Professor David Peimer
Damon Runyon: Romanticising New York Hustlers and Gangsters with Such Charm
Summary
Damon Runyon invented a romanticized version of New York, from Prohibition in the 1930s through the Great Depression and beyond. A city of gambling joints, speakeasies, all night diners, dreamers, losers, gangsters, hustlers, dancing girls, millionaire playboys, racketeers, boxing champions - where life was a game played with weighted dice. He created tropes that still resonate today, with attractive and lovable characters despite their foibles. This lecture will look at how Runyon’s unique characters lived on the screen.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.