Amy Herzog
Amy Herzog is an acclaimed American playwright and writer known for her impactful works that often draw from her personal life and family history. Born and raised in the greater New York area, Herzog has a rich background influenced by her politically active relatives, including her paternal grandmother, a proud Communist, and a step-grandfather involved in espionage during World War II. She received her education in English and playwriting from Yale University, where she began to explore themes of political ideology and familial relationships in her works.
Her notable plays include "After the Revolution," which earned her multiple awards and delves into political divisions within a family, and "4,000 Miles," a sequel that reflects on intergenerational connections and personal journeys. Herzog's later works, such as "Mary Jane," explore the struggles of single motherhood amidst chronic illness and have received critical acclaim. In addition to her writing, she actively supports emerging playwrights through teaching and nonprofit initiatives. Herzog's personal experiences, including the loss of her daughter, deeply inform her storytelling, making her a significant voice in contemporary theater.
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Subject Terms
Amy Herzog
Playwright
- Born: 1979
- Place of Birth: Highland Park, New Jersey
Contribution: Amy Herzog is a writer, playwright, and professor whose prominent works include 4,000 Miles (2011), After the Revolution (2010), Belleville (2011),The Great God Pan (2012), and Mary Jane (2017).
Background
Amy Herzog grew up in the greater New York area. Her grandparents and many of her aunts and uncles were prominent political activists, although her immediate family was less politically inclined. Most notably, Joe Joseph, Herzog's paternal step-grandfather, shared American secrets with the Soviets during World War II, an act of espionage that came to light in 1999. Herzog shared her name with that of her paternal grandmother, Leepee Joseph (née Amy Taft), a proud Communist. Her paternal grandfather was prominent writer and lyricist Arthur Herzog Jr.
Herzog attended Yale University, where she focused on acting and received a bachelor's degree in English in 2000. Upon graduating from Yale, she embarked on a short-lived performance tour and, by the fall of 2001, had turned her attention to playwriting. Several years later, she returned to Yale, this time to obtain a master of fine arts (MFA) degree in playwriting from the university's school of drama in 2007.
As she pursued her burgeoning career, Herzog began to explore the political divisions within her family. Many of her relatives were active supporters of socialism and communism—a pair of leftist ideologies that did not always converge easily. Herzog, who, like her parents, was not particularly interested in politics or activism, started to appreciate the passions of her relatives. Many of her relatives, and particularly her grandmother Leepee, would eventually appear in her plays in both major and minor roles.
Career
In 2010, Herzog utilized many of the ideologies and characteristics of her socialist and communist relatives in her first professional production, After the Revolution. This play appeared during the Williamstown Theater Festival and at Playwrights Horizons in New York City. Straddling the line between fiction and biography, this play focuses on the political divisions that develop within a family when the elderly Vera Joseph takes up the mantle of her late husband's socialist activism. That play garnered Herzog the 2011 Lilly Award for playwriting, the 2011 Whiting Writers' Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, and the 2012 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award. It was also named one of the best plays of the 2010–11 season in The Annual Best Plays Yearbook.
In the summer of 2011, Herzog's play 4,000 Miles, a sequel to After the Revolution, was produced by the LCT3, the emerging artist division of the Lincoln Center Theater in New York. The play takes place ten years later, with the returning character of Vera Joseph and her grandson Leo, who is based on one of Herzog's cousins and has just returned from a cross-country bicycle trip. Among the props used in the production was the same bicycle Herzog had used on her own transcontinental trek to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity after college. Herzog's sophomore play won the 2012 Village Voice Obie Awards for best new American play and for best performance and was named as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2013. It also garnered the 2012 Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding scenic design. Many of Herzog's family members, including her parents and her grandmother, attended multiple showings of her productions in New York. So successful was its initial run that 4,000 Miles enjoyed a second production run at the LCT's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in the spring of 2012.
After the success of 4,000 Miles, Herzog decided to venture away from characters based on her own family. However, she continued to explore the forces that bring people together as well as the impacts of history and experience on people's lives. Belleville (2011) focuses on the strained relationship between two married people living in Paris, while The Great God Pan (2012) describes the experience of a thirty-something man facing the recovery of the long-repressed memory of childhood trauma. Belleville, like Herzog's previous productions, received a great deal of critical acclaim. Reviews of The Great God Pan were more mixed.
