The Crucible: Archive Materials

Diane Bell as Mary Warren, Kirk Willis as John Proctor
Cleveland Play House archives (CWRU)

In honor of the Cleveland Play House 100^th Season, the Playwrights Unit has been asked to write short plays about the company’s history. As CPH’s 2015 production of The Crucible will be in performance when these sketches will be presented, I offered to cover the regional premiere of that play, which was produced at the Play House in 1954.

We were given access to company archives, which are kept at Case Western Reserve University, and their staff and the apprentices at CPH have been extremely helpful in locating and distributing specific items.

I have previously covered The Crucible in this blog, having read contemporary reviews of the CPH ’54 production, as well as Miller’s own inspiration for having written it. But there was much I had never seen, including photographic images of the actors, their costumes, and the scenic design.

Produced at the Euclid-77^th Street Space, it was presented on a wide, open thrust stage, with little wing space. The set is a spare frame construction. The period costumes, inspired by the garb of 17^th century Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay colony, do much of the work in placing this production in time and space.

The reviews for the CPH production were uniformly positive; when they were critical, it was generally in comparing this new play to Miller’s landmark Death of a Salesman.  A preview piece written by William F. McDermott for the Plain Dealer provided background which informed potential audiences this new work (it opened on Broadway in 1953) had elicited a wide range of opinion.

The Crucible at the Euclid-77th Street Theatre
Cleveland Play House archives (CWRU)

True, The Crucible had won the Tony Award for Best New Play. However, the producers did not decide to create a touring production. McDermott reported that the West German paper Der Tag found the work, “too narrow minded in clinging to historical fact,” and that in Miller’s characters he had created, “no one person which stirs our conscience.”

When the Munich-based paper Abend suggested this play is a “reliable image of what happens in the United States,” it even produced a defensive response from the playwright who countered, “In Salem they only hung [sic] sixteen persons, in Europe they had burned thousands.”

One of the great delights of looking into an archive like this are the pieces of personal correspondence which someone, at some time, decided it would be worth to save. There were some internal memos, and also personal messages of special interest or gratitude.

A thank you card from a Mrs. S. who lived on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights saw The Crucible with her husband in 1954 and offered a pair of observations which, taken together, will be familiar to anyone who has managed any theater company, anywhere:

“Neither of us can remember a more wonderful production.”

-- and also –

“I was annoyed to see so many empty seats.”

See also: some thoughts on "The Crucible" at Cleveland Play House (2015)

Cleveland Public Theatre presents THE WITCHES as part of Test Flight, a showcase of new works, March 3, 4 & 5, 2022.

Source:
The Plain Dealer, October 3, 1954
Cleveland Play House Archives, Case Western Reserve University

The Intimate Bar

Emily Pucell as Dare Wright
Photo courtesy of Cassie Neumann

Do Do That Voodoo
Sept. 10, 2011
Pandemonium 11

Toni K. Thayer ... The Living Newspaper
David Hansen ... William F. McDermott
Emily Pucell ... Dare Wright
Joshua D. Brown ... Orson Welles
Geoffrey Hoffman ... Bernard Schrader
Eric Perusek ... your bartender


McDermott chats up Dare at the Intimate Bar in the Alcazar Hotel.
We had two great performances Saturday night, the "Lose Me Lodge" space had, perhaps 30 chairs in it which were filled at 8 PM and we were SRO at 8:55.

At the end of the brief performance, Toni was to hand out copies of McDermott's actual PD review of the "Voodoo" Macbeth, but she did one better and actually calling out the banner. Every audience member took one! And they had Josh's poster for It Can't Happen Here on the reverse.


Orson Welles shares a laugh with his driver ... or is Bernard yawning?
It was a sheer delight working with this team, even for only a few days. Having Josh back in town was a thrill, and he took the opportunity to play Orson Welles with great joy. Mr. Welles was in rare form that night ... it was hard for me to play half in the bag and focus on the other actors' faces, but I looked up at Josh one time when I was going off on some rant and he had this maniacal grin on his face, it was tremendous.


Welles quizzes the theater critic as he phones in his review.
This was my first time working with Geoff, and I hope to again.

I was ostensibly the "director" of this piece, I wrote it, it was short, our time was short, so I just told everyone what I wanted.

But he graciously offered several spot-on suggestions, which in the whirlwind of our time together I was extremely grateful to receive.

