The Actor's Workshop was a theatre company founded in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

in 1952. It was the first professional theatre on the west coast to premiere many of the modern American classics such as

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are ''All My Sons'' (1947), ''Death of a Salesman'' (19 ...

's ''

Death of a Salesman ''Death of a Salesman'' is a 1949 stage play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. The play premiered on Broadway in February 1949, running for 742 performances. It is a two-act tragedy set in late 1940s Brooklyn told through a monta ...

'' and ''

The Crucible ''The Crucible'' is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. Miller wrote the play as an ...

'', and the world dramas of

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic ex ...

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a ...

Jean Genet Jean Genet (; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels '' The Thief' ...

and

Harold Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that span ...

. For the 1953–1954 season, the Workshop offered six plays: ''

Lysistrata ''Lysistrata'' ( or ; Attic Greek: , ''Lysistrátē'', "Army Disbander") is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponne ...

'', by

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his fo ...

; ''

Venus Observed ''Venus Observed'' is a play in blank verse by the English dramatist and poet Christopher Fry. The play concerns a Duke who decides to remarry for a third time. He gets his son Edgar to pick the bride. The Duke likes Perpetua but Edgar wants her ...

'', by

Christopher Fry Christopher Fry (18 December 1907 – 30 June 2005) was an English poet and playwright. He is best known for his verse dramas, especially '' The Lady's Not for Burning'', which made him a major force in theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. Biograp ...

; ''

'', by Arthur Miller; a revival of ''Playboy''; ''

The Cherry Orchard ''The Cherry Orchard'' (russian: Вишнёвый сад, translit=Vishnyovyi sad) is the last play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Written in 1903, it was first published by ''Znaniye'' (Book Two, 1904), and came out as a separate edition ...

'', by

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career a ...

; and '' Tonight at 8.30'', by

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combina ...

. On April 15, 1955, the Actor's Workshop signed the first Off-Broadway Equity contract to be awarded outside New York City. When the Actor's Workshop began in 1952, all the talk in America’s progressive theatre ranks was of “decentralization," and ANTA’s "forty-theatre plan" was in its formative stage. In 1955, the Actor's Workshop became the first theatre group outside of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

to sign an "off-Broadway" Equity agreement. A local, independent professional theatre troupe, not just another amateur "Little Theater", was envisioned Fowler, 163 by an early ensemble of two directors,

Herbert Blau Herbert Blau (May 3, 1926 – May 3, 2013) was an American director and theoretician of performance. He was named the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington. Early life and career Blau earned ...

and

Jules Irving Jules Irving (né Julius Israel; April 13, 1925 – July 28, 1979) was an American actor, director, educator, and producer, who in the 1950s co-founded the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. When the Actor's Workshop closed in 1966, Irving moved ...

, and a dozen unemployed

Actors Equity The Actors' Equity Association (AEA), commonly referred to as Actors' Equity or simply Equity, is an American labor union representing those who work in live theatrical performance. Performers appearing in live stage productions without a book ...

members who adopted the name "Actor's Workshop" as a sign of their interest in polishing performance skills and honing them in group critique. From its start in a loft above a judo academy on Divisadero Street, the Workshop expanded over the years to a warehouse on Elgin Street and eventually occupied two simultaneously running houses, the Marines Memorial Theater and the Encore Theater. The guiding artistic vision of the Workshop was a legacy of the Group Theatre of the 1930s, with the troupe's eyes firmly on social responsibility and ensemble principles. Fowler, ch. II & 425. Among the company's most lauded productions were the plays of Miller,

Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thre ...

, Bertolt Brecht, John Osborne, Harold Pinter--and Shakespeare. Their 1957 production of Beckett's '' Waiting for Godot'' played before their regular audiences and later to inmates of San Quentin Prison; in 1958, ''Godot'' was chosen by the U.S. State Department to represent American theater at the Brussels World's Fair and, along the way, the company performed at New York's York Playhouse. In addition to the troupe's focus on contemporary drama, a rare assay at

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's ''

King Lear ''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane a ...

'', brought great acclaim to the company, a ''Lear'' directed by Blau with young Michael O'Sullivan in the title role, a version that amazed audiences in surreal emotionality and went on to become one of the Workshop's longest running shows. For years, the company struggled financially but retained relative artistic autonomy which shifted in the 1959–60 season, when the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the dea ...

, through its "Program for Playwrights", began to grant aid to selected regional theaters and became, in the process, quite influential. While the Workshop directors maintained focus on serious, contemporary drama, the Ford money introduced "star" names and occasioned mismatched temperaments. The Workshop is considered by many to have been a seminal part of the modern theater movement in America. In ''Regional Theatre: the Revolutionary Stage'', Joseph Zeigler cites the Actor's Workshop as one of the six founding theatres of the Regional Theatre Movement. Blau and Irving, the co-founder directors, were professors at

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

. Their work rose to prominence on the American scene to such an extent that in 1965 the two were invited to initiate the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center at the

Vivian Beaumont Theater The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a Broadway theater in the Lincoln Center complex at 150 West 65th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Operated by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), the Beaumont is the only Broa ...

, which had just finished construction at New York's

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

. The direction of the Workshop was assumed by Kenneth Kitch and

John Hancock John Hancock ( – October 8, 1793) was an American Founding Father, merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of ...

, who managed to keep the company going through the summer of 1966. At that time, William Ball's traveling

American Conservatory Theater The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school. History The Americ ...

(ACT) was seeking financial support and in residence at Stanford University, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, wishing to put its weight behind the city's artistic development, visited performances at both the financially ailing Workshop and ACT, then chose to sponsor ACT as San Francisco's resident company. Knickerbocker, “The City is Offered a Repertory Theater,” ''S.F. Chronicle'', July 29, 1966.

References

External links

Actor's Workshop and Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center records, 1947-1978 (bulk 1955-1973)
held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metro ...

1952 establishments in California Performing groups established in 1952 Theatre companies in San Francisco

References

Further reading

External links