European Modernism and the Resident Theatre Movement: The Transformation of American Theatre between 1950 and 1970 Sarah Guthu A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Thomas E Postlewait, Chair Sarah Bryant-Bertail Stefka G Mihaylova Program Authorized to Offer Degree: School of Drama © Copyright 2013 Sarah Guthu University of Washington Abstract European Modernism and the Resident Theatre Movement: The Transformation of American Theatre between 1950 and 1970 Sarah Guthu Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Thomas E Postlewait School of Drama This dissertation offers a cultural history of the arrival of the second wave of European modernist drama in America in the postwar period, 1950-1970. European modernist drama developed in two qualitatively distinct stages, and these two stages subsequently arrived in the United States in two distinct waves. The first stage of European modernist drama, characterized predominantly by the genres of naturalism and realism, emerged in Europe during the four decades from the 1890s to the 1920s. This first wave of European modernism reached the United States in the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s, coming to prominence through productions in New York City. The second stage of European modernism dates from 1930 through the 1960s and is characterized predominantly by the absurdist and epic genres. Unlike the first wave, the dramas of the second wave of European modernism were not first produced in New York. Instead, these plays were often given their premieres in smaller cities across the United States: San Francisco, Seattle, Cleveland, Hartford, Boston, and New Haven, in the regional theatres which were rapidly proliferating across the United States. In this study I address and answer a basic question: why were the majority of these European plays first staged outside of New York City at the resident theatre companies? The choice to stage the second-wave dramas was often influenced by various contributing factors: the work of prominent directors who devoted their careers to the second-wave dramas, the work of translators who rendered these plays into English, the influence of critics and scholars who helped to introduce and explain the new dramas, the emergence of academic theatre journals, the publishers that made these plays available across the United States, and the embrace of the new dramas by the American universities. The second wave of European modernism arrived impressively across the United States in the 1950s, as regional theatres outside of New York mounted many of the first American productions of these plays, and later settled in New York in the 1960s as the theatres of Off-Broadway began to produce these dramas. CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: The Second-Wave of European Drama in America – Contributing Factors .........................................................................................21 Chapter Two: The Actor’s Workshop in San Francisco, California .......................................35 Chapter Three: A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Washington ..........................................97 Chapter Four: The Cleveland Play House in Cleveland, Ohio ..............................................150 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................184 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................192 Appendix A: Premiere productions and publications of second-wave dramas in Europe and the United States ......................................................................201 Appendix B: A Representative Sample of Journal Articles Published on the topic of Second-Wave Dramatists and Plays, 1950-1970 ........................................215 Vita .........................................................................................................................................230 i Acknowledgments This project could not have come to fruition without the contributions and support of many people. I would like to thank my husband, Cassidy Zimmerman, whose love and wit have been especially appreciated during this journey. I would like to thank the members of my committee for their wisdom and support, particularly that of my chair, Thomas Postlewait. Thank you, Tom, for pushing me to the next plateau. A number of librarians and researchers have aided my work: I would like to thank Patrick Scheible and Angela Weaver at the University of Washington for fielding countless queries; Linda Long and her colleagues in Special Collections at the University of Oregon for facilitating two rather rushed research trips; Jill Tatem, Eleanor Blackman, and the archival team at Case Western Reserve University for generously providing me with materials from the unprocessed archives of the Cleveland Play House; and Sarah Guyuron and the interns at the Cleveland Play House for providing me with details of the theatre’s production history. I am grateful to SHKS Architects for their hospitality, especially during my final month of writing. Finally, I must express my deep and abiding gratitude to and admiration for Herbert Blau. ii For Herb What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. And every phrase And sentence that is right (where every word is at home, Taking its place to support the others, The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and the new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together) Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. - T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding iii 1 Introduction In 1956 a small theatre company in San Francisco mounted the American premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children. Marc Blitzstein’s 1954 adaptation of The Threepenny Opera in New York City, starring Lotte Lenya, had made Brecht a household name in America, and the play’s popularity only increased when Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin released their own recordings of the play’s song, “Mack the Knife” (in 1956 and 1959, respectively). Yet this landmark production of Mother Courage closed after only seventeen performances, unable to find an audience for a play in which the protagonist was “not endearing.”1 Six years later, this theatre company, the Actor’s Workshop, produced Brecht’s Galileo. The production was so well-received it was put into the summer repertory, where it continued to attract audiences for months. Something had changed. True, the theatre troupe was better educated about Brecht’s methods in 1962. But more significantly, the audience, too, had changed. During the 1950s, Brecht had “passed from the depths of unrecognition to the heights of chic celebrity.”2 America had changed, and would continue to change as the United States was influenced by an influx of European modernist drama. This dissertation offers a cultural history of the arrival of the second wave of European modernist drama in America in the postwar period, 1950-1970. I examine how a number of second-wave European plays were first staged by theatre companies outside of New York City. Why did this happen, given New York’s established position as the center for modernist drama in the United States? In this study I address and answer a basic question: why were the majority of these European plays first staged outside of New York City at the resident theatre companies? 1 Paine Knickerbocker, “Mother Courage – A Workshop ‘First’,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 17, 1956, 21. 2 Eric Bentley, “Introduction: Homage to B.B.” in Seven Plays by Bertolt Brecht, ed. Eric Bentley (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1961), xiii. 2 Two Waves of Modern Drama It is important to recognize that modernism in the European drama developed in two qualitatively distinct stages, and that these two stages subsequently arrived in the United States in two distinct waves. The first stage of European modernist drama dates, generally, from the 1890s to the 1920s. It is characterized predominantly by the traditions of naturalism, realism, symbolism and expressionism, though this first stage also includes surrealism, futurism, DADA, and a number of other early twentieth century avant-garde movements. The major playwrights of this first stage were Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Maeterlinck, Zola, Pirandello, Synge, O’Casey, Yeats, Jarry, Čapek, Von Hoffmansthal, Hauptmann, Przybyszewski, Blok, Sternheim, and Gorky. The plays of Georg Büchner antedate this period, but Büchner may also be considered an early forerunner of the Scandinavian naturalist/realist tradition. This first wave of European modernism reached the United States in the 1920s. The second stage of European modernist drama generally dates from 1930 through the 1960s. It is characterized predominantly by the existentialist dramas that critic Martin Esslin christened the “Theater of the Absurd,” and by the epic drama. The major playwrights of this second stage are Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, John Osborne, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Peter Weiss, Sławomir Mrożek, Arthur