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19-Washingtons-Arena Welcome to a free reading from Washington History: Magazine of the DC History Center (formerly the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.). We hope this essay will provide food for thought and discussion as well as diversion. Sixty years ago, Washington’s much-admired Arena Stage opened in a former movie theater on Mount Vernon Square, across the street from the city’s Carnegie Library (now home to the DC History Center). It came to a metropolitan area where live theater was found in church basements, university theater departments, and the venerable National Theatre, whose professional shows originated elsewhere and played for brief runs. Hard to imagine today, with so many resident theater companies like Studio, Signature, Shakespeare, Folger, Woolly Mammoth, Roundhouse, Olney, and others producing original works and featuring DC area performers, but in 1950 locally developed professional live theater was not to be found. As former George Washington University Professor Edward Mangum describes in his first-person account, there was another issue here: segregation. The National Theatre segregated its audiences. In 1948 this segregation provoked organized protests and forced intransigent theatre managers to close their doors. (The National would reopen four years later to welcome all audiences.) Mangum details his career in DC, what it took to open an avowedly non-segregated professional theater (including costs and dimensions), and the company members who supported his crusade, including his student and first assistant managing director, Zelda Fichandler and her husband Tom. As the pandemic has shut down live theater, and as companies are producing new, online shows— including Arena’s current The 51st State—we look forward to a future where we again sit together in the presence of live art. “Washington's Arena Stage Emerges from Church Cocoon,” first appeared in Washington History 10-1 (spring 1998), © Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Access via JSTOR* to the entire run of Washington History and its predecessor, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, is a benefit of DC History Center membership. Copies of this and many other back issues of Washington History magazine are available for browsing and purchase online through the DC History Center Store: https://dchistory.z2systems.com/np/clients/dchistory/giftstore.jsp ABOUT DC HISTORY CENTER The Historical Society of Washington, D.C., doing business as DC History Center, is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), community-supported educational and research organization that collects, interprets, and shares the history of our nation's capital in order to promote a sense of identity, place and pride in our city and preserve its heritage for future generations. Founded in 1894, the organization serves a diverse audience through collections, public programs, exhibitions, and publications. DC History Center welcomes visitors to its new home on the second floor of the historic Carnegie Library. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the DC History Center’s Kiplinger Research Library is currently closed, and the exhibit galleries are open with limited access. Please see dchistory.org for details. * JSTOR is an online resource that digitizes scholarly research. Academic institutions typically provide organizational access to all of JSTOR’s holdings through their libraries. ; MvtiOi! Mil/ ^r L-Jy^^HSr ,*4flB^B^H "^^^ / "J*^^3^JBf^^^^^BBMMPI^^^^^^^^BB^^^^^^^Hf , Jt^^^^^^r^Pwr&^^^^^^^m ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^1 Managing Managing Director Director Edward Edward Mangum Mangum and and Assistant Assistant Managing Managing Director Director Zelda Zelda Fichandler Fichandler put put the the finishing finishing touches touches on on the the marquee marquee announcing announcing the the opening opening of of Arena Arena Stage, Stage, 1950. 1950. The The then- then- revolutionary revolutionary theater-in-the-round theater-in-the-round was was born born while while Washington Washington was was struggling struggling over over whether whether to to desegregate desegregate its its theater theater audiences. audiences. Author Author Mangum Mangum details details the the genesis genesis of of this this thriving, thriving, 48-year-old 48-year-old Washington Washington institution. institution. All All photographs photographs appear appear courtesy courtesy of of the the author, author, except except as as noted. noted. HSW. HSW. 4 4 PRIMARY VOICES Washington's Arena Stage Emerges from Church Cocoon by Edward Mangum July 31, 1948, with the final days For months, groups of students came to of a successful three-week run of ask me why I didn't open a theater and settle Oklahoma coming to an end, the only the problem for everybody. In the late spring legitimate theater in the capital of the United 1949, 1 took the first steps toward opening a States closed its doors. The National Theater, theater in the District. On