Kenneth N. Kurtz

Kenneth N. Kurtz

Kenneth N. Kurtz is a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Miami, Florida, where for forty four years he taught Theatre history, Scenic and Lighting Design, Scene Painting and the History of Decor. As a member of United Scenic Artists he has executed professional commissions for such theatres as the Coconut Grove, Asolo, Colony, Burt Reynolds and Clarion Castle in Florida, the...
Kenneth N. Kurtz is a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Miami, Florida, where for forty four years he taught Theatre history, Scenic and Lighting Design, Scene Painting and the History of Decor. As a member of United Scenic Artists he has executed professional commissions for such theatres as the Coconut Grove, Asolo, Colony, Burt Reynolds and Clarion Castle in Florida, the Alliance in Atlanta, the Walnut Street in Philadelphia, and the Sharon Playhouse in Connecticut. His settings and/or lights have showcased such luminaries as Jose Ferrer (Life With Father), Mercedes McCambridge (Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), Theodore Bikel (Sunshine Boys), Brian Murray (Equus ), and Kathy Rigby (Peter Pan). Any profession that pays one good money to make Captain Hook’s pirate ship is a wonderful thing.

Ken Kurtz has written eight plays, all historical in subject matter. Chiaroscuro (about Caravaggio) was produced in Chicago and Palm Springs. Merde de Canard (a French farce) won the second place award in the Kaufman and Hart New American Comedy. Festival at Arkansas Rep. and recently received a reading at Gablestage. Ben’s Key won the second place award at the South Florida Writers’ Guild Ten Minute Play Competition and was produced at Boca Raton's Willow Theatre.

Ken resides in Pinecrest with his husband Bob and a beagle named Benjamin. He is also proud to be a guide at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.

Plays

  • Chiaroscuro by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: dark comedy, docudrama/historic + 1 more
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    Keyword: Carravaggio, Art and inspiration + 2 more
    Genre: dark comedy, docudrama/historic, period
    Keyword: Carravaggio, Art and inspiration, gay romance, renaissance
    Chiaroscuro (A Study in Shadow, 79 pages.) is dark, raw in fact. It tells the story of Caravaggio and a young man hired off of the streets of Renaissance Rome to pose for a painting of The Flaying of Marsyas. The coercing of proper expression is extreme. Poetry, memory, torture and lust all come into play. There is full frontal nudity, as well as simulated sex (albeit sequestered behind an easel). The theme is...
    Chiaroscuro (A Study in Shadow, 79 pages.) is dark, raw in fact. It tells the story of Caravaggio and a young man hired off of the streets of Renaissance Rome to pose for a painting of The Flaying of Marsyas. The coercing of proper expression is extreme. Poetry, memory, torture and lust all come into play. There is full frontal nudity, as well as simulated sex (albeit sequestered behind an easel). The theme is imagination, and what might happen when a model has too little and an artist far too much.
    Three scenes, 1:10. One set.
    3 men. Renaissance period costumes
  • Lost Portraits by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    4–6
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    Genre: docudrama/historic, romantic comedy
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    Keyword: Ben Franklin, Marie Antoinette + 1 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, romantic comedy
    Keyword: Ben Franklin, Marie Antoinette, romance and revolution
    Lost Portraits (81 pages) is a trio of scenes about Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, the loveliest and perhaps most successful portrait painter of 18th Century France.

    Portrait of a Patriot ( 27 pages.) Playwright Beaumarchais (40) and painter Elisabeth (21) have very different suggestions for newly arrived diplomat, Ben Franklin (72), on how to seduce France to meet a new America's needs.
    ...
    Lost Portraits (81 pages) is a trio of scenes about Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, the loveliest and perhaps most successful portrait painter of 18th Century France.