He really gave me an excellent note for the delivery of my last line which really put a nail onto the last moment. Well, the penultimate moment. The last moment was his, and that was super, too -- especially to our older crowd, who really got it.

This event also gave me the chance to do some revisions.


YES!!!
Photos courtesy of Margi Herwald Zitelli
After our second performance, it was time for dessert, to check out a few of the other shows ... and to finally get that Magic Hat.

Did I mention CPT received a one million dollar grant from The Kresge Foundation’s Building Reserve Grant program? So it was a good night for everyone.

David as McDermott

Pandemonium, Saturday Sept. 10.
Expect the unexpected.

Do Do That Voodoo

For those of you jonesing for a piece of this new play Centennial! ... the first public performance of one short scene from my unofficial history of Cleveland theater will be presented as part of Cleveland Public Theatre's annual benefit extravaganza -- PANDEMONIUM!
In 2003, then-Artistic Director Randy Rollison had the brilliant idea to kick out all the stops and create a mammoth benefit which would not only entertain and intoxicate (in all sense of the word) as many monied patrons as possible, but also to show off as many square inches of CPT's burgeoning campus as possible. At the same time, he solved the seemingly unending bane of the theaterworld -- mooching artists. Why yes you can have a free ticket! But you have to perform.

And we do. And we love it. Because no one wants to miss this party.

That first year Randy asked me to shepherd some actors together to present Neo-Futurist plays in the scene shop. And so for one night Magdalyn, Josh, Kelly and I were the New Guerrillas presenting Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (by permission) an attempt to perform ten plays in ten minutes. A dozen audience members were seated in the freight elevator at the Levin lobby, were handed a menu of plays, dropped down to ground level, the doors swung open and the four of us started shouting at them for which play they wanted to see. After ten minutes a buzzer went off, the doors closed and the audience went away. It was such a hit we were asked to reprise it several additional times during the evening. Yes, I kissed Christine Howey on the mouth. Yes, I paid her two dollars.

What we were unaware of, sequestered in the bowels of the theater, was how expansive the rest of the party was. We simply hadn't seen it. After we were released, we went above and found a huge dance party going on in the Gordon Square and out into the then-unpaved parking lot. It was huge! Since then, we the acquisition of the Church and Fellowship Hall spaces, it has gotten even bigger.

In 2005 we were about to open the revival of The Vampyres and I provided a cutting from that play ... which was presented out of doors on a platform stage. It was just one of those cases of bad planning on my part, I was unable to participate in any of the technical preparations and just distanced myself from the entire event. It wasn't the year for it for me, with a two year-old and a new baby at home. When Beth asked if I was interested in providing something this year, I made sure the scene fit the venue.

Two years ago, my wife wrote a piece especially for the event, a tribute to the goddess Kali in the form of a Mary Kay party, a scene I was delighted to have participated in. Last year the theme for the night was Wild Thing and though I was unable to attend, I was very happy to send the actor-teachers from Great Lakes to teach happy, adult partygoers how we coach first graders to perform Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are. Apparently, it was quite a hit.
This year, my scene Do Do That Voodoo takes place in the Intimate Bar at the Alcazar Hotel following a performance of the Federal Theatre's Negro Unit touring production of Macbeth, directed by Orson Welles.

The scene will feature Toni K. Thayer as the Voice of the Living Newspaper, Emily Pucell as Dare Wright, Geoff Hoffman as Bernard Schrader, Joshua D. Brown as Orson Welles, Eric Perusek as the bartender ... and your truly as William F. McDermott.

Saturday, September 10. Pandemonium. Be there.


Evan Palazzo
"You Do Something To Me"

Tony Brown (critic)

Whither goest, Gurney Man?
Just prior to the celebrated Millennium, in the waning months of 1999 when everything seemed possible but nothing appeared to be certain, the Plain Dealer threw a retirement party for Marianne Evett, who for fifteen years had served there as theater critic.

The event was held at Windows On The River in the Powerhouse, back when the Powerhouse was a place people liked to go to. The theater community was invited - which I was delighted to discover now officially included me, as Artistic Director of the fledgeling Bad Epitaph Theater Company. The most influential people in Cleveland theater were there, to show respect for a woman who took her role as guardian of taste and professionalism in her purview very seriously.

