Question: What American playwright, stage director and screenwriter of a screenplay "Rope"?
Context: Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017), known professionally as Sam Shepard, was an American playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director whose body of work spanned half a century.  He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most given to any writer or director.  He wrote 44 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs.  Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play "Buried Child".  He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in "The Right Stuff" (1983).  Shepard received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. " New York" magazine described him as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." A theatre director or stage director is an instructor in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production (a play, an opera, a musical, or a devised piece of work) by unifying various endeavours and aspects of production.  The director's function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it.  The director therefore collaborates with a team of creative individuals and other staff, coordinating research, stagecraft, costume design, props, lighting design, acting, set design, stage combat, and sound design for the production.  If the production he or she is mounting is a new piece of writing or a (new) translation of a play, the director may also work with the playwright or translator.  In contemporary theatre, after the playwright, the director is generally the primary visionary, making decisions on the artistic concept and interpretation of the play and its staging.  Different directors occupy different places of authority and responsibility, depending on the structure and philosophy of individual theatre companies.  Directors use a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration. Neil Peter Jampolis is a light designer, set designer, and stage director.  He is best known for the light designing he did for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s 1975 production of "Sherlock Holmes" for which he won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award.  Jampolis went on to win an American Theatre Wing Hewes Design Award in 1982 and three more Tony Award nominations for "The Innocents", "Black and Blue", and "Orpheus Descending".  He also won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for lighting Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner's "Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe".  Jampolis has also worked as either a light designer, set designer, or stage director with Pilobolus Dance Theatre the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the Santa Fe Opera, Opera Pacific, the New York City Opera, Pasadena Playhouse, and Hollywood's Matrix Theatre among others.  He is currently one of the main light designers for the Seattle Opera and a distinguished professor of theatre at UCLA's School of Theatre, Film, and Television.  He also occasionally works as a stage director and set designer for Seattle Opera as well. Arthur Laurents (July 14, 1917 – May 5, 2011) was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter. David Drake (born June 27, 1963) is an American playwright, stage director, actor and author.  He is best known as the author and original performer of "The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me", for which he received a "Village Voice" Obie Award, a 1994 Drama-Logue Award for "Outstanding Solo Performance," and a Robbie Stevens Frontiers Magazine Award for the same.  Nominations include a 1994 LA Weekly Theater Award and a Lambda Literary Award nomination for "Best New Play of 1994" (published by Anchor Books). Franklin Lacey (1917–1988) was an American playwright and screenwriter.  He is best known for co-authoring the story for "The Music Man" (1957), together with collaborator Meredith Willson, and later collaborating on the screenplay with Marion Hargrove for the 1962 film version.  One of his first major works was the play "Pagan in the Parlor" in 1949; it was directed for the stage by "Frankenstein" director James Whale.  He also wrote the screenplay for the film "Rain for a Dusty Summer" (1971), which starred Ernest Borgnine.  He worked closely with the author Aldous Huxley on a musical version of his novel "Brave New World", but the project was eventually shelved. Rope is a 1948 American psychological crime thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the 1929 play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton, adapted by Hume Cronyn and with a screenplay by Arthur Laurents. The Velvet Rope Tour was the third concert tour by American recording artist Janet Jackson.  Launched in support of her sixth studio album "The Velvet Rope" (1997), the tour visited Europe, North America, Japan, New Zealand, Africa, and Australia.  Jackson was inspired to create an autobiographical show using elements of Broadway theatre, portraying her struggle with depression and self-esteem.  The tour's stage production was developed as a storybook setting, allowing spectators to cross beyond her "velvet rope" and experience her life story through the evolution of her musical career.  It consists of twenty-six songs, several band interludes, and intense choreography along with nine costume changes and four sets.  Jackson depicts themes such as burlesque and domestic violence among the show's complex production of pyrotechnics and theatrics. Jeffrey Hatcher is an American playwright and screenwriter.  He wrote the stage play "Compleat Female Stage Beauty", which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just "Stage Beauty" (2004).  He also co-wrote the stage adaptation of "Tuesdays with Morrie" with author Mitch Albom, and "Three Viewings", a comedy consisting of three monologues - each of which takes place in a funeral home.  He wrote the screenplay "Casanova" for director Lasse Hallström, as well as the screenplay for "The Duchess" (2008).  He has also written for the Peter Falk TV series "Columbo" and E! Entertainment Television. Nathaniel Merrill (February 8, 1927 – September 9, 2008) was a celebrated American stage director and opera director.  He was the resident stage director at the Metropolitan Opera from 1956-1985.  During his 28 seasons at the Met he staged a total of 14 new productions in addition to directing several revivals.  He also served as the Artistic Director of Central City Opera from 1959-1966.  In 1981 he and his wife, conductor Louise Sherman, founded Opera Colorado.  Merrill served as the company's artistic director and stage director and his wife worked as the company's musical director.  Upon his wife's death from cancer in 1998, Merrill retired and thereafter lived in Denver until his death of complications related to Alzheimer's disease a decade later.
Answer: Arthur Laurents