A copy-typescript of “A Matter of Position”

Elaine MAY

A copy-typescript of “A Matter of Position” printed by Hart Multi-Copy Inc., of West 42nd Street , N.Y. Published by the Berkshire Theatre Festival, 1564 Broadway, N.Y., N.Y., [undated, but 1962]. Quarto (11 x 8 1/2in; 280 x 216mm), 142 pages (recto only of 142 leaves). Plasticized card wrappers, titled on the upper cover (short split and small knick out of upper cover, slight discoloration to lower cover). 

An early copy-typescript of a play which marked a change in direction for Elaine May.

‘May and Mike Nichols dissolved their iconic comedic partnership in 1961, not long after May directed Nichols in A Matter of Position, a play that she’d also written. “As soon as we weren’t in balance . . . equals on the stage . . . great angers . . . and things . . . arose. We flew apart,” Nichols told The New York Times in 1984. “It took years for Elaine and me to come back to each other after that. And what happened in those years was that we became two individual people, rather than Nichols-and-May. When she became wholly Elaine May and I became wholly Mike Nichols, we became the dearest of old friends.”’ (Marley Marius in Vogue, 26 Oct. 2018).