Daniel Gerould

Who was Daniel Gerould?

Daniel Charles Gerould 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. 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, Witkacy: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz as an Imaginative Writer, The Witkiewicz Reader, and his original translations of most of Witkiewicz’s plays.