Sidney R. Homan
Professor
Several times
an award-winning teacher at UF, Sidney R. Homan has published widely in Shakespeare,
Renaissance, and modern drama. In recent years his scholarly interest
has shifted from the metadramatic focus of his When the Theater
Turns to Itself: The Aesthetic Metaphor in Shakespeare (1982)
to the performance criticism of Shakespeare’s Theater of
Presence: Language, Spectacle, and the Audience (1986) and Beckett’s
Theaters: Interpretations for Performance (1983). This latter
book emerged from a tour of Florida prisons with a production of Waiting
for Godot. His most recent books are based on performances in
which has worked as a director or actor: Directing Shakespeare:
A Scholar Onstage (2004) and Staging Modern Playwrights:
From Director’s Concept to Performance (2004).
Editor of Shakespeare’s “More Than Words Can Witness” (1980) and Shakespeare and the Triple Play (1988) and a co-editor of Shakespeare’s Personality (1989), Professor Homan has published The Audience as Actor and Character (1989), Filming Beckett’s Television Plays (1992), and Pinter’s Odd Man Out (1993).
His A Fish in the Moonlight: Growing Up in the Bone Marrow Unit will appear early in 2008. Here he recounts the stories he told of his youth and the experience sharing them with young patients as part of his work as Artist-in-Residence for the UF’s Arts in Medicine Program. This will be followed by memoir called The Tell-Tale Paper Clip: A Life On Campus and Onstage.
In recent years Professor Homan has directed and acted in the plays of Shakespeare, Beckett, Stoppard, Pinter, Feiffer, Shepard, Chekhov, Wilde, Shaw, Williams, and Churchill, among others. In February 2004 he made his New York debut in All Our Yesterdays, a piece in five movements for musical ensemble and actor. He has also adapted for the stage everything from Dylan Thomas and Machiavelli to slave diaries, as well as letters to the editor of the local newspaper for a show called More Letters to the Editor and a collage of African-American writings, songs, and dances entitled Black Voices. More recently he has directed As You Like It, Pinter’s No Man’s Land, and a play by a Hollywood actor entitled Suckerfish.
At present he is writing a book with his colleague Hernan Vera (UF, Sociology) examining the figure of Hitler in Hollywood movies. And he has tried his hand at a novel, One Wednesday in New York City, and a work of historical fiction, The Fuehrer and the Dove.
Contact
- office: Turlington Hall 4109
- voice: (352) 392-6650, ext. 240
- fax: (352) 392-0860
- email: <shakes@ufl.edu>