This was the Marianne Evett who had championed the tenure of Josephine Abady, the end of the residency company at the Play House, and who eviscerated Peter Hackett. She was a champion of the rise of small, semi-professional houses like Dobama and Ensemble. She was not afraid to call out the often sloppy work produced at that time by Cleveland Public Theatre -- as Jim Levin reminded everyone in the room that night he made an unannounced grab for the mic to read a poem he had written for the occasion which may have been written to be amusing, or perhaps simply audacious, but in the end came off as inappropriate for the occasion.

My own relationship with Marianne had been one birthed in awkwardness. In a desperate attempt to get the PD to give much-deserved (we believed) ink to Guerrilla Theater Company, we sent daily, abusive faxes to the newsroom. When the diminutive Mrs. E. finally appeared at our theater to grant an interview (she absolutely refused to ever attend any of our performances) I was admonished and lectured that that was no way to get attention from a newspaper.

Get it?

Having proved a certain degree of competence over the 1990s and emerging as a thirty year-old with a promising new theater company in my charge, Marianne was a supporter of Bad Epitaph's preliminary offerings. After ten years, I had won over the most important voice in Cleveland theater.

Then we got another voice. Alas.

Twelve years on, with no party, no fanfare, no announcement in the largest daily paper in Ohio (wait, is it?) theater critic Tony Brown has disappeared. Just vanished. He hasn't written a theater review for a month, and I understand there still are plays going on around here. He's not tweeting, there's nary a peep from the man who has proudly invited controversy from that first night when he was introduced at Marianne's farewell party and we all sat on the edge of our seats to learn who would be creating the first draft of Cleveland theater history in the 21st Century.

"Criticism is by its very nature adversarial," he warned us, "Let's mix it up."

And mix it up he did. Sometimes literally. I need not elaborate. But where does that leave us? For the past several years I have been poring over old newspapers to learn my Cleveland theater history, history written by the critics. All theater history is written by the critics. And in Cleveland those critics have loomed large, from Tony Brown and Marianne Evett, Peter Bellamy and Tony Mastroinni (who double-handedly closed a Play House production of Lysistrata after three nights and got at least one person fired), Arthur Spaeth, Archie Bell and the legendary and much-beloved William F. McDermott ... for over a century, newspapers landed on doorsteps and people looked at them over breakfast or took them to work and there was a name attached to the opinions which told you which plays to see and which to avoid.

And today, there is no one. The theater people know the names of those who write about theater today, but no one else does. The PD gives as little space as possible to theater, doling it out to stringers like Don Rosenberg and Christine Howey. There are a few blogs dedicated to theater criticism, I would be interested to know what their traffic actually is, it can't be much. They certainly aren't paid.

The problem with theater criticism in the digital age is that the onus is on you to find it. A newspaper had the day's events of your community typed up and put in front of you. If I received a daily paper, I might even know how the Tribe is doing, but I don't. And the average baseball fan is not occasionally confronted by the photo of an actor doing their business with a writer telling you what to think about what they are doing.

Who will speak for Cleveland theater?

November 21, 2011 UPDATE.

January 1, 2012 UPDATE.

March 28, 2012 UPDATE.

Sources:
Showtime in Cleveland: The Rise of a Regional Theater Center

Euclid-77th Street Theatre

During the 1930s and 40s, Cleveland Play House Artistic Director Frederic McConnell had a problem to tackle, namely that his theater had grown too big for the Brooks and Drury theatres -- he needed a third stage.

After a few opportunities fell through, CPH finally acquired a former Christian Science space on Euclid Avenue at East 77th Street, a building which remains today, appearing something like a domed mosque though it has never been one.

McConnell and his architects created something unique and rare in Cleveland theater history - a thrust stage!

"I never saw a theater in which the sight lines were clearer. The stage is semi-circular, and the audience is bestowed around three sides of the stage. It is altogether different from the ordinary picture-frame theater. It brings audiences into closer contact with the players and will form a wonderful background for certain types of plays, such as those of Shakespeare." - William F. McDermott

The Euclid-77th Street Theatre did, in fact, feature the works of William Shakespeare when it opened on October 15, 1949 with a production of Romeo and Juliet and for a time the Bard was an annual fixture in the CPH season, in this 560-seat auditorium.

It was on this wide, open stage that CPH presented the Cleveland premiere of The Crucible in 1954.

