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Sir Tom Stoppard, (born as Tomáš Straussler on July 3, 1937) is an Academy Award winning British playwright of more than 24 plays. Born in Czechoslovakia, he is famous for plays such as Travesties.

Contents 1 Works 1.1 Theatre 1.2 Radio, film, and TV 1.3 Literature

Works

Theatre

Stoppard's plays deal with philosophical issues while presenting verbal wit and visual humour. The linguistic complexity of his works, with their puns, jokes, innuendo, and other wordplay, is a chief characteristic of his work. Many also feature multiple timelines.

• (1966) Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is one of Stoppard's most famous works—a comedic play which casts two minor characters from Hamlet as its leads, but with the same lack of power to affect their world or exterior circumstances as they have in Shakespeare's original. Hamlet's role is similarly reversed in terms of his stage time and lines, but it is in his wake that the heroes drift helplessly toward their inevitable demise. Rather than shaping events, they pass the time playing witty word games and pondering their predicament. It is similar to Samuel Beckett's absurdist Waiting for Godot, particularly in the main characters' lack of purpose and incomprehension of their situation.
• (1968) Enter a Free Man examines a fabulist's world, which at the end collapses into the reality of a mundane and unfulfilled life. It was developed from a 1963 television play A Walk on the Water and first performed on the stage on 28 March 1968 with Michael Hordern in the leading role.
• (1968) The Real Inspector Hound depicts two theatre critics that are watching a Country House Murder Mystery, and later become involved in the action by accident. The viewer is watching a play within a play. In a particularly Stoppardian touch, he based the whodunnit the critics are watching very closely on Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, knowing full well that the producers of that play (still running in London's West End) could not complain without drawing attention to the very thing they want to conceal, that Stoppard's play (even its title alone) gives away their "surprise" ending.
• (1970) After Magritte is a surreal piece that places its characters, through perfectly rational means, into situations worthy of a Magritte painting. It features a husband-and-wife dance team, the rather confused mother of one of them, a detective named Foot and a constable named Holmes; Stoppard notes that it is frequently performed as a companion piece to The Real Inspector Hound.
• (1972) Jumpers explores the field of academic philosophy, likening it to a highly skilful competitive gymnastics display. The play raises questions such as "What do we know?" and "Where do values come from?" It is set in an alternative reality where British astronauts have landed on the moon and "Radical Liberals" (i.e., Communists) have taken over the British government.
• (1972) Artist Descending a Staircase imitates the disjointed style of the Marcel Duchamp painting (Nude Descending a Staircase) after which it is named. The scenes, which switch between 1972, 1914, and several other years, focus on a group of three artists who were members of the avant-garde movements of the 1910s and 1920s. Now old, the artists are still experimenting with their styles, but conflict ensues when one of them falls (or is pushed) down the stairs. The play, meant for radio, turns into something of a murder mystery.
• (1973) Born Yesterday, the play by Garson Kanin, sidelined Stoppard into the director's chair during a play season at The Greenwich Theatre, London. The part of Billie Dawn was played by Lynn Redgrave. This was his first and last attempt at directing.
• (1974) Travesties is a parody of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The play starts from the fact that Tristan Tzara, Vladimir Lenin, and James Joyce were all in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1917 (in fact they were there at slightly different times, but Stoppard gets round this by telling the story through the memory of a confused old man, Henry Carr - hence also the facts getting mixed up with the plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, which Carr performed in at the time).
• (1976) Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land combines two one act plays written to celebrate the British naturalisation of Ed Berman, founder of London's Almost Free Theatre, where the work was first performed on 6 April 1976 as part of the theatre's season celebrating the American bicentennial. The work is a farce that portrays a special committee of the House of Commons appointed to investigate reports that a large number of MPs have been having sex with the same woman. It contains implied commentary on the government, its workings, its members, and its relationship to the press and to the public. New-Found-Land is a brief interlude in which two government officials try to decide whether to give British citizenship to an eccentric American (based on Berman) and contains an imaginative rhapsody about America.
• (1977) Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was written at the request of André Previn and was inspired by a meeting with Russian exile Viktor Fainberg. The play calls for a small cast, and also a full orchestra; the latter not only provides music throughout the play but also forms an essential part of the action. The play concerns a dissident under an oppressive regime (obviously meant to be taken for a Soviet-controlled state) who is imprisoned in a mental hospital, from which he will not be released until he admits that his statements against the government were caused by a (non-existent) mental disorder.
• (1978) Night and Day is about journalism. Set in a fictional African country governed by the tyrant Mageeba, the plot involves the interactions of two British reporters and a British photographer and the family of a British mine owner during a period of unrest in the country. The playbill for a Chicago theater company's 1996 performance of this play stated that it was based on Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel Scoop.
• (1979) Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth are two works. In Dogg's Hamlet the actors speak a language called "Dogg", which consists of ordinary English words but with meanings completely different from the ones normally assign them. Three schoolchildren are rehearsing a performance of Hamlet in English, which is to them a foreign language. Cahoot's Macbeth is usually performed with Dogg's Hamlet, and shows a shortened performance of Macbeth carried out under the eyes of a secret policeman who suspects the actors of subversion against the state.
• (1979) 15-Minute Hamlet The entire play of Hamlet, only in fifteen minutes. An excerpt from Dogg's Hamlet, it is often performed and published on its own.
• (1979) Undiscovered Country is an adaptation of Das Weite Land by the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler.
• (1981) On the Razzle is a comedic farce based on Einen Jux will er sich machen, a play by 19th century Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy; this work is also the source for Thornton Wilder's plays "The Merchant of Yonkers" and The Matchmaker and the musical Hello, Dolly!
• (1982) The Real Thing examines love and fidelity, and makes extensive use of play within a play.
• (1984) Rough Crossing is based on a classic farce by Molnar and takes place aboard a ship as two playwrights struggle to finish a musical comedy and rehearse it before docking in New York. It contains references to famous musical comedies such as those produced by Gilbert and Sullivan.
• (1986) Dalliance An adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Liebelei set in 1890s Vienna, the play depicts a man who learns that the life of simple mutual love is better than that of a bon vivant. He learns this only in the last days before he dies in a duel.
• (1988) Hapgood mixes the themes of espionage and quantum mechanics, especially exploring the idea that in both fields, observing an event changes the nature of the event. It also compares the dual nature of light (in that it is both a wave and particles) with a double agent that is not sure which side he is really working for.
• (1993) Arcadia alternates between a pair of present day researchers investigating an early 19th century literary mystery and the real incident that they are investigating. It touches on mathematics, thermodynamics, literature, and landscape gardening as it examines the quest for knowledge.
• (1995) Indian Ink is based on Stoppard's radio play In The Native State, and examines British rule in India from both sides.
• (1997) The Invention of Love investigates the life and death of Oxford poet and classicist A. E. Housman, especially his repressed homosexual love for his friend Moses Jackson, contrasting Housman with Oscar Wilde's public fall from grace.
• (2002) The Coast of Utopia is a trilogy about the origins of modern political radicalism in 19th century Russia. The central figures in the action are Michael Bakunin, Vissarion Belinsky, and Alexander Herzen. The work consists of three plays: Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage.
• (2006) Rock 'n' Roll spans the years from 1968 to 1990 from the double perspective of Prague—where a rock 'n' roll band comes to symbolise resistance to the Communist regime—and of Cambridge, where the verities of love and death are shaping the lives of three generations in the family of a Marxist philosopher. Stoppard gives the character Max Morrow a significant number of lines relating to fish pie, thought to be a way of teasing Brian Cox (who played Morrow in the first performances) about an embarrassing television advertisement for Young's Fish Pie he had done many years before. Its first public performance was a 3 June, 2006 preview at the Royal Court Theatre. The play was a controversial addition to the Royal Court's 50th anniversary season, due to the left-leaning nature of much of the Royal Court's work and the anti-communist nature of much of Stoppard's work (including "Rock 'n' Roll" itself).
• Henry IV is a play written by Luigi Pirandello in Italian. Stoppard's translation is noted for its colloquial dialogue.

