author
Elmer Rice
1892–1967
Best remembered for bold, inventive plays like The Adding Machine and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Street Scene, this American dramatist helped push modern theater in new directions. His work often mixed experiment with sharp social observation, giving everyday city life unusual force onstage.
1 Audiobook
裁判
by Elmer Rice
About the author
Born in New York City on September 28, 1892, Elmer Rice began his professional life in law after studying at New York Law School, but he soon turned to writing for the stage. His early breakthrough came with On Trial in 1914, and he went on to build a reputation as a playwright willing to try new forms and tackle difficult public questions.
Rice is especially associated with The Adding Machine (1923), a landmark expressionist play, and Street Scene (1929), his vivid portrait of tenement life in New York, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Across his career, he also worked as a director, novelist, and screenwriter, and his plays often explored the pressure that modern institutions and social systems place on ordinary people.
He remained an important figure in American theater through the interwar years and beyond, admired for combining theatrical innovation with social concern. Rice died on May 8, 1967, in Southampton, England, leaving behind a body of work that still stands out for its energy, experimentation, and strong sense of public life.