About Edward Cornell

I grew up in Woods Hole on Cape Cod and in the suburbs of Boston.  My father was part of the instrumentation lab at MIT under Dr. Charles Draper where the inertial guidance systems for the first intercontinental ballistic missiles were invented.  I attended Williams College in philosophy, studied aesthetics with S. Lane Faison and discovered the theatre in a serious way, apprenticing at the Williamstown Theatre Festival under Nikos Psacharopoulos.   One summer a classmate and I started a theatre on Montserrat in the British West Indies.   Then I arrived at Yale Drama, where I studied with Stella Adler and met Joe Papp.  He took me into NYC as his assistant and I began a sudden career in the off Broadway theatre.  At the New York Shakespeare Festival,  I helped Joe write The Naked Hamlet,  founded the Other Stage and directed the first off Broadway play ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, No Place to be Somebody, "a black, black comedy" by Charles Gordone.  I directed in many of the leading theatres of the day, worked with some of the great actors of my generation, and some of the great designers.

The exhilarations and discoveries of this extraordinary world only increased my appetite for the direct experience of life.  I ended up in an old hotel under the Brooklyn Bridge living with some friends in the very place where Hart Crane is supposed to have written bridge us, O Bridge, that we may not be abridged.  I helped win a rent strike there, and we took over the building.  I was for several years a single parent to my two boys, drove a cab, worked as a brakeman on the Penn Central Railroad and as an itinerant professor of acting and directing at places like NYU, Hofstra, and Ohio University.  I kept a hand in the theatre world, directed a revival of Charles MacArthur's political satire, Johnny on a Spot at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and won an Obie for it.  I was co-coordinator of the Playwrights and Directors Unit at the Actors Studio for a while, and I was also sometimes part of a small investment banking firm.  Our offices were at One World Trade Center, and we made privately placed tax exempt bonds for rural hospitals.

Then I moved to the country and began a serious study of painting.  I didn't take formal lessons.  My teachers were my sons Ethan and Noah who had gone on to art school and a friend who is a curator of painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  She would take me through the galleries and into her shows.  We talked and I spent time alone with the great paintings. 

In time I found a life here at Crooked Brook on an old farm in the Adirondack Park.   I'm president of the trustees of the Wadhams Free Library and was chairman of the planning board for a while, helped write the new zoning ordinance and fomented a few peace events.  There is a professional theatre I act with sometimes, and  I have my own swamp, a brook and a forest that has secret places and stands next to a vast primeval wilderness.  I have an emotional companion.  I get into NYC a lot, haunt the museums and stay with my sons who still live the art life in the big city.  And I paint and make stuff out of junk.

 

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Edward Cornell Crooked Brook Studios 154 Sayre Road Westport NY 12993 518 962 4386 [email protected] www.crookedbrookstudios.com

