Writer in Action: The Alvin Boretz Collection

To help contextualize Boretz's work in theater, this exhibit outlines the plays that he developed during his career while stressing the importance of his undeveloped scripts and the difficulties of producing plays.

Boretz's first play, Camp Ghost, was written when he was eighteen years old and demonstrates his early love of the form that he returned to many times in his life. His two plays were both produced in 1942 under very different circumstances. Produced in his last year of college with his senior class, Sounds in the Night was his first major production on the stage, while Here We Go Again was written while he was on detached service with Hqts. Air Transport Command and promotes recruitment for the war effort.

Many years later, Boretz would begin writing plays for theater again. In 1962, his story The Wall Between, originally a television special written for the General Electric Theater in collaboration with United Cerebral Palsy, was adapted into a play for the United Community Chest of St. Clair County theater. The plot resembles Boretz's 1947 radio episode "Love is the Doctor" for the series Exploring the Unknown. However, it was not until the 1980s that Boretz would return to writing complete plays meant for production.

His two most famous productions, Made in America (1984) and I Remember You (1991), both received public recognition for their complex examples of life, love, and loss in the late twentieth century. Both plays were eventually recorded for television and appear in both forms, as a testament to Boretz's continued love of writing during the last decades of his career.