Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright. He also acts as a director, screenwriter and critic. On account of Tom, many literary works have been translated into many languages of the world.
Biography and personal life
At birth, the playwright was named Tomasz Straussler. He was born in Zlín on July 3, 1937. His parents were Jewish and worked in the field of medicine. Tom was the second child and grew up with his older brother Peter. When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, the Straussler family managed to escape. They settled in Singapore. Later it turned out that all the relatives who remained at home were killed by the Nazis. Then the mother and sons went to India, and the father, Eugene Straussler, born in 1908, died.
Tom's mother married a Briton again. The stepfather gave the children his last name and moved the family to England. The Stoppards were educated at a boarding school in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. Tom did not succeed in graduating from the institution, he was expelled from there. Then he took up journalism and wrote for newspapers in his youth.
In addition to writing, in adulthood, Tom was involved in political activities. He visited many countries, including Russia. In 1997, Tom was knighted. Stoppard was inducted into the Royal Society of Literature.
Tom was in 2 marriages. His last wife was Miriam Stoppard and she passed away in 1992. Tomas's wife was a TV presenter. As a result of 2 marriages, Stoppard had four sons. One of Ed's children became a famous British actor.
Creation
From the pen of Tom Stoppard came a lot of literary works. Some of them have been translated into Russian. Joseph Brodsky translated his 1967 tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead in 1990. In his work, Stoppard tells the tragedy of William Shakespeare "Hamlet" from the perspective of the courtiers. The play was filmed twice. In 1990, the film of the same name was released with Tim Roth, Gary Oldman and Richard Dreyfus in the lead roles. The director was the author of the tragicomedy. In 2004, the animated film "The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata" was released, which is also considered a kind of film adaptation of the work of Tom Stoppard.
In 2000, several of the plays that Stoppard wrote in the 1960s and 1970s were translated into Russian. Among them are "Free Man Enter", "The Real Inspector Hound", "After Magritte" and "Travesti". In 1977, he wrote the play Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-ask for freedom, in which he criticized the Soviet regime. The production featured actors such as Ian McKellen, John Wood and Patrick Stewart.
A year later, Stoppard writes about the civil war in one of the African countries in the play "Night and Day". In the 1990s, he created the dramas Indian Ink and Arcadia, the latter being voted the best play by Tom and winning the Laurence Olivier Prize for Best New Play. In 2002, a play about Russia of the 19th century "The Coast of Utopia" appeared. It was staged in England, USA and Russia. In 2006 he writes Rock and Roll. The action of the work takes place in Great Britain and Czechoslovakia. In 2015, Tom writes the play "A Difficult Problem". In 2019, it was staged at the Russian Academic Youth Theater. Tom personally attended the first rehearsals.
