Monodrama Theater

{{Infobox television

| image =

| caption =

| runtime = 15 min./30 mins.

| creator = Lawrence Menkin

| director = Lawrence Menkin

| writer = Jay Bennett
Henrik Ibsen
Charles Dickens
William Shakespeare

| presenter =

| starring = Carroll Baker
Jack Manning
Jan Sherwood
Anne Thomas
Stephen Elliott
Owen Jordan

| country = United States

| network = DuMont

| first_aired = {{start date|1952|5}}

| last_aired = {{end date|1953|12|7}}

| num_episodes =

}}

Monodrama Theater, also known as Mono-Drama Theatre, was a late night television series which aired on the DuMont Television Network weekdays at 11pm ET from May 1952 to December 1953.

Production background

The series consisted of a single actor or actress performing in front of a black curtain, or bare stage, with recorded music cues, in an example of monodrama. Some sources suggest this series, produced by Lawrence Menkin (1911-2000), also aired episodes of One Man's Experience and One Woman's Experience, both also produced by Menkin. Filming took place at a tiny studio at 515 Madison Avenue.[https://books.google.com/books?id=2uN_AkdwAioC&dq=monodrama+theater+dumont+tv+series&pg=PA70 Ed McMahon, When Television Was Young (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007), p. 70]

In 1953, in a series of episodes of Monodrama Theater, actor Jack Manning performed a one-man show of Hamlet. His performance took place over the course of two weeks in 15-minute-long segments. Jack Gould, a television critic for the New York Times, praised Manning's performance as Hamlet, calling him "inventive, versatile and, above all, natural." Gould also noted of Manning at the time that, "He knows his Shakespeare and truly catches the meaning of the lines."[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E3DC1338F933A1575AC0A96F9C8B63 New York Times, Jack Manning obituary (September 20, 2009)]

In April 1954, DuMont filled the 11pm ET time slot with The Ernie Kovacs Show, which ran until April 7, 1955.

Preservation status

As with most DuMont series, no episodes are known to exist.

References

Bibliography

David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) {{ISBN|1-59213-245-6}}
Alex McNeil, Total Television, Fourth edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1980) {{ISBN|0-14-024916-8}}
Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, Third edition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964) {{ISBN|0-345-31864-1}}