Edward Einhorn

Edward Einhorn (born September 6, 1970) is an American playwright, theater director, and novelist, noted for the comic absurdism of his drama and the imaginative richness of his literary works.

A native of Westfield, New Jersey, Einhorn graduated from Westfield High School, where he was an editor of the student newspaper Hi's Eye.[1] He attended Johns Hopkins University. In 1992 he started the Untitled Theater Company #61 in New York (co-founded with his older brother David Einhorn, who has produced plays for the company). With that company, Edward Einhorn has directed T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes, Eugène Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle, and Richard Foreman's My Head Was a Sledgehammer among other works. He has staged a festival of the complete plays of Eugène Ionesco, a festival of the complete plays of Václav Havel, a calypso musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, an adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,[2] and a "NEUROfest" of plays on aspects of neurology. Off-Broadway, he directed Fairy Tales of the Absurd, a trilogy of one-act plays, two by Ionesco and one (One Head Too Many) by himself.[3] Other adaptations include The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula Le Guin[4] and City of Glass, by Paul Auster[5]

As playwright, Einhorn has composed one-act and full-length plays, and is known for an absurd comic style. Perhaps his best known play is The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein,[6] a farce set at a fantasy marriage between Stein and Toklas. The received a Critic's Pick from Jesse Green, co-chief reviewer of The New York Times. Other work includes dramas on Jewish legends[7] and a series of plays on neurological and neuroscientific topics — The Neurology of the Soul (on neuromarketing),[8] The Boy Who Wanted to be a Robot (on Asperger syndrome), The Taste of Blue, (on synesthesia), Strangers (on Korsakov's syndrome), and Linguish (on aphasia). He has adapted Lysistrata and Iphigenia in Aulis for modern audiences.[9] He has also written a few plays on Czech subjects, such as Rudolf II (based on the 16th century Emperor who lived in Prague), and The Velvet Oratorio (a Vaněk play staged at Lincoln Center and based on the events of the Velvet Revolution).[10] His most personal play, Drs. Jane and Alexander, is a found text piece about his mother and his grandfather, Alexander Wiener, who discovered the Rh factor in blood.

He has written two Oz novels, Paradox in Oz[11] and The Living House of Oz[12] (both illustrated by Eric Shanower), as well as a number of short stories. He has also written two picture books on mathematical subjects for young readers: A Very Improbable Story,[13] on the subject of probability, and Fractions in Disguise, on the subject of fractions.[14] A number of his plays have also been published, including his Hanukkah drama, Playing Dreidel with Judah Maccabee [15]

In 2011, he authored the first English language translation of Václav Havel's final play, The Pig, or Václav Havel's Hunt for a Pig,[16][17] as well as Havel's one-act, Ela, Hela, and the Hitch. Both were published, as part of Theater 61 Press' Havel Collection. Einhorn also wrote the introductions to all the books in the Havel Collection.[18]

In 2014 and 2015, he created and produced the show Money Lab, an economic vaudeville, produced at HERE Arts Center in Manhattan and The Brick in Brooklyn.[19][20]

In 2019, he directed the filmed version of The Last Cyclist, a play originally written by Karel Svenk in Terezin during the Holocaust. It was filmed at La MaMa[21][22]

In 2020, his podcast The Resistible Rise of J. R. Brinkley was released, a four-part audio drama about the quack doctor turned politician, hosted by Dan Butler.[23]