President to Speak at Centennial Celebration for Author William Saroyan

President Jon Whitmore is author of "William Saroyan: A Research and Production Sourcebook" and is considered a foremost expert on the life and works of William Saroyan.

Texas Tech will join the City of Fresno, Calif., Stanford University, and historians of American theatre and literature to celebrate the centennial of the life of William Saroyan in 2008. The celebration includes Texas Tech because President Jon Whitmore is considered a foremost authority on the plays of the Armenian playwright and novelist born in Fresno 100 years ago.

The first event of the celebration, a symposium on his life and times dubbed “William Saroyan: Recalling The Daring Young Man,” will be held at the Saroyan Theatre in Fresno in January and features Whitmore as an expert on the dramatic works of the prolific Depression-era author.

Whitmore said his interest in Saroyan came about for two major reasons. “He was an early 20th century proponent of multiculturalism and that appealed to me,” Whitmore said. “The characters in his plays respect other people and their cultures; perhaps this comes from his growing up among Armenian, Chinese and Hispanic farm workers.”

Whitmore said he was also attracted to the non-realistic and non-linear nature of Saroyan’s dramas. “He was influenced by the circus and vaudeville. The scenes of his plays are often full of musicians, singers and dancers. Rather than telling a linear story, he puts together scenes that act as a non-linear whole,” he said.

The symposium is sponsored by the William Saroyan Society, which is dedicated to promoting the life and literary works of the writer. Another celebration will be held in September at Stanford University, home to the collected works and writings of Saroyan. Some 40 other events are planned in California in 2008, but one notable event will occur on the Texas Tech campus. Saroyan’s best known play, “The Time of Your Life,” will be presented at the Charles Maedgen Theatre on Nov. 20-23, with Whitmore serving as dramaturge for the production.

Whitmore began his studies of Saroyan while in graduate school at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He wrote his dissertation on the dramatic works of Saroyan and received his Ph.D. in theatre history in 1974. Whitmore was named to the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in 2004, in part for his scholarship on Saroyan. He is the author of a book and several articles on Saroyan and has spoken on the playwright at other symposia held both at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.

Is the playwright still widely performed today? According to Whitmore, the one-act plays of William Saroyan as well as his full-length plays like “The Time of Your Life,” “My Heart’s in the Highlands,” “The Cave Dwellers” and “The Human Comedy” are standard repertoire in high school and college theatre departments across the country.

“Saroyan is as much a staple of American theatre today as he was a half-century ago,” Whitmore said. “Some students of theatre perform or direct his work many times during their academic careers.”