Lajos Egri

Lajos N. Egri (June 4, 1888 – February 7, 1967) was the author of The Art of Dramatic Writing, which is widely regarded as one of the best works on the subject of playwriting, though its teachings have since been adapted for the writing of short stories, novels, and screenplays. He is also the author of the companion textbook. The Art of Creative Writing, which further expounds on similar subjects.

Early years

Egri came to the US in 1906 and worked in a New York garment factory as a tailor and presser. He was an active member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union.

Playwright

Egri wrote his first three-act play at the age of ten, according to his biographical sketch in The Art of Dramatic Writing. In 1927, Rapid Transit, Egri's expressionist play, was translated from Hungarian and produced at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York. Casting about for some adequate means of conveying a sense of the furious pace of this machine age, Egri pictured a world in which all of life is compressed into twenty-four hours. Children grow to maturity in a few minutes; meals are eaten in split seconds; tabloid newspapers are issued at intervals of a second or two, and the loss of half a minute is a serious matter. The New York Times described the play as "chaotic at times, but sporadically interesting." Egri was also author of other plays, among them the satirical comedy Believe Me or Not (1933), Tornado (1938), This is Love (1945 with Arden Young) and The Cactus Club (1957). His one-act Hungarian plays include Satan is Dead, Spiders, Between Two Gods, There Will be No Performance, and Devils.