Play Guide [356k PDF] - Arizona Theatre Company

The Great GatsbyFITZGERALDintending to become a professional dancer despite her late start to the art form andprevious lack of experience. The physical and mental training strained both her healthand their marriage, and Zelda began to have increasingly severe manifestations of mentalillness which took further toll on her health and well-being. Zelda was briefly committedto a mental asylum in Switzerland in 1930 and, the following year, was committed to theJohns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland after suffering another mental breakdown. Whilea patient at Johns Hopkins, Zelda wrote the autobiographical novel Save Me the Waltz,which further estranged her from her husband, who saw it as a preemptive revelation ofthe material he was using in his own novel-in-progress. Zelda spent the rest of her life inor as an outpatient of sanatoriums. In 1934, Fitzgerald published his fourth novel, Tenderis the Night, the story of an American psychiatrist in Paris and his problematic marriage toa patient of wealth; the autobiographical novel clearly parallels Fitzgerald’s own life at thetime. In 1936, Zelda entered the Highland Hospital in North Carolina, where she spent theremainder of her life until her death in a fire at the hospital in 1948.Did You Know?F. Scott Fitzgerald was never truly satisfied with the titleThe Great Gatsby. He vacillated between various titles for the novel includingGatsby; Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; Trimalchio; Trimalchio in West Egg;On the Road to West Egg; Under the Red, White, and Blue; Gold-Hatted Gatsbyand The High-Bouncing Lover. Zelda and the publisher convinced him to agreeto the title The Great Gatsby, but he tried even until the last minute before thenovel’s 1925 publication to change it.Fully immersed in alcohol and depression, Fitzgerald attempted once more to revive hiscareer in 1937, moving to Hollywood as a screenwriter and freelance storywriter. Whilethis choice did not gain him the critical acclaim he was accustomed to garnering, it didachieve him the financial stability to begin writing his fifth novel, The Love of the LastTycoon, in 1939. The manuscript was approximately halfway completed at the time ofhis death from a heart attack at the age of 44 on December 21, 1940, at the home of hismistress, movie columnist Sheilah Graham.F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure, but critics and readers rememberhim today as one of the greatest American novelists of all time. For many readers of hiswork, his life’s journey represents that of the quintessential writer who burned brightly,but briefly. The Great Gatsby remains one of the most-taught novels in high schools andcolleges across the nation, and its themes of American aspiration, ambition, and failurerepresent some of the defining characteristics of classic American literature.-written by Katherine Monberg, Artistic InternArizona Theatre Company Play Guide 11