When thinking about playwriting and screenwriting, the Southwest is not an area that immediately comes to mind. Places like New York, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles are better suited, seemingly, for theater. However, American playwright, screenwriter, film and theater director, actor, and professor, Mark Medoff not only vibrantly influenced the Southwest with his appreciation and love for the arts, but he helped create a more diverse industry for actors with hearing disabilities.
Born in Mount Carmel, Illinois, on March 8, 1940, the son of physician Lawrence R. Medoff and therapist Thelma Irene Butt, Medoff grew up in Miami Beach. He attended the University of Miami, where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree and continued to Stanford University to complete his master's. He received an honorary degree in 1981 from Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., the only university in the world where students live and learn using American Sign Language and English. The university was founded in 1864 by an Act of Congress (its Charter) and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. Working as an instructor at Capital Radio Engineering Institute in Washington
D .C., in 1967, Medoff wrote The Wager, a one-act black comedy reminiscent of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It is a "brightly inventive comedy [that] blends verbal eloquence and needle-sharp characterizations in its often-biting examination of the antics of four graduate students," writes Concord Theatricals.
Medoff eventually moved from Miami to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he taught screenwriting, acting for film, short film production, and directing and producing at New Mexico State University (NMSU). He made it his goal that every child and student could pursue the arts no matter race, gender, or disability, quite a remarkable feat and a coup for the Desert Southwest.
Image caption: Mark Medoff. COurtesy of New Mexico State University.
Described as "a man of many talents with a creative fire," writing in witty and poetic language, Medoff wrote 30 plays and worked on 19 films. His themes often center on conflicts and the difficulty of communication within families or family-like groups and are influenced by social injustice. His obituary in The Guardian reports that in 2004, "I [Medoffl] went to a psychologist when I was 18 or 19, and he said I was the first kid he'd ever met who was rebelling against a happy childhood. So, when I started writing, I began to expropriate social issues and quickly roped myself out of my angst." In 1980, the Shreveport Journal quotes him saying, "Writing is a form of exorcism for me. I exorcise the hostilities that inhabit me. If I couldn't do this, I would be a different person, probably a criminal ... My high comes from the world I get to create." In 1973, Medoff broke through on Broadway with his play When You Coming Back, Red Ryder? The play won him Drama Desk and Obie awards for outstanding new playwright and was adapted in 1979 into a film, with Medoff writing the screenplay.
The play Children of the Lesser God in 1980 won Medoff a Tony for excellence in live Broadway theater and acting honors to deaf actress Phyllis Frelich. The Las Cruces Sun-News tells that "Medoff often said that within 20 minutes of meeting his friend, Phyllis Frelich, he had decided to write a play for her," with Frelich's husband, Mark Medoff Robert Steinberg, confirming the story. Steinberg introduced Medoff to Frelich in 1977 and said Medoff found Frelich's work with the National Theatre of the Deaf fascinating. "Mark was always so curious, so interested," Steinberg recalls. "He knew she was an actor but had never met a deaf person or seen deaf acting before. He was intrigued by us, by our deaf-and-hearing relationship, and I think that's where it really started." After meeting Frelich, Medoff decided to write a play for her, paving the way for many deaf actors to follow Frelich's inspiring Tony Award-winning performance. The Los Angeles Times reports Medoff saying, "[When we first met] I was so taken by Phyllis' energy and the way she welcomed me in and bid me to communicate with her, I wanted to write a play for her."
Children of a Lesser God describes the romantic relationship between a deaf woman and an instructor at a school for the deaf. Medoff later, in 1986, adapted the award-winning play to the screen, where 21-year-old deaf actress Marlee Matlin played the leading role and garnered herself an Oscar for best actress. Medoff understood some actors are deaf and able to deliver in the same way that a hearing actor can. He says, "Deafness is not the opposite of hearing. It is silence full of sound." The film received Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Screenplay nominations. Matlin is the youngest Best Actress winner to date and the only deaf Academy Award winner at the time. Matlin also took home the Golden Globe Award that same year. Incidentally, this year, deaf actor Troy Kotsur took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in CODA.
In Medoff's fifty years at NMSU, he impacted the university and the entire Southwest region immensely. Medoff was the artistic director of the American Southwest Theatre Company and head of the Theatre Arts Department and co-founded the Creative Media Institute program of NMSU. "His legacy has brought world-class artistic expression and education to the New Mexico classrooms," says New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Making history in Las Cruces, a stellar list of celebrities traveled to the town to honor the Tony Award-winning playwright and Academy Award nominated screenwriter Medoff. Special guests included Linda Hamilton, Richard Dreyfuss, Chris McDonald, Jesse Plemons, and Neil Patrick Harris. The lunch and fundraiser for the Mark Medoff Lecture Endowment that funded the Mark Medoff Lecture Series at NMSU brought in world-class artists in theater, television, and film to influence and revolutionize not only the students at NMSU but the communities of the Southwest.
