The adjective \u201cStoppardian\u201d entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1978 to describe writing marked by \u201celegant wit while addressing philosophical concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe subject matter of the play exists before the story and it is always something abstract,\u201d Stoppard told the Paris Review in 1988. \u201cI get interested by a notion of some kind and see that it has dramatic possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
He won five Tony Awards for best play and two Laurence Olivier Awards for best new play.<\/p>\n
From child refugee to critical renown<\/h3>\n
Stoppard was born Tom\u00e1\u0161 Str\u00e4ussler to a Jewish family in Zl\u00edn, Czechoslovakia, on July 3, 1937. The Str\u00e4usslers fled to Singapore when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939.<\/p>\n
But they couldn\u2019t escape war. In 1942, the Japanese advanced on Singapore. Stoppard would always remember hiding under a table as a young child while bombs were falling there, according to Hermione Lee\u2019s 2021 biography, \u201cTom Stoppard: A Life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stoppard\u2019s father, a doctor, joined the British Army and died when his ship was bombed. Stoppard\u2019s mother fled to India, where her two sons attended an American school in Darjeeling.<\/p>\n
Then she married British Army Major Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the family a new surname and moved them to England in 1946. Stoppard\u2019s mother, eager to adopt a new English identity, buried the family history. She never told her sons that they were Jewish.<\/p>\n
Stoppard attended boarding schools in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, but found lessons dull. Eager to work, he decided to forgo university.<\/p>\n
At 17 he became a journalist, first at the Western Daily Press in Bristol, then at the Bristol Evening World, and his work included theater reviews. He became a fan and friend of a young Peter O\u2019Toole, then in repertory at the Bristol Old Vic, and grew enamored with the theater world.<\/p>\n
Stoppard then moved to London where he tried his own luck as a playwright. His breakthrough came with \u201cRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.\u201d It was first performed at the 1966 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and got a professional staging at London\u2019s National Theatre in 1967. The show transferred to Broadway in 1968 and won Stoppard his first Tony Award for best play.<\/p>\n
In the play, two minor characters from Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cHamlet\u201d bumble about, confused about their role in the prince\u2019s drama, and wander into existential discussions about the search for meaning. During the early days of the Broadway run, a theatergoer complained the play was incomprehensible and asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s it about?\u201d Stoppard replied, \u201cIt\u2019s about to make me very rich,\u201d according to Lee\u2019s biography.<\/p>\n
An artistic evolution<\/h3>\n
Then came the metatheatrical comedy \u201cThe Real Inspector Hound\u201d (1968) and the satire of academic philosophy \u201cJumpers\u201d (1972). Stoppard divorced his first wife, Jose Ingle, in 1972.<\/p>\n
In \u201cTravesties\u201d (1974), author James Joyce befriends Dada founder Tristan Tzara and Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and all three share a stage in 1917. It won Stoppard his second Tony for best play.<\/p>\n
His 1982 play \u201cThe Real Thing\u201d netted Stoppard his third Tony for best play and marked a turning point toward more personal, emotional writing. It was about a successful married playwright who has an affair with an actress performing in his own play.<\/p>\n
Stoppard maintained that it wasn\u2019t autobiographical at the time he wrote it\u2014though later it became public that he had had an affair with Felicity Kendal, who had starred in a few of his plays. At the time, Stoppard was married to Miriam Stern, a well-known doctor. They divorced in 1992 after a 20-year marriage.<\/p>\n
