Why I Broke Down When Arthur Miller Died

Abstract

Abstract Why did I break down when Arthur Miller died? This is the dramatic question this playwright attempts to answer in this essay. My emotional attachment to Miller began when New York's New Dramatists sent me to observe rehearsals of Miller's original Broadway production of The Price. It grew when I saw Miller's comic side while meeting him in his producer's office. I was overwhelmed when I saw the first Kazan “operatic” production of Salesman. Dealing with Miller personally when I initiated the Arthur Miller Award at the University of Michigan was intensely affecting. And the intensity of my respect for him reached new depths while presenting my paper on fashioning an epic theater piece from his memoir, Timebends. Unquestionably Miller's political activism and his dramatic writing techniques shaped my own. Did the convergence of all these Miller events in my memory explain why I broke down when Arthur Miller died? Yes!