In April 2019, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported that Medoff "entered hospice care after battling cancer in recent years and suffering a fall." He died on April 23, 2019, from complications of cancer at age 79. Reacting to the news, Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima said, "Las Cruces has just lost one of her most iconic playwrights and film directors. When Mark won the Tony Award for Children of a Lesser God, he put Las Cruces on the national stage. We will always remember him, and he will be greatly missed." Amy Lanasa, Associate Professor and department head of the Creative Media Institute at NMSU, tells the Las Cruces Sun-News:
He just seemed so genuinely surprised to be surrounded by so much love and so many people sending him messages and thanking him. I never worked on a show or a film set where Mark was involved where there weren't kids and dogs and students alongside the professionals. It was never a question for him. It was just how he wanted to work. He wanted his family close, and he wanted his students to learn by doing.
The Monitor notes Medoff once told the NMSU faculty, "Look, we can sit around and talk about how to teach people to make movies, or we can just make movies. Why sit around and talk about it when you can get up and take action or create something."
A production of My Fair Lady, directed by Larissa Lurry, premiered three days after his death and dedicated the performance to Medoff and the legend he left behind at NMSU. "Being able to dedicate this production is a way of thanking him for all the time and energy and love that he put into the program," Lurry states. Many students brought up in the Southwest educational system have NMSU as an option on their list of universities to attend. Those who chose NMSU and partook in a film or acting class had the pleasure of learning from Medoff, forever enhancing the literacy and writing in the Southwest region.
Medoff's final project, Walking with Herb, a novel written by Las Cruces resident Joe Bullock and adapted by Medoff for the screen, was set to premiere theatrically to pay tribute to Medoff and the City of Las Cruces. Bullock recognized how much effort and love Medoff put into the project and appreciated the time he took. Director Ross Marks, Medoff's son-in-law, cast the film with Academy nominee actors, such as Edward James Olmos, Kathleen Quinlan, and comedian George Lopez. Marks and Medoff dedicated this film to the great City of Las Cruces and NMSU, where the film's shooting took place. It eventually was released in select theaters on April 30, 2021.
Image caption: Mark Medoff at the EPCC NW Campus Library. Courtesy of Lorely Ambriz.
Medoff's wife, Stephanie, and three children, Jessica, Debra, and Rachel, led the celebration of Medoff's life to honor his memory at NMSU. Beckoned by the film industry to move to Hollywood or New York to further his career, Medoff stayed in Las Cruces, saying, "I came here by accident, but we stayed here by choice." Governor Grisham echoes the sentiment, "He chose us. He chose to stay here." The Shreveport Journal reports him as saying, "I don't feel I have to be in constant contact with New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. I am not starving for culture; I stay in New Mexico because I like living here." Medoff was fond of the quiet City of Las Cruces and lived there most of his life. As a professor at NMSU, he inspired and touched countless people, encouraging them to appreciate and pursue the arts at the university. Medoff also directed theater locally, often downtown at the Las Cruces Community Theatre. Marilee and Baby Lamb, a play he wrote and directed about Marilyn Monroe, premiered at the Rio Grande Theatre in 2015.
Medoff's family remembers the legacy he left behind in his Southwestern mansion, where Medoff often hosted many benefits and gatherings for the arts and cultural community of Las Cruces. Medoff wrote most of his 30 plays in this home, many premiering in Las Cruces and NMSU. His home reflects his creations and inspirations. "Every nook and cranny of the home is as original as the residents," writes S. Derrickson Moore in the New Mexico Maga:ine article "Staging Area."
Medoff bestowed upon New Mexico and West Texas his knowledge and intellect of writing and the film industry and instilled newfound greatness in the region. His legacy will forever live on in the contributions to the growth of the Southwest and the lives he positively impacted. In honor of the late Medoff, Governor Grisham made May 19 Mark Medoff Day in New Mexico.
Medoff was not a man who cared for the glitz and glamour of big cities like Hollywood and New York. He lived a humble life and deeply cared for his small community. He didn't let his head swell up at the thought of fame, appreciative of his accomplishments, teaching others what he knew. Many admire him for bestowing his knowledge and intellect of writing and the film industry and instilling newfound greatness in the region. His legacy will forever live on in the contributions to the growth of the Southwest and the lives he impacted.
In 2017, Medoff said, "I can't teach students to write, to direct, to act, but I can create an atmosphere in which they can teach themselves." The stage is set. It is now up to each individual to perform.