    Portrait of a Patriot ( 27 pages.) Playwright Beaumarchais (40) and painter Elisabeth (21) have very different suggestions for newly arrived diplomat, Ben Franklin (72), on how to seduce France to meet a new America's needs.
    Portrait of a Pronoun (17 pages.) The Chevalier D’ Eon (43), the century’s most famous sexual ambiguity, desires a portrait. Will Elisabeth (22) paint the Dame or the Dragoon?
    Portrait of a Peasant (37 pages.) concerns a portrait commissioned by Marie Antoinette (28). She wishes to be shown as a shepherdess. Elisabeth (now also 28) will paint it, but only if the queen abandons her elegant theatre costume in favor of the genuine and repellent peasant rags that the artist provides, and thereby experiences some of the miseries of her lowest subjects.
    Three scenes with one intermission, 1:45.
    Bare stage with period furniture groupings around a three-fold changing screen.
    4 men (or two men double cast), 2 women. Eighteenth century period costumes.
  • Un-Selfportrait. A mannered monologue. by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Recommendations: 6
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: docudrama/historic, period + 2 more
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    Keyword: Vigee-leBrun, George Sand + 1 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, period, romantic comedy, verse
    Keyword: Vigee-leBrun, George Sand, Chopin
    While Elizabeth Vigee leBrun paints her portrait, George Sand paints her life in words, rhymed couplets no less, all said while Chopin plays his piano scherzo in the next room.
  • Merde de Canard by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    8
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    Genre: comedy, farce + 1 more
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    Keyword: Classic French farce, meaning sex both human and mechanical
    Genre: comedy, farce, period
    Keyword: Classic French farce, meaning sex both human and mechanical
    Merde de Canard (107 pages) is a farce-comedy, based on the unflappable yet unpredictable logic of automatons. Its hero is a character from history, Jacques de Vaucanson, whose wondrous mechanical creations, especially the famous shitting duck, delighted Parisians of the mid-eighteenth century and also foreshadowed the workings of modern computers. As in all such comedies there are mistaken identities,...
    Merde de Canard (107 pages) is a farce-comedy, based on the unflappable yet unpredictable logic of automatons. Its hero is a character from history, Jacques de Vaucanson, whose wondrous mechanical creations, especially the famous shitting duck, delighted Parisians of the mid-eighteenth century and also foreshadowed the workings of modern computers. As in all such comedies there are mistaken identities, lovelorn chases, sex desired but never quite delivered, and in this case, robots (one of them rather randy) running amuck. The play is subtitled: A Comedy of Seven Doors and Eight Automatons.
    Two Acts, 1:45. One set. Period costumes, including panniers for the ladies.
    4 men, 4 women, and 2 mime-puppeteers to perform the automatons.

