Regional Theatre: the Revolutionary Stage

Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage is a 1977 book by Joseph Wesley Zeigler.

Zeigler presents the history of how it came to be that there are professional theatres throughout the country that constitute "an alternative to the theatre on Broadway." ^[1] The focus of his book is the Regional Theatre Movement ("Movement"), which took place from the 1940s through the late 1960s. While local theatres, most of them amateur, existed in American towns and cities prior to the Movement, it was this development that laid the foundation for today's network of regional theatres of comparable (and often superior) professional quality and artistic vision to that found in New York City.

Author

During the Movement's formative years, Zeigler worked at two of its founding theatres, Arena Stage in Washington DC and the Actor's Workshop in San Francisco. He also worked at the Theatre Communications Group, an outgrowth of the Ford Foundation – two institutions he credits as having powerful influence on both the growth and the decline of the Movement.^[2]

History of the Regional Theatre Movement

The story of the Regional Theatre Movement begins with a small number of directors, actors and producers who had the desire to develop a new expression of professional theatre as an alternative to Broadway. "The early regional theatres ... started as reactions to the theatrical Establishment of their time – Broadway … They were the new, anti-Establishment revolution." ^[3]

While Zeigler also covers regional theatre activity which predates the Movement – the "little theatres" of the 1920s, the Depression era Federal Theatre Project and the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA), local theatres with rich histories such as the Cleveland Play House (1916) and the Pasadena Playhouse (1920), and early pioneers like Margo Jones in Dallas – he documents the Regional Theatre Movement as a unique period in which the status quo of American theatre arts was challenged and invigorated.

Zeigler identifies six theatres which were what he calls the "acorns" of the Movement.^[4] These founding theatres were the Alley Theatre, Houston (1947), the Mummers Theatre, Oklahoma City (1949), Arena Stage, Washington DC (1950), the Actor's Workshop, San Francisco (1952), the Milwaukee Repertory Company (1954), the Front Theatre, Memphis (1954), and the Charles Playhouse, Boston (1957).

For each of these theatres, Zeigler tells the stories of their leaders and how they achieved their goals Nina Vance in Houston, Mack Scism in Oklahoma City, Zelda Fichandler in Washington DC, Jules Irving and Herbert Blau in San Francisco, Mary John in Milwaukee, George Touliatos in Memphis, and Michael Murray in Boston.

The professional theatre world in which the Movement took root was dominated by Broadway. The New York theatrical establishment defined the artistic dimensions and the creative opportunities of the professional stage. Zeigler writes that the early leaders of the Movement "sought to dislodge the overwhelming psychological power of the New York commercial theatre …" ^[5]

In addition, the Movement leaders were reacting to their belief that the Broadway system was not necessarily the best way to create great theater. "Some of us looked about and saw that something was amiss. What was essentially a collective and cumulative art form was represented in the United States by the hit-or-miss, make-a-pudding, smash-a-pudding system of Broadway production." (Zelda Fichandler) ^[6]

The Movement's objective, therefore, was not to cure Broadway's ills; it was to build something new and better. "Let us, from the start, be quite clear that this was a revolt . . . They were out to create something their own, something of substance." (Alley Theatre, Thresholds) ^[7]

The Movement's leaders are described by Zeigler as being young, middle class, and without resources. To achieve success, they first had to overcome barriers. He described the humble beginnings of the movement's leaders and their theatres: "Zelda Fichandler (Arena Stage, Washington, DC) in a beer factory, Michael Murray (Charles Playhouse, Boston) above a fish market, or Jules Irving and Herbert Blau (the Actor's Workshop, San Francisco) behind a judo academy." ^[8]

Some found their respective cities neither supportive nor welcoming. "We forged a better way, we scratched it out, hacked it, ripped it, tore it, yanked it, clawed it out of the resisting, unyielding, nose-thumbing environment . . . We taught ourselves how to survive." (Zelda Fichandler) ^[7]

With success, often building substantial numbers of season subscribers, came higher costs and accumulated debts. In addition to competing with other nonprofit organizations in their markets in fundraising; they also turned to organizations like the Ford Foundation for grants. Their expanded role as cultural institutions in their communities and their greater financial exposure brought increased involvement by and reliance on boards of trustees whose backgrounds and interests were more institutional than artistic.

Zeigler identifies the tensions brought about by the shift in focus from artistic to community as the turning point in the Movement. "It seems to me … that the major reason for survival or death was the nature of the compromises made by the theatres … All of the compromises were related to the institutionalism of the theatres." ^[9]

He asserts that the leading agents of institutionalism were the Ford Foundation and the Theatre Communications Group, which exerted substantial financial and organizational influence on the Movement. The Ford Foundation created and funded the Theatre Communications Group, which morphed from a mission of establishing standards for regional theatre "production, administration, and the training of personnel" to what Ziegler calls an agent of "homogenization" of the Movement.^[10]

Zeigler cites these influences as the cause of the "malaise [which was] pervasive in the regional theatre in the last half of the 1960s." The problem, he says, was that the theatres "had reached Establishment status through institutionalization in structure and especially in philosophy." ^[11]

By the late 1960s, these forces pushed regional theatres beyond the Movement itself toward their current role as establishment cultural institutions. Zeigler concludes that, "Regional theatre can best survive and grow by recognizing itself as another institutional resource of commodity culture." ^[11] This is a far cry from what the early leaders of the Movement were trying to accomplish. "Their frustration came out of the realization that in ten short years the Movement had become, like all elements of the Establishment, a preserver of the past and that they were no longer innovators." ^[12]

As Michael Murray, co-founder and Artistic Director of Boston's Charles Playhouse and one of the Movement's early leaders, observed: regional theatres evolved "to represent the city's image of itself, rather than the artist's image of the city." ^[3]

Zeigler describes the post-Movement development of "establishment" regional theatres, like the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and the Seattle Repertory Theatre; followed by the creation of additional smaller theatres around the country.

Zeigler concludes by describing the "recentralization" of regional theatres in "two forms: the propulsion into New York of new plays which had been premiered in regional theatres and the booking of limited engagements by regional theatre companies on Broadway.^[13]

References