Mordecai Gorelik

Mordecai Gorelik, who was brought to the United States from Russia at the age of five, deserted his father's lumberyard, becoming, eventually, an internationally-known stage and film designer, instructor, and theatre historian. He is the author of a classic textbook, "New Theatres for Old," and of innumerable other writings, including a contribution to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His work as a designer of professional plays for The Group Theatre on Broadway, for the Actors Laboratory Theatre, Hollywood, and for other stage managements, has been varied by jobs as production designer of American and foreign films, and by official stage research abroad. He has represented the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Fulbright Grant in theatre studies throughout Europe (Eastern as well as Western) and as far abroad as Japan, India, Israel, and Australia. At the end of the War, in 1945-46, he served as designer and director for the Biarritz American University, France, under U.S. Army auspices; and in 1949 he was an Expert Consultant in theatre for the American Military Government in Germany. From 1960 to 1972, as Research Professor in Theatre, he carried on class work and staged plays at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. As an Emeritus Professor on theater research, his work was anthologized in Best Short Plays of the World Theater' (1976).