    Merde de Canard won the second place award in the 2006 Arkansas Rep. Kaufman and Hart New Comedy Competition. On August 15, 2016, the play received a reading at Gablestage, Coral Gables, Fl.
  • Panegyric by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    9
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    Genre: romantic comedy
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    Keyword: Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll + 2 more
    Genre: romantic comedy
    Keyword: Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, Paul Gauguin, peter pan
    Panegyric (93 pages) is a romantic comedy. It is 1905 and three men who never really grew up find their shades delivered to the perfect purgatory. Oscar Wilde dallies quite innocently with a beautiful boy, Lewis Carroll flounders with a young and fetching mermaid, and Paul Gauguin chases after a nubile native princess. Of course they all learn to fear the ticking sound of the crocodile. You guessed it. Their...
    Panegyric (93 pages) is a romantic comedy. It is 1905 and three men who never really grew up find their shades delivered to the perfect purgatory. Oscar Wilde dallies quite innocently with a beautiful boy, Lewis Carroll flounders with a young and fetching mermaid, and Paul Gauguin chases after a nubile native princess. Of course they all learn to fear the ticking sound of the crocodile. You guessed it. Their souls have been delivered to the Neverland.
    This is a sequel to Peter Pan, and we recently witnessed the centenary of that lovely classic, which two prequel novels by humorist Dave Barry and an estate commissioned sequel as well as a Johnny Depp biopic have helped to celebrate -- to say nothing of the 2003 film version of the original play, plus Peter And The Starcatcher and a musical version of Finding Neverland currently running on Broadway.
    Peter Pan lives on and on...and on?
  • Tilting at Tilsit by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic
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    Keyword: Napoleon, a comedy of seduction
    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic
    Keyword: Napoleon, a comedy of seduction
    Tilting at Tilsit. (62 pages) A comedy of Seduction. Napoleon and Tsar Alexander meet to decide the future of Europe in an elegant tent erected on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen. Since it floats it also tilts whenever one of the emperors goes too far to either side. Though neither could admit it, they also go too far in the quest for control. In fact, Napoleon once wrote to Josephine saying...
    Tilting at Tilsit. (62 pages) A comedy of Seduction. Napoleon and Tsar Alexander meet to decide the future of Europe in an elegant tent erected on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen. Since it floats it also tilts whenever one of the emperors goes too far to either side. Though neither could admit it, they also go too far in the quest for control. In fact, Napoleon once wrote to Josephine saying that if Alexander had been a woman he would have seduced him.
    Two scenes, 60 min. One set…that tilts.
    Two actors (Napoleon-38, Alexander-30). Period military uniforms.
  • Tales of the Sun King by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    12
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    Genre: docudrama/historic, verse
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    Keyword: Divine right versus human wrong, Louis XIV + 1 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, verse
    Keyword: Divine right versus human wrong, Louis XIV, Versailles
    Versailles: a Masque of Baroque Perspective. (95 pages) In very free verse, Magic Realism meets the Seventeenth Century. Louis XIV spars with the three men who made his dreams come true: painter Charles Le Brun, garden designer Andre Le Notre, and military engineer Sebastien de Vauban, whose wondrous forts protected the frontiers of France. As well as the three women who delighted his private life: comely...
    Versailles: a Masque of Baroque Perspective. (95 pages) In very free verse, Magic Realism meets the Seventeenth Century. Louis XIV spars with the three men who made his dreams come true: painter Charles Le Brun, garden designer Andre Le Notre, and military engineer Sebastien de Vauban, whose wondrous forts protected the frontiers of France. As well as the three women who delighted his private life: comely Louise de la Valliere, voluptuous Madame de Montespan, and puritanical Madame de Maintenon. All seven create a glorious edifice with dangerous cracks in its foundation.
    Three scenes with one intermission, 1:35. One set with numerous pasteboard cut-outs and/or projections.
    Three principal actors (2 men, 1 woman) and a chorus of 6 men and 3 women. Period costumes.
  • The Wine of Wrath by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Cast: 
    18
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    Genre: adaptation, tragedy + 1 more
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    Keyword: the bacchae, revenge + 1 more
    Genre: adaptation, tragedy, verse
    Keyword: the bacchae, revenge, Dionysus
    The Wine of Wrath (60 pages) is a free-verse adaptation of Euripides’s The Bacchae. It differs from the original Greek tragedy in that the chorus speeches have been rendered as lyrics for four increasingly impassioned ladies’ hymns to the god and one vicious men’s hunting song, and the original’s offstage scene wherein Dionysus transforms the young headstrong king into a female spy has also been imagined as an...
    The Wine of Wrath (60 pages) is a free-verse adaptation of Euripides’s The Bacchae. It differs from the original Greek tragedy in that the chorus speeches have been rendered as lyrics for four increasingly impassioned ladies’ hymns to the god and one vicious men’s hunting song, and the original’s offstage scene wherein Dionysus transforms the young headstrong king into a female spy has also been imagined as an onstage cross-dressing premonition of the horror that is to come.
    One hour, one set, period Greek costumes.
    5 men plus 5 male chorus, 1 woman plus 7 female chorus.

  • Ben's Key by Kenneth N. Kurtz
    Recommendations: 9
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: comedy, young audiences
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    Keyword: Ben Franklin, time travel
    Genre: comedy, young audiences
    Keyword: Ben Franklin, time travel
    Due to that famous key and the lightning strike, Ben Franklin time travels to a present day tavern on Philadelphia's Market Street