The 1993 play, \u201cArcadia,\u201d is one of his most critically acclaimed works. Set on a country estate, it toggles between the Regency Era and the present and weaves together physics, history and a whodunnit involving the poet Lord Byron. It won Stoppard his first Olivier Award for best new play.<\/p>\n In 2002, his nine-hour trilogy \u201cThe Coast of Utopia\u201d came to theaters, bringing three plays on three consecutive nights: \u201cVoyage,\u201d \u201cShipwreck and \u201cSalvage.\u201d The shows include meandering political and philosophical debates, set against the messy domestic lives of a group of 19th-century Russian intellectuals. It won Stoppard his fourth best-play Tony.<\/p>\n Stoppard had a parallel career in Hollywood. He co-wrote the cult 1985 dystopian fantasy \u201cBrazil,\u201d which scored him his first Academy Award nomination. He adapted the novel \u201cEmpire of the Sun\u201d into Steven Spielberg\u2019s 1987 film.<\/p>\n Stoppard also worked as an uncredited \u201cscript doctor\u201d on many films including \u201cIndiana Jones and the Last Crusade,\u201d \u201cSchindler\u2019s List\u201d and \u201c102 Dalmatians.\u201d While tweaking the script for \u201cThe Bourne Ultimatum,\u201d he killed off Bourne, according to Lee\u2019s biography. That story line didn\u2019t stick for the 2007 film.<\/p>\n His involvement in the 1998 sensation \u201cShakespeare in Love\u201d started with an uncredited rewrite of Marc Norman\u2019s script about a love affair that inspired the writing of \u201cRomeo and Juliet.\u201d But his role swelled to a credited co-billing. The script circulated around Hollywood for a few years, then was bought by now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.<\/p>\n After the film\u2019s first screening, Weinstein demanded it be rewritten and reshot with a happy ending\u2014but Stoppard fought to keep his denouement of \u201clove lost, inspiration gained.\u201d Through it all, Stoppard said he remained ignorant of the alleged goings-on that would later lead the film\u2019s star, Gwyneth Paltrow, to join several other women in accusing Weinstein of sexual misconduct, according to Lee\u2019s biography.<\/p>\n The film won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best screenplay. It also scored Stoppard a Golden Globe Award for best screenplay.<\/p>\n Stoppard was a celebrity and social creature. Beginning with his 60th birthday, in 1997, he threw a large party every two years in London\u2019s Chelsea Physic Garden. It became a legendary, star-studded event. Guests included Mick Jagger, Princess Margaret, Paul Simon, Stephen Fry, Harrison Ford and Keith Richards. The 2013 affair had 800 guests and a total bill of \u00a3118,000 (about $180,000 at the time), according to Lee\u2019s biography. Stoppard married television producer Sabrina Guinness in 2014.<\/p>\n Stoppard learned of his own family history in 1993. A Czech cousin visited and revealed that Stoppard was Jewish, and that all of his grandparents and three of his aunts had died in the Holocaust, according to Lee\u2019s biography.<\/p>\n The haunting discovery inspired Stoppard to write a multigenerational Jewish family epic that ends with an English-raised boy who doesn\u2019t even know he\u2019s Jewish. \u201cLeopoldstadt\u201d premiered in London\u2019s West End in 2020 when Stoppard was 82.<\/p>\n The play follows a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna from 1899 to 1955 as the rise of Nazism destroys their place in society. It won Stoppard his second Olivier Award for best new play, and his fifth Tony for best play.<\/p>\n Stoppard said he still wasn\u2019t done writing. \u201cI\u2019d like to get back to my desk and write another play,\u201d he told PBS NewsHour<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n Stoppard was known for elevating intellectual theater in the public consciousness and marrying intellectual depth and dramatic entertainment<\/a>. \u201cThe only modern playwright to present the same kind of challenges as Shakespeare is Stoppard,\u201d actor Antony Sher told the Independent<\/a> in 2015.<\/p>\n He reaped great commercial rewards with cutting-edge highbrow material\u2014yet sometimes felt his audience couldn\u2019t keep up. He was derided as a snob<\/a> when he suggested, in a few statements over the years, that he had to dumb down his work for uncultured audiences.<\/p>\n Queen Elizabeth II knighted Stoppard in 1997 and awarded him the Order of Merit in 2000 for his services to drama.<\/p>\n Stoppard is survived by his wife, Sabrina Guinness, and four sons.<\/p>\nPublic life, hidden personal history<\/h3>\n
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