Radio, film, and TV

In his early years, Stoppard wrote extensively for BBC radio, in many cases introducing a touch of surrealism. His original works for radio are:

• (1964) The Dissolution of Dominic Boot, a 15 minute play in which Dominic travels around London in a taxi trying to raise the money for the mounting fare.
• (1964) ‘M’ is for Moon amongst Other Things
• (1966) If you’re Glad I’ll be Frank; bus-driver Frank attempts to liberate his wife Gladys who is trapped as the voice of the speaking clock.
• (1967) Albert's Bridge, in which Albert finds solace in his never-ending task as a solitary bridge painter.
• (1968) Where are They Now?, written for schools radio, the play intercuts a 1969 Old Boys' dinner with the same characters' 1945 school dinner.
• (1972) Artist Descending a Staircase, a story told by means of multiple levels of nested flashback from the present to 1914 and back again.
• (1982) The Dog it was that Died
• (1991) In the Native State, set both in colonial India and present-day England, examining the relationship of the two countries. Stoppard later expanded the work to become the stage play Indian Ink (1995)

Stoppard has also adapted many of his stage works for radio.

In his television play Professional Foul (1977), an English philosophy professor visits Prague, officially to speak at a colloquium, unofficially to watch a football international between England and Czechoslovakia. He meets one of his former students and is persuaded to smuggle the student's dissident thesis out of the country.

He has also adapted many of his own plays for film and TV, notably the 1990 production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Tom Stoppard has written extensively for film and television. Some of his better-known scripts and adaptations include:

• (1975) Three Men in a Boat (adaptation of Jerome K. Jerome's novel for BBC Television)
• (1975) The Boundary (co-authored by Clive Exton, a 30 minute BBC television play written, rehearsed and performed within a week)
• (1977) Professional Foul (dedicated to fellow playwright Václav Havel)
• (1985) Brazil (co-authored with Terry Gilliam, script nominated for an Academy Award and Charles McKeown)
• (1987) Empire of the Sun
• (1990) The Russia House
• (1998) Shakespeare in Love (co-authored with Marc Norman, script won an Academy Award)
• (2001) Enigma
• (2005) The Golden Compass (a draft screenplay, subsequently rejected)

It is rumoured that Stoppard assisted George Lucas in polishing up some of the dialogue for Indiana Jones and the Last CrusadeTemplate:Fact and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, though Stoppard received no official or formal credit in this role. He worked in a similar capacity with Tim Burton on his film Sleepy HollowTemplate:Fact.

Literature

Stoppard has written one novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966). It is set in contemporary London and its cast includes not only the eighteenth century figure of the dandified Malquist and his ineffectual Boswell, Moon, but also a couple of cowboys with live bullets in their six-shooters, a lion (banned from the Ritz) and a donkey-borne Irishman claiming to be the Risen Christ.