Roger Altenberg's Web Home Page

My dad passed away on October 12, 2005

Here are eulogies, and his obituary.

— Lee Altenberg

Performances:

Brown University, 1940-1941,The Women Have Their Way, My Heart's In The Highlands.
Moby-Dick and Multicultural Democracy: A Dramatic Reading and Discussion of the script adapted from Melville by Joyce Adler, Wednesday June 4, 2003, Baldwin High School Auditorium, Kahului. 3rd International Melville Conference, Lahaina, Maui, Hawai`i.

Play Productions:

1930s-1940s: Hello Out There, The Last Lesson, The Marriage Proposal, The Country Wife, The Beaux Stratagem, Red Riding Hood, The Fall of the House of Usher
1949, Spring: Arsenic and Old Lace, Family Portrait
1954, The Strangers, written and directed by Roger Altenberg, starring Roger Altenberg and Elizabeth Lee.
1955, January 12, American Sketches: They Have Yarns by Carl Sandburg, Casey Jones, Mr. Flood's Party by Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Man On The Flying Trapeze, The Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost, Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, The People Will Live On, by Carl Sandburg. Arranged and directed by Roger Altenberg.
1955, May 19. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck.
1956, April 24-28. The Hasty Heart by John Patrick. Produced and directed by Roger Altenberg.
1956, March. The Play's the Thing, by Ferenc Molnar. Directed by Elizabeth Altenberg, Production Coordination by Roger Altenberg.
1958, Spring. The Farewell Supper, by Arthur Schnitzler. Directed by Roger Altenberg.
1959, December. The Plough and the Stars, by Sean O'Casey. State Playhouse, California State University Los Angeles. Directed by Roger Altenberg.
1960. The Lark (The Story of Joan of Arc), by Jean Anouilh. Directed by Roger Altenberg.
1961. Look Homeward, Angel, by Ketti Frings. Directed by Roger Altenberg.
1963. Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Roger Altenberg.
1975, February 28-March 9. The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Directed by Roger Altenberg.
1977, February 25, 26, 27, March 4, 5, 6. Tom Jones, by Joan Macalpine, based on the novel by Henry Fielding. State Playhouse, California State University Los Angeles, Drama Production #194. Directed by Roger Altenberg.

Curriculum Vitae, 1949

Doctoral Dissertation:

A HISTORICAL STUDY OF GILMOR BROWN'S FAIROAKS PLAYBOX: 1924-1927. ALTENBERG, ROGER MONROE, PHD. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 1964. 517 pp. PUBLICATION: 26, no. 02, (1964): 1211. [Scanned Pages] [PDF version of entire thesis]

Writings:

Love, June 11, 1933.
To My Father Who Is, date unknown.
Non-Success, March, 1950.
The Pinewood Players Present “Holy City”, 1996.
Children, 2003.
Who Are My Enemies? — A Maui Fairy Tale, 2003.

Press:

Course offers true-to-life re-enacted experiences, March 8, 1978.

Gallery:

“Following the score” in the peanut gallery of the Metropolitan Opera House, 1937. From Opera: Front and Back by Hyman Howard Taubman, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1938.

My future wife and I in a production of "The Snob" by Carl Sternheim with the Oakland Community Players, February 4, 1953. I directed the play, and my future mate showed up for the audition, which is how we met.

A description of "The Snob" from https://www.goethe.de/uk/los/eaptheat.htm:

"Widely described as the German Moliere, Sternheim wrote "Der Snob" in 1912 as part of a series of five plays under the blanket title "Scenes from the Heroic Life of the Middle Class". The play is about the Bourgeois society's quiet pandemonium of insidious class struggles, driven by the will to power to where only the fittest survive.
"The hero, Christian Maske struggles to rise above his and his parents' peasant origins at any cost. "Der Snob" depicts an alienated world, in which values no longer exist, and where success is its own reward, no matter how it is achieved. Though Sternheim takes a critical position, he is a master of not only making us laugh, but laugh at ourselves."

These are my two sons, age 4 years, and age 5 months.

Here I am with my two sons and my two grandsons, age 2 and 3, December 2002.

My family on Liz's birthday, 2005.