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NICHOLAS SAUNDERS (1914 - 2006) |
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Nationality: USA Email: n/a Website: n/a |
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Literary Agent: n/a |
Nicholas Saunders had a distinguished career as a stage and television actor, and a parallel career at Voice of America, where he began in 1947 as a Russian-Language announcer, and at Radio Liberty, where he rose to be the Production and Presentation Manager of the Russian Department. In his early seventies he began another career, translating Russian plays into English with his collaborator, Frank Dwyer. The first Saunders-Dwyer translation was Anton Chekhov's unjustly neglected comic masterpiece, The Wood Demon, followed over the next two decades by Chekhov's The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and most of the master's comic one-acts; Bulgakov's Zoya's Apartment (produced on Broadway at Circle in the Square); Gorky's The Summer People and Enemies; Turgenev's A Month in the Country; Gogol's The Government Inspector; and Ostrovsky's The Forest. Mr. Saunders was born Nikita Soussanin in 1914 in Kiev, in what is now Ukraine. He escaped from the Soviet Union as a boy with his father, the actor Nicholas Soussanin, and was raised in Hollywood, where he graduated from Hollywood High. His stepmother was the actress Olga Baclanova. As an actor and director, Mr. Saunders worked in 19 Broadway productions (three directed by George Abbott), including The Magnificent Yankee (produced and directed by Arthur Hopkins) and Lady in the Dark (directed by Moss Hart). He also appeared in hundreds of television programs, but he was probably best known for his featured role as Capt. Barker on The Phil Silvers Show. In later years, Mr. Saunders was a member of LA's classical Antaeus Company and played Godfather Orlovsky in the Antaeus debut production the acclaimed world premiere of the Saunders-Dwyer The Wood Demon, directed by Dwyer at the Mark Taper Forum in 1994. Mr. Saunders was married for 67 years to Gedda Petry, a gifted actress, singer, and dancer who had also been in the Broadway cast of Lady in the Dark. Nicholas and Gedda had two children, the actress Lanna Saunders, who died in 2007, and Theo Saunders, a jazz pianist and composer, leader of the Theo Saunders Sextet. Nicholas died in August 2006, at the age of 92.
Plays by Nicholas Saunders
Cherry Orchard, The | ||
| 1st Produced: | - - - | - - - | ||||
Company: | n/a | |||||
| 1st Published: | Playscripts, Inc | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #118935 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Comedy/Drama Translation | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 10 | Female | 5 | ||
Parts other: | 3 | |||||
Notes: | Original Playwright - Anton Chekhov. translated by Nicholas Saunders and Frank Dwyer | |||||
Synopsis: | Faced with the imminent loss of her family estate, Lyubov Andreyevna Ranyevskaya returns to her ancestral home and neighboring cherry orchard to see if she can find a way to save them. She and her family soon discover, however, that there is more at stake than the beloved old house and orchard. Great changes, frightening and exhilarating, for them and for Russia, lie just ahead. This lively, touching, surprisingly funny translation of Chekhov's classic play will delight audiences and actors alike as it illuminates the joys of a new world being born, the sorrows of an old world passing away, and the timeless absurdity of the human condition. | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Zoya's Apartment | ||
| 1st Produced: | - - - | - - - | ||||
Company: | n/a | |||||
| 1st Published: | Samuel French Inc, 1991 | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #30869 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Adapatation/translation | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 6 | Female | 3 | ||
Parts other: | extras | |||||
Notes: | Original Playwright - Mikhail Bulgakov; Written in collaboration with Frank Dyer | |||||
Synopsis: | satire about survival in the Soviet bureaucratic Eden as brassy madam is forced to close the brothel and move to Paris | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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