Jeff London

The ACTF will continue presenting its eight regional festivals in 2026.

For NPR News, I'm Jeff London in New York.

Born Thomas Straussler in what was then Czechoslovakia, his family fled the Nazis during World War II.

His father was

killed, his mother remarried a man named Stoppard, and the family settled in England, the playwright told NPR in 2022.

I'd been turned into a little English boy.

I was very happy being a little English boy.

And wrote dense, intellectual, linguistically complex plays.

His big break was the existential Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead that focused on two minor characters in Hamlet.

He became a superstar playwright with works like The Real Thing and the semi-autobiographical Leopoldstadt.

Stoppard won a screenwriting Oscar in 1999 for Shakespeare in Love.

For NPR News, I'm Jeff London in New York.

Born Thomas Straussler in what was then Czechoslovakia, his family fled the Nazis during World War II.

His father was killed, his mother remarried a man named Stoppard, and the family settled in England, the playwright told NPR in 2022.

I'd been turned into a little English boy.

I was very happy being a little English boy.

and wrote dense, intellectual, linguistically complex plays.

His big break was the existential Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead that focused on two minor characters in Hamlet.

He became a superstar playwright with works like The Real Thing and the semi-autobiographical Leopoldstadt.

Stoppard won a screenwriting Oscar in 1999 for Shakespeare in Love.