Paul Schmidt

Paul Francis Schmidt (January 29, 1934 – February 19, 1999) was an American translator, poet, playwright, and essayist.

He graduated from Nashua High School in 1951, Colgate University in 1955, and studied at Harvard University.

He studied mime with Marcel Marceau and acting with Jacques Charon.

He served in the U.S. Army Intelligence, from 1958 to 1960.

Schmidt was professor at the University of Texas at Austin, from 1967 to 1976. He also taught at the Yale School of Drama.

He translated Euripides, Chekhov, Velimir Khlebnikov, Brecht, Genet, Gogol, Marivaux, Mayakovsky, and Rimbaud.

He wrote three plays, one of which, Black Sea Follies won the Helen Hayes Award, and the Joseph Kesselring Prize for best play. Schmidt was a frequently-commissioned theater collaborator. He translated plays by Chekhov and Racine for productions developed by the Wooster Group in NYC, and Genet’s “The Screens” for JoAnne Akalaitis at the Guthrie Theatre. He also wrote an original libretto for the Robert Wilson - Tom Waits opera “Alice" (developed and premiered in Hamburg, later seen at BAM).

Schmidt's work was profiled in The New York Review of Books.

He was married to Stockard Channing.

He is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.