The Play House abandoned this location in 1983 when it invested in Philip Johnson's $14-million dollar money pit, which left the organization with three adjacent prosceniums, each chronologically less charming than the one that came before.

Sources:
Showtime in Cleveland (John Vacha)
Cleveland Memory Project

McDermott on the Authorship Question

Opening September 30, 2011

McDermott on Shakespeare
The Plain Dealer, Wednesday, October 6, 1954

“The Elizabethans were great giossips. If there had been so astonishing and fascinating a secret about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays they would have spilled it with energy and delight.”

McDermott on "The Crucible"

Not a photo from The Crucible

Witch Hunting Is Topic Subject of Powerful Drama at Play House
By William F. McDermott
The Plain Dealer, Wednesday, October 7, 1954

The Play House last evening opened its Euclid-77th Street theater with Arthur Miller’s drama, "The Crucible". It is a strong, arresting, powerful plot and the Play House people rise to the opportunity it presents and overcome the difficulties it offers.

Some critics in New York and Europe have said that the play too impersonal and lacking in sharpness of struggle between individuals. I do not agree. It is a story about mass hysteria and necessarily its characters must be numerous and its action diffuse. But within the pattern of his design Mr. Miller has composed a sound and moving play.

The characters are sometimes scantily sketched, but there can be no denial that the principals among them are thoroughly well drawn and that the entire movement of the play is genuinely and excitingly dramatic.

It is difficult to believe that such things as Mr. Miller depicts actually happened in America, but, shocking as they are, they did happen. You can not escape the imitation of the author that something of the same sort is still happening in the world. He does not press the point, but you can sense the underlying suggestion.

Witch Hunts

"Crucible" is a dramatization of the witch hunts of Salem in 1692. This terror lasted for only a few years but produced cruelties and shames which have left lasting scars. These savageries were inflicted in the name of government and God.

Mr. Miller shows his skill as a dramatist in evoking the spell of fear and superstition which overcame a community and led it to commit shocking wrongs. He makes these wrongs more terrible and more real by showing their effect through the medium of ordinary and recognizable human beings. His canvas is broad, but his details are clear.

Innocent women were brought to trial and hanged for witchcraft on flimsy charges created by the imagination of children, or the vengefulness of enemies, all amid pious speeches and the solemn dignity of self-assured and dogmatic judges. This is Mr. Miller’s material and he makes the most effective use of it.

The cast is large and admirably directed by Frederic McConnell, who could not have found the task an easy one. It is one of the most forceful, best-disciplined performances of a difficult play that I have seen at the Play House for a long time.

Well Acted

Kirk Willis is excellent as young John Proctor who has the courage to stand up against the overwhelming forces of fear and superstition ranged against him. In this role, he conveys quiet strength, unquenchable integrity, a sense of justice and a willingness to sacrifice his life for what he believes to be honesty and goodness.

As his wife, Elizabeth, Eve Arden gives a sensitive portrayal of an outwardly cold woman who possesses an inner warmth of feeling and is more than normally forgiving. These two characters are fully developed by the dramatist and completely articulated by the players.

There are many other notable performances. June Squibb, as Abigail, is in key with the role at all times. Ella Apple has some fine moments as Tituba. Robert Allman, as Giles, hovers like a wraith around the fringes of the evening, and is altogether successful. Helen Watkins plays Rebecca Nurse with a moving reality and a touch of pathos.

Rolf Engelhardt is brisk and sure in the important role of the Rev. John Hale, and Max Ellis gives force and a forbidding genuineness to another minister of the gospel, the Rev. Samuel Parris. Some of the younger and less experienced people in the cast carry off their tasks with the skill and understanding of veterans. All honors are due to everybody concerned in the performance, including William McCreary who designed the simple and appropriate settings.

The play is not a pleasant one. But the time and place with which it deals were not pleasant. I found it an exciting and provocative drama.

McDermott's end

"He was a pale, round-faced, little man, with a skyscraper forehead, small hands, thin fingers, and an unexercised body, who kept puffing cigars as if he were laying down a barrage. But he had a cherub's bright smile, eyes bright as searchlights, and a giant's courage." - John Mason Brown, New York Evening Post critic

McDermott retired from the Plain Dealer in 1957, as he approached his 67th birthday. He was ill for most of the 1950s, once famously treated to a private performance of Katherine Cornell's production of Captain Carvello in his Bratenahl apartment in 1951 when he was too sickly to make the trip downtown.