Herzog's next play, Mary Jane, premiered in 2017 at the Yale Repertory Theatre and opened Off-Broadway later that year. It tells the story of a single mother facing the challenges of caring for a child with chronic illness, and critics praised its intimate take on deep, complex themes. The writer was inspired by her own experience caring for her seriously ill child. Mary Jane received many awards nominations, including for two Drama Desk Awards, six Lucille Lortel Awards, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. It was also recognized as the 2017–18 theater season's best new American play by the New York Drama Critics' Circle. In 2019 Herzog shared the Dramatists Guild of America's Horton Foote Playwright Award with fellow writer Heidi Schreck.
The writer went on to pen adaptations of several classics and revisit one of her own. Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House opened on Broadway in March 2023. Famed actress Jessica Chastain starred in the production, which was nominated for a Tony Award for best revival of a play and won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding adaptation. She also adapted Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, which opened in March 2024. Her husband directed the play, which won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding adaptation and was nominated for a Tony Award. The couple broke their longstanding rule about working together for this production, which they felt was particularly relevant in the twenty-first century because of its political and environmental themes. Mary Jane opened on Broadway the following month starring Rachel McAdams. The playwright noted before the show opened that it was difficult to revisit that part of her life because her daughter had died a year earlier at age eleven. It was nominated for the Tony for best play.
In addition to her own writing, Herzog also spent a great deal of time helping other aspiring playwrights master their craft. In 2003, she cofounded the Tank, a nonprofit, volunteer-run performance space for emerging artists in Manhattan. From 2007 to 2010, she taught playwriting to MFA candidates at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia. She also conducted readings and workshops at the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Hell's Kitchen nonprofit theater company Ars Nova (where she was playwright in residence in 2010), New York Stage and Film, Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and Washington's Arena Stage, among others. Along with teaching, Herzog held commissions at Ars Nova, Playwrights Horizons, Steppenwolf, and Yale Repertory Theatre.
Impact
Herzog rose to become one of the most acclaimed playwrights of her generation. Many of her works are known for featuring characters, experiences, and situations that are closely drawn from her own life. Politics, whether clearly visible (as is the case in After the Revolution) or an understated influence (as is the case with The Great God Pan), are another common element. Also characteristic of Herzog's stories are the emotional and experiential factors that can strain and draw together a family or a romantic couple.
Personal Life
Herzog married the stage director Sam Gold. They had two daughters. Their elder child, Frances, was born in 2012 with a muscular disease, nemaline myopathy. She died in 2023.
Bibliography
Als, Hilton. "The Theatre: Amy Herzog's 'The Great God Pan.'" Rev. of The Great God Pan, by Amy Herzog. New Yorker. Condé Nast, 19 Dec. 2012. Web. 11 July 2013.
"Amy Herzog." Internet Broadway Database, June 2024, www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/amy-herzog-494630#Credits. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.
"Amy Herzog." Lincoln Center Theater. Lincoln Center Theater, 2008. Web. 11 July 2013.
"Amy Herzog." Whiting Foundation. Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, 2011. Web. 11 July 2013.
Herzog, Amy. "Amy Herzog Wants You to Enter Into the Strangeness of Caregiving." Interview by Parul Sehgal. The New Yorker, 12 May 2024, www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/amy-herzog-wants-you-to-enter-into-the-strangeness-of-caregiving. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.
Herzog, Amy. "Q&A: Playwright Amy Herzog on Family History, Political Activism, and the Culture of Capitalism." Interview by Patrick Pacheco. Huffington Post. HuffPost Arts and Culture, 16 Apr. 2012. Web. 11 July 2013.
Herzog, Amy. "Teeth and Sympathy." Interview by Alexis Soloski. Theatre Communications Group. Theatre Communications Group, Mar. 2012. Web. 11 July 2013.
Snyder, Diane. "Profile: Amy Herzog." TimeOut. Time Out, 31 May 2011. Web. 11 July 2013.
Soloski, Alexis. "The Playwright and the Radical." New York Times 25 Mar. 2012: AR10. Print.