Tabori, George

(1914- )

   Playwright, director. Bertolt Brecht convinced Tabori to try his hand at playwriting when the two met in Hollywood, where Tabori had been working on screenplays. His Flight into Egypt premiered on Broadway in 1952 under the direction of Elia Kazan (1909-2003). Prior to that he worked with Brecht on the English-language version of Das Leben des Galilei (The Life of Galileo), which premiered in Los Angeles in 1947. Tabori had been a student in Berlin when forced into exile in 1934; he became a British subject in 1936 and began writing in English as a foreign correspondent in Bulgaria and Turkey; between 1941 and 1943 he worked as a secret agent for the British government in Palestine, returning to London in 1943 to work for the BBC. His American sojourn began in 1947, and his prolific career as a screenwriter included I Confess for Alfred Hitchcock in 1953. Tabori worked both in London and in New York during the 1950s, at one point becoming a member of the Actors Studio.

   In 1958 Tabori's Brou Ha Ha premiered in London, and in 1960 his collage of Brecht material titled Brechton Brecht premiered OffBroadway. The Cannibals followed in 1968, The Niggerlovers in 1969, and Pinkville in 1970. He returned to live in Germany in 1971, and several plays he wrote in English were premiered in German translation during the 1970s and 1980s. They included Clowns, The Demonstration, Sigmund's Freude (based on material by Fritz Perls), Talk Show, The 25 Hours, The Voyeur, Peepshow, My Mother's Courage, and several adaptations of material for the stage by Franz Kafka. Tabori's most controversial play of the 1980s was Mein Kampf, subtitled A Farce, about the young Adolf Hitler's 1907 unsuccessful attempt to enter art school in Vienna. In the 1990s Tabori's directing career reached new heights, as seven of his productions were invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen. One of them was Oleanna by David Mamet (1947- ). In 1992 Tabori received the Büchner Prize.