Creative words of wisdom series #4
Arthur Miller
"Acquiring a mentor is a key element for the development of creative potential."
Arthur A. Miller, considered by many to be the greatest American playwright, was born on October 17, 1915 into a prosperous Jewish family in New York. His father, Isadore Miller, owned the Miltex Coat and Suit Company with over 800 employees. His mother, Gittel Miller, kept a fashionable house near Central Park where she offered a regular diet of classical music as cultural nourishment.
Miller showed no interest in creating stories, writing or books during his childhood and youth. He became even more disinterested in academics when his family was forced to move to Brooklyn after the fall of the family's business in the Crash of 1929. He was obliged to get a job delivering bagels in the early morning hours prior to high school. This catastrophic displacement of his family, however, did give Miller an opportunity to make and store keen observations about economic systems, social justice and the family.
Miller's creative ability to observe the world around him, a characteristic of all creative individuals, coupled with a stubborn self-esteem enabled him to do what others would consider not possible. How else would a student with a poor academic record get into the University of Michigan after being rejected? He wrote a persuasive letter to the Dean of Admissions with a strategic plan that he would follow for one year in order to be admitted the next year. He was accepted the next year on probation. How else would a person who had never written anything in his life determine that he could write a play, submit it for the 1936 Hopwood Prize for Creative Writing and win? He won second place in 1936 and first place in 1937.
Miller found a genuine mentor on campus by the name of Kenneth Thorpe Rowe. Acquiring a mentor is a key element for the development of creative potential. Professor Rowe was a well-connected professor in theatrical circles who was also teaching the only playwriting course in the country at a university. "Rowe soon became for me a combination of critical judge and confidant. . . his chief contribution to my development was his interest in the dynamics of play construction. His scholarship and support were greatly important," says Miller in Martin Gottfried's Arthur Miller: His Life and Work.
Miller's incredible work ethic is the final creative characteristic that so enables his vast creative output. From his first play in college in 1936 to his last play in 2002, Miller has written a large body of work. Over these sixty-six years he has authored radio plays, novels, theatre essays, articles, screenplays, short stories and full length plays for the theatre. Over that time he has won multiple Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and a 2000 Academy Award nomination for his screenplay of his most widely produced play, The Crucible, starring his son-in-law Daniel Day-Lewis. His Resurrection Blues was produced in 2002 at the Gutherie Theatre in Minneapolis.
Arthur Miller, author of five mainstay plays of the Western theatre - - - All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, and The Price, all of which are produced continually all over the world, is nearly eighty-nine years old and still writing.