August 16, 1950, for 113 years a showplace for presidents twoand years, two weeks, and two days after the public alike, and for a generation the city's National closed, the first production of the sole source of professional theater, suddenly first play at the Arena Stage opened to a became a second-run movie house. The only packed and enthusiastic house. Washington live theater remaining was the limited out- had its first resident professional acting com- put of three universities and a handful panyof and its first arena theater, and blacks amateur groups.1 and whites sat together in harmony. I was teaching theater at the time at That was when. How the Arena opened George Washington University. Throughout is a longer and more convoluted story. the city, people were indignant over the rea- son given for the National's closing: a dispute more than a decade of pro- with Actors' Equity Association, the union of ducing and directing plays in all professional actors in the United States, Washington, I had never directed over segregated audiences. African Americans theater-in-the-round nor had I seen an arena had never been seated in the theater with production. Articles on arena staging had whites, and, spurred by local activists, Equity appeared in the monthly Players Magazine, vowed it was past time to open audiences towhich had covered educational theater and all. The National vowed it would never related fields since 1923, and of which I was change. Equity boycotted the theater. Shows an associate editor. But I had paid scant at- from the prestigious Theatre Guild and other tention, involved as I was - like everyone I New York producers bypassed Washington knew as - in proscenium staging. I had also they toured the country. heard Walter Kerr, my major theater profes- sor in the early 1940s at Catholic University of America, say that theater-in-the-round was Notes begin on page 92. a temporary form used for staging obscure 5 Washington History, Spring/ Summer 1998 historic farces such as Ralph Roister Doister. I surrounded, I knew at long last, here was had no plans to produce Ralph Roister Doister. what I was looking for. Besides, Jones's the- I did have plans to open a new theater, ater was very small. Such a layout would however. Promoters and other business- wise easily fit into some of Washington's small Washingtonians said the money could not be movie houses and would be relatively inex- raised; real estate agents said no place was pensive to build. available; architects said permits would not Back in Washington, with Margo's the- be granted. Recklessly I told myself that they ater burned into my brain, I dug out my were wrong, and I began a search. I investi- drawing board and drafting instruments and gated an abandoned church on 14th Street, adapted Margo's plan to the little Hippo- N. W., a huge edifice with the usual pews and drome movie house at 9th Street and New sloping floor leading to the pulpit; old ware- York Avenue, N. W. Eight months later, Arena houses scattered throughout the city; and aStage swung open its door. few struggling movie houses. Each building We opened with all the excitement of a would have needed much expensive reno- Broadway premiere, but one nagging ques- vation to transform it into an auditorium tion lingered for company and staff alike: with a stage, fire curtain, dressing rooms, Were we or were we not a professional the- lighting grids, and all the trappings ofater? a How would the public view us? We proscenium theater. I even explored the beau- were a non-Equity group of mostly local ac- tiful old Belasco Theater on the east side of tors, directors, and technicians, many of Lafayette Square across from the White whom had volunteered for years in local House, then serving as a storehouse for thou- community theaters and universities. True, sands of dusty documents belonging to theour actors and directors received Equity scale Department of the Treasury. A Public Build- (the minimum), then $40 per week. But we ings Administration architect estimated thecould not afford to put into escrow the $1,200 cost of renovation - if the Belasco could be that Equity required to guarantee salaries in retrieved from government possession -case at of default. We feared that the press in an unreachable $1 million-plus. particular would regard us as just another At one point, Washington almost had amateur a venture. theater on a boat. The decommissioned, mo- There was something else we didn't torless, 347-foot Potomac was offered as scrap know that, had we known it, would have for $5,000. With a huge dance floor, state- given us chills. Among themselves, Washing- rooms, and bar with brass and mahogany fit- ton theater critics had given us six months tings, it could have been the theater show- before we folded. place of the nation. But after searching the Potomac shoreline, we failed to find a place events that would shape the artis- to dock it permanently, and the boat was tic style of the new Arena Stage began towed away to a Baltimore shipyard.
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