Charles Marowitz (26 January 1934 – 2 May 2014)^[1] was an American critic, theatre director, and playwright, regular columnist on Swans Commentary.^[2] He collaborated with Peter Brook at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and later founded and directed The Open Space Theatre in London.^[3]

He was also the co-founder of Encore magazine which was published between 1954 and 1965, and co-editor of The Encore Reader: A Chronicle of the New Drama (1965). He was a regular contributor to publications such as The New York Times, The Times (London), TheaterWeek, and American Theatre and was the lead critic on the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner until it ceased publication.

The period as a critic in London was recorded in the book Confessions of a Counterfeit Critic (Eyre Methuen 1973). Its subtitle was A London Theatre Notebook 1958-1971.

He was the author of Murdering Marlowe, which imagined a rivalry between William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. It was selected as a finalist for the GLAAD Media Awards of 2002. He was author the 1987 Broadway play Sherlock's Last Case with Frank Langella in the lead role.^[4]

His free adaptations of Shakespeare were collected in The Marowitz Shakespeare. He died of complications from Parkinson's disease in 2014 at the age of 80.^[5]

Selected bibliography

• Marowitz, Charles (1977). Artaud at Rodez. London: Marion Boyars. ISBN 0-7145-2632-0.
• Marowitz, Charles, ed. and trans. (2000). The Marowitz Shakespeare: Adaptions and Collages of Hamlet, MacBeth, the Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, and the Merchant of Venice. London: Marion Boyars. ISBN 978-0-7145-2651-5.
• –––, Tom Milne, and Owen Hale, eds. (1981). The Encore Reader: A Chronice of the New Drama. London: Methuen, 1965. Reissued as New Theatre Voices of the Fifties and Sixties. London: Eyre Methuen.
• Trussler, Simon (2014). Charles Marowitz in London: Twenty-Five Years Hard: Marowitz in the Sixties. New Theatre Quarterly, 30:3, p. 203–206