husband and wife, both academics, are facing personal and professional crises when a mysterious young woman enters their lives. Many secrets from past and present burst open as the husband's life begins to unravel and as his wife seems more and more under the illusion that he is her onetime hero, Charles Lindbergh.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881454249/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i2
2008
Ruth Rehrer Wolff was born on December 17, 1932, in Malden, Massachusetts, United States. She is the daughter of Louis K. and Etta B. Wolff.
Ruth Wolff studied at Smith College where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude in 1953. She was also a student at Yale University in 1954-1955.
Ruth Wolff has been a successful playwright since the late 1950s. Her first produced play, The Golem, was an adaptation from Jewish mythology, but she eventually became known for her historical and biographical plays about famous women. Eleanor of Aquitane, Wolff's second effort for the stage, featured the famous medieval queen of France and England. The Abdication, first produced in 1971, told the story of Sweden's Queen Christina, who left her throne and converted to Catholicism for the love of Cardinal Azzolino. Sarah in America depicted the famed nineteenth and early twentieth-century actress, Sarah Bernhardt, during her various performance tours in the United States. Wolff has also penned plays featuring women writers Mary Shelley and George Sand and the Victorian-era Chinese Empress Tzu-Hsi. Renowned actresses such as Glenda Jackson, Anne Wil Blankers, Liv Ullmann, and Katherine Helmond have starred in Wolff's plays and in movies produced from her screenplays.
The Abdication has had a long and distinguished performance record. Premiering at the Bristol Old Vic, it has been presented throughout the United States and in many foreign countries, including acclaimed productions in the Hague in Dutch at De Haagse Comedie, in Montreal in French at the Théâtre de Quat'Sous, and in Italian, in a production which toured all of Italy, presented by II Gruppo Arte Drammatica. Wolff wrote an article about this Italian tour of her play for the New York Times Magazine. She also wrote the script for the film version of The Abdication, which starred Liv Ullman and Peter Finch, produced by Warner Bros. in 1974. The play, which continues to be performed worldwide, has been published in the drama anthology The New Women's Theatre.
Sarah in America has been described in the introduction to Empress of China as "a tour de force for one actress." Sarah in America, about Sarah Bernhardt's tours of the United States, takes the actress from age thirty-six to age seventy-two, portraying the impetuous actress from her naive first encounters with North America, through the immense success of her middle years, through failure, loss of love, and illness, to great triumph in her old age. The play's premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 1981, starred Lilli Palmer and was directed by Sir Robert Helpmann. The play has also been produced at the Pasadena Playhouse starring Katherine Helmond and at Hofstra starring Tovah Feldshuh.
Sarah in America subsequently appeared on television in the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) series Kennedy Center Tonight. Wolff also wrote a screenplay about Bernhardt, The Incredible Sarah, which starred British actress Glenda Jackson. The film covers Bernhardt's early career in France through her tenure at the Comedie Française, the beginnings of her career as an independent actress/manager, and her tumultuous marriage.
Empress of China had its premiere production with New York's Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in 1984 and in the same year was produced at the Cincinnati Playhouse. Later published by the Broadway Play Publishing Company, Empress of China was also produced by several west coast theatre companies and had a notable production, in Italian, at the Todi Festival in Italy. As the introduction to the published version notes, the play tells the story of a Dowager Empress who held power in China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese people's uprising against imperial rule and foreign influence at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Wolff's other plays are The Perfect Marriage, The Second Mrs. Wilson, Hallie, Theatre, Buffaloes, Back to Bald Pate, Aviators, and others. Wolff is also known as a contributor of articles to periodicals, including Ms., the New York Times Magazine, and the Dramatists Guild Newsletter.
(Empress of China is a searing yet sympathetic portrait of...)
1985(In a house poised between land and sea, a husband and wif...)
2008
Quotations:
"I write Broadway-type plays in a time when Broadway doesn't exist, historical plays in a time when history doesn't exist and am an American playwright often writing about Europe and Asia when for Americans these places don't exist."
"Since I decided on this career, this profession has changed mightily. For most of us, our writing careers have been divided. Film is an exuberant, spacious and sensual medium, and dramatists are lucky to live in a time when they can write for it."
"Some ideas can only be conveyed by precisely expressed language - and this is when it is a glory to be able to write for the stage. In spite of my anger and sorrow that so many of my colleagues must spend so much of their time not writing plays, in spite of the fact that in these last two decades so many of their and my plays are not being written (or not being produced), I still have faith in the theatre as a great and special communicator."
"The theatre may be, in the future, one of the last places where people may come together to experience ideas and emotions. In times of increasing isolation, this shared experience will continue to be a precious one - no matter how threatened and how rare."
Ruth Wolff is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Writers Guild of America West, and the League of Professional Theatre Women.
Ruth Wolff married Martin Bloom on August 7, 1955. The marriage produced one child, Evan Todd. Martin passed away in 2017.