Born West Hartford CT, April 2, 1944 Education     Williams College, BA in philosophy, cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1965 Williamstown Theatre Festival, apprentice, 1964 Yale Drama School in directing, 1965 -67 Yale University Graduate School in philosophy, 1972 Career   1965 - 66 Montserrat Summer Festival Theatre, Montserrat, British West Indies - co-founder, co-producer, director, actor, designer 1967 - 68 New York Shakespeare Festival - assistant to Joseph Papp, playreader, assistant director, co-author with Joseph Papp, The Naked Hamlet   "Shakespeare's language remains undisturbed in this version, but Papp's imaginative scissoring and repasting has sculpted a Hamlet of crystalline tensity." Time, January 5, 1968, p.55 1968-71 New York Shakespeare Festival - first managing director of the Other Stage, experimental wing of the NYSF 1969 New York Shakespeare Festival - directed No Place to be Somebody which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the first off-Broadway play to receive that honor.   "Let's be simple about this. Charles Gordone is the most astonishing new playwright to come along since Edward Albee, and with 'No Place to Be Somebody,' now running in the Public Theatre's downstairs tryout room he lurches at us...like the ripe and roaring Albee of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'... Everything, under Ted Cornell's strict and vigorous stage direction, is extremely well performed; the cast has been immaculately selected, and the interplay is the easiest and most effective since 'The Boys in the Band.' " Walter Kerr, The New York Times, May 18, 1969, Section 2, p.1, ff. 1967 - 1991 Director of more than 70 theatre productions for The New York Shakespeare Festival, The Long Wharf Theatre, Arena Stage, The Hartford Stage Company, The Indiana Repertory Theatre, Playwrights' Horizons, The Actors Studio, and The Brooklyn Academy of Music among others. 1972 - 1973 New York Shakespeare Festival - Associate Director for Television - one of my responsibilities was to coordinate the production of Sticks and Bones by David Rabe, directed by Robert Downey, as a television film produced by the NYSF for CBS as one of a series of specials. We devised an original production technique employing one of the portable video cameras, then used on the sidelines at football games, which had been specially equipped to accept film lenses.   "I don't think plays and novels should be movies; I'm really against it. What I tried to do in 'Sticks and Bones' was to overcome that inherent impossibility. I think tape is the answer to every fantasy a filmmaker ever had!" Bob Downey, Sticks and Bones by Ted Cornell, Peter Powell and Bob Downey, Filmmakers' Newsletter, Volume 6, Number 7, pp. 20-26 1975 - 90 The Franklin House Tenants Union - co-founder and first helmsperson of a tenants' group which organized a rent strike and gained control of an historical building on the Brooklyn waterfront. My sons continue to live in this landmark hotel under the Brooklyn Bridge. 1978              The Penn Central Railroad - freight brakeman 1978 - 79 The Actors Studio - co-coordinator of the Playwrights and Directors Unit 1980  The Brooklyn Academy of Music - directed Johnny On a Spot for the BAM Theatre Company.   "...you can't help dreaming about the ideal cast, including James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Raymond Walburn and Joan Blondell. But under Edward Cornell's lickety-split staging, the Bamsters do nicely...and it's the funniest play in New York..." Jack Kroll, Newsweek, March 17, 1980, pp. 85, 86 "Stage View, Selected Highlights of the Season, ...Directors - Edward Cornell lighted the hidden fires of 'Johnny on a Spot.' Peter Brook did everything that could be done to transcend the trite spiritual message of 'Conference of the Birds,' and Hal Prince did another kind of snazzy confidence job in sugarcoating Eva Peron." Frank Rich, The New York Times, June 8, 1980, Section D, p.1, ff. 1981 - 89  John W. Loofbourrow Associates, Inc. - Associate - This investment banking firm with offices at One World Trade Center, specialized in tax exempt bonds for rural health care institutions. We created and privately placed bonds ranging in size from two to thirty million dollars employing original, computer-based derivatives invented by Loofbourrow. 1981 - 91 Ohio University, Hofstra University, New York University (Circle in the Square) - Visiting Professor and Acting Instructor, variously, repeated visits 1990/present Crooked Brook Studios - purchased and renovated an early twentieth century farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings on a 140 acre tract of land in the Adirondack Park in upstate New York. The land is now part of an undesignated wildlife corridor within the park and is managed under a 480a New York State logging agreement. Two wetlands and ponds were created on the property in 1995 by the United States Department of the Interior under a continuing Fish and Wildlife Restoration Agreement. The house and barns are my living quarters and studios and the nearby lands on Crooked Brook are the site of my environmental sculptures. 1991/present The Wadhams Free Library - volunteer and president of the trustees - beginning in 1996 we carried out a three-year renovation and expansion of the library in commemoration of its centennial. 1996 Crooked Brook Studios - one man show curated by Atea Ring   "Stillness permeates his works: a hushed poetry that in its unsentimental and trenchant character recalls the views of empty roads and impenetrable woods of Edward Hopper." Susan Alyson Stein, Curator of European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Exhibition Catalogue 1996 - 2001  Atea Ring Gallery - gallery artist 1998/present  The Depot Theatre - board member, program committee member and actor as part of this LORT D equity theatre 1999 - 2002  Town of Essex - chairman of the planning board - helped write the new comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance for the town and was central to the creation of the Essex Farm initiative which introduced production-scaled organic farming procedures to the Boquet Valley. 1999  Adirondack Park Visitor Interpretive Center - "Two Views" an exhibition of paintings by Adirondack painters Linda Fisher and Edward Cornell   "For Cornell the wilderness serves as a window to the modern day rather than a place to hide." Robin Caudell, The Plattsburgh Press Republican, August 26, 1999, pp. C1, C4 2000 Crooked Brook Studios - one man show   "Almost without fail, motorists slow down on Walker Road in Wadhams when they catch sight of artist Edward Cornell's property. His 'Rotating Installation of a Minimally Processed Found Object' qualifies as a traffic stopper...The sculpture challenges the viewer's imagination...Some have referred to it as an Adirondack prayer wheel." Robin Caudell, The Plattsburgh Press Republican, October 5, 2000, p. C2 2002  Town of Essex - Election Day, oil on canvas, 35" x 48," placed on permanent loan to the town, now hangs in town hall 2003  The Depot Theatre - donated Depo' Heat 25 Yea!, oil on canvas, 48" x 48," to the theatre in celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. The design became the logo of the anniversary celebrations, and the painting now hangs in the theatre lobby. 2004  Merricks Bread and Coffee, Wadhams NY - The Bakery Show, summer-long, one man show of figurative and abstract oils 2002/present The Diogenes Society - founding member of this non-partisan advocacy group demanding honesty in public discourse. Designed the organization's logo and numerous signs and props.  2002/present  The Boquet River Association - as a board member of this local environmental advocacy group, I re-designed the organization's logo and contribute drawings to its publications. 2005/present Crooked Brook Studios are featured as the Art Farm on the Adirondack Harvest farm tour offering open studio access to my paintings and monumental environmental sculptures. 2007 The Williams Club, New York City - Life in the Slow Lane - one man show of oil paintings and collage, March 29 through May 10. 2007 North Country Cultural Center for the Arts, Plattsburgh, NY - Old Work and New - two man show with John Kokoszka of oil paintings, sculpture and collage, May 12 through June 18. Awards 1980 Obie Award for outstanding achievement in directing Johnny on a Spot at the Brooklyn Academy of Music 2004 Mary G. Leggett Award from the Clinton Essex Franklin Library System - as outstanding trustee in the Clinton Essex Franklin area   Selected Bibliography   William Shakespeare's Naked Hamlet, Joseph Papp assisted by Ted Cornell; The McMillan Co., 1969 Not Since Edward Albee, Walter Kerr, The New York Times, May 18, 1969, Section 2, p.1, ff. No Place to be Somebody, Charles Gordone; Bobbs-Merril Company, Inc., 1969 Enter Joseph Papp, Stuart W. Little; Coward, McCann and Geohegan, Inc., 1974 A Dream Grows in Brooklyn, Jack Kroll, Newsweek, March 17, 1980, pp. 85, 86 Joe Papp, An American Life, Helen Epstein; Little, Brown and Company, 1994 A Visit to Crooked Brook, an art farm, Lee Manchester, Lake Placid News, January 6, 2006, p 21ff. Art Farm Creations, Kim Smith Dedam, Plattsburgh Press-Republican, September 7, 2006, C1ff. Edward Cornell, the Change Artist, Elizabeth Ward, Adirondack Life, January/February 2007, p.19ff. Sculptor Ted Cornell Reinvents Self, Brian Mann, North Country Public Radio, Interview, October 25, 2007