Deaths on February 13

Daniel C. Gerould, American playwright and academic (b. 1928)

Daniel Charles Gerould (March 28, 1928 – February 13, 2012) was the Lucille Lortel Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center and Director of Publications of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. A scholar, teacher, translator, editor, and playwright, Gerould was a specialist in US melodrama, Central and Eastern European theatre of the twentieth century, and fin-de-siècle European avant-garde performance. Gerould was one of the world’s most recognized “Witkacologists,” a leading scholar and translator of the work of Polish playwright, novelist, painter, and philosopher Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz ("Witkacy"). Gerould was best known for introducing English-language audiences to the writings of Witkiewicz through such work as Stanisław I. Witkiewicz, The Beelzebub Sonata: Plays, Essays, Documents (PAJ Publications 1980), Witkacy: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz as an Imaginative Writer (University of Washington Press, 1981), The Witkiewicz Reader (Northwestern University Press, 1992), and his original translations of most of Witkiewicz’s plays.