Rochelle Owens Explained

Rochelle Owens
Birth Date:2 April 1936
Birth Place:Brooklyn, New York

Rochelle Bass Owens (born April 2, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American poet and playwright.[1]

Life and career

Owens is the daughter of Maxwell and Molly (Adler) Bass. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, then studied at the New School for Social Research and the University of Montreal.

After a brief marriage to David Owens, she married the poet George Economou on June 17, 1962.[2] Owens has taught at Brown University, the University of California-San Diego, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Southwestern Louisiana.[3] As of 2018, Owens lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and Philadelphia.[4] Her biography is published in Gale Research Contemporary Authors, Volume 2 (1983). In 2006, she was celebrated in La MaMa's Coffeehouse Chronicles series.[5] [6]

Theatre

She was highly involved in the early off-off-Broadway theatre movement. As a poet, she contributed greatly to the St. Marks Poetry Project and was a founding participant in Mickey Ruskin and Bill Mackey's Cafe Deux Megots on 7th Street in the East Village. Owens was also involved in the ethnopoetics movement. Her work has influenced experimental playwrights and poets in subsequent generations.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Owens' plays premiered in New York City at the Judson Poets Theatre, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Theater for the New City, and the American Place Theatre. She was a founding member of the New York Theater Strategy and the Women's Theater Council. Her play Futz was first published in 1961 and is foundational to the off-off-Broadway canon. It raised some controversy, and was banned in Toronto and called a "lust and bestiality play" by a newspaper in Edinburgh. Futz was made into a film in 1969. The cast includes Sally Kirkland and Frederic Forrest.[7] [8]

Owens' plays have been performed in theatre festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin.[9]

Poetry

Owens at the age of 19 had her poetry published in LeRoi Jones' (as Amiri Baraka was known then) and Hettie Jones’ magazine Yugen. Owens’ poems appear in the volume Jones edited in 1962 titled "Four Young Lady Poets". Owens may not refer to herself as a "Beat poet", but she was there and influential among the Beat poets and that movement in New York. She read her poems at The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church In-the-Bowery in New York City, on the same bill that included Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Allen Ginsberg introduced her poetry to LeRoi Jones.[10]

Radio

In 1984, after relocating to Norman, Oklahoma, Owens hosted "The Writers Mind", a radio interview program from the University of Oklahoma with various artists.[11]

Awards and recognition

Selected works

Plays

Screenplays

Poetry

Anthologies

Videos

Sound recordings

Translations (to English)

As editor

Novels

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama . D . Columbia University Press. 2007. 978-0-231-14424-7. Gabrielle H. Cody . Evert Sprinchorn.
  2. Book: International Who's Who in Poetry 2004. Taylor & Francis Group. 250 . 978-1-85743-178-0 . 2004 . Europa.
  3. Web site: Rochelle Owens . www.broadwayplaypubl.com . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20001119124700/http://www.broadwayplaypubl.com/owensb.htm . 2000-11-19.
  4. Book: The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama . 2 . Columbia University Press. 2007. 978-0-231-14424-7. Gabrielle H. Cody . Evert Sprinchorn.
  5. http://lamama.org/programs/coffeehouse_chronicles/ La MaMa's Coffeehouse Chronicles series
  6. Book: The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama . 1. Columbia University Press. 2007. 978-0-231-14422-3. Gabrielle H. Cody . Evert Sprinchorn.
  7. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064354/
  8. Friedman, Amy. "Rochelle Owens: Off Beat, Off-Off Broadway". Beat Drama: Playwrights and Performances of the 'Howl’ Generation.edited by Deborah Geis. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.
  9. Book: The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama: Volume 2. Columbia University Press. 2007. 978-0-231-14424-7 . Gabrielle H. Cody . Evert Sprinchorn.
  10. Friedman, Amy. "Rochelle Owens: Off Beat, Off-Off Broadway". Beat Drama: Playwrights and Performances of the 'Howl’ Generation.edited by Deborah Geis. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.
  11. Book: The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama . 2 . Columbia University Press. 2007. 978-0-231-14424-7. Gabrielle H. Cody . Evert Sprinchorn.
  12. http://www.gf.org/fellows/11075-rochelle-owens
  13. [Rockefeller fellowship|Rockefeller Fellowship at Bellagio Center]
  14. https://libraries.ok.gov/ocb/oklahoma-book-awards/ Oklahoma Book Award
  15. La MaMa Archives Digital Collections. "Production: Futz (1967a)". Accessed June 20, 2018.
  16. La MaMa Archives Digital Collections. "Production: Futz (1967b)". Accessed June 20, 2018.
  17. La MaMa Archives Digital Collections. "Production: Homo and The Queen of Greece (1969)". Accessed June 20, 2018.
  18. La MaMa Archives Digital Collections. "Production: He Wants Shih! (1973)". Accessed June 20, 2018.
  19. https://books.google.com/books?id=_ZAhT9ybotEC&q=Rochelle+Owens
  20. https://books.google.com/books?id=yr-LwaRxoHMC&dq=Rochelle+Owens+joe%27s+garage&pg=PA2
  21. https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078552 Kulchur Press
  22. http://www.texturepress.org Texture Press
  23. http://junctionpress.com Junction Press
  24. https://www.shearsman.com Shearsman Books
  25. http://singinghorsepress.com Singing Horse Press
  26. https://folkways.si.edu/the-best-of-broadside-1962-1988-anthems-of-the-american-underground-from-the-pages-of-broadside-magazine/folk/music/album/smithsonian Broadside Records
  27. https://www.discogs.com/label/97472-Kilmarnock-Records Kilmarnock
  28. https://poetry.sfsu.edu Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives

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