William F. McDermott died in 1958.

Sources:
Leaps of faith (Chloe Warner Oldenberg)
Showtime in Cleveland

The Ostriches

People’s Theater Plays
The Cleveland Citizen, December 6, 1935

The People’s Theatre will present “The Ostriches” … a brilliant comedy on war written by Rudolph Wittenberg, who recently came to this country from Germany. The Theatre itself was organized last June to present plays of social importance to a vast audience of people who have never seen their own lives portrayed in the theatre.

Many unions have given their endorsement and a great number saw performances of an earlier production, the stirring “Waiting For Lefty,” which has revolutionized American theatre of today, both in method of presentation and in subject. Also a great number of unions in Cleveland have seen “Union Label,” a short skit which is part of its mobile theatre. In one week a play was written and rehearsed by the People’s Theatre and performed in conjunction with the Union Buyers’ Club at a benefit for the (Brunk) strikers.

War is declared in Europe and two neighbors in America join in hand-to-hand combat on their own territory. After being reconciled in jail they decide to prevent the horrors of war reaching this country by forming the “International Peace Co.” Interspaced with scene of hilarious comedy are realistic flashbacks which are signaled by descending sirens.

As the theatre was founded for the workingmen, the admissions price of 35 cents is also with his budget.

The Ostriches as translated by Howard Da Silva, opened on December 23 in a former nightclub at 4300 Carnegie. The opening night performance was delayed forty minutes (accompanied by the sounds of hammering backstage) and when the curtain finally rose you could see the wet paint on the just-completed set.

The People's Theatre is not aligned with any political party. That is the euphemistic way of saying that it is not Communistic, and its organizers wish you to be clear about that. - William F. McDermott, The Plain Dealer

Sources:
The Cleveland Citizen
The Plain Dealer
Showtime in Cleveland (Vacha)

McDermott on the Federal Theatre's "Macbeth" (1936)

Charles Collins as Macduff

COLORED ACTORS TAKE MACBETH TO THE TROPICS
William F. McDermott
The Plain Dealer, September 30, 1936

A tropical and riotously colored carnival ... the gentle Bard of Avon is bedecked with voodoo dances, tom-toms, savage noises, strange writhings and as fine a set of fancy-dress ball uniforms as ever dazzled and audience.

The most extraordinary production of 'Macbeth' that the American theater has ever seen and it is one of the most interesting to pass this was in my time ... a good show and an exciting spectacle ... grotesque, wild, tumultuous.

As Shakespearean production goes it is a stunt, but a successful stunt ... many lines are lost because they who speak them have not enough practice in the delivery of blank verse... the critical moments are sometimes dimmed because the actors are obviously not equal to them ... yet, these colored actors succeed in bringing Shakespeare alive. They give him strange dimensions, they distort his meaning ... but they infuse him with some of their own excitement and lend him their own special nimbleness and pungency.

Colored folk are natural actors. They have histrionic temperament. They play spontaneously and with gusto. Their weakness is a tendency to overact. Shakespeare warned against it; but his plays can stand a whirlwind of passion. They are better overacted than underacted.

Maurice Ellis as Macbeth, Edna Thomas as Lady Macbeth, Canada Lee (Banquo) and Charles Collins (Macduff) are singled out for praise.

The director is never mentioned.

Newsreel footage of the Federal Theatre's "Macbeth"

Romeo and Juliet (1934)

Katherine Cornell & Basil Rathbone

For the record …
Plain Dealer critic William F. McDermott had been single since he and his first wife divorced in 1921. He remarried in 1938.

It was Katharine Cornell who famously staged a performance at McDermott’s apartment in Bratenahl in 1950 when he was ill and couldn’t make it downtown for the production.

William McDermott really, really liked Katharine Cornell’s work.

In 1934 Miss Cornell brought her production of Romeo and Juliet to the Hanna (she was the producer as well as star) where McDermott was bowled over not only by her work, but by that of the entire company, including the “minor roles”.

“I do not remember a single representation that seemed as sponstaneous and vital and enriching as this one at the Hanna last evening.”
- McDermott, The Plain Dealer, Dec. 11, 1934

He really, really liked the production.

I have edited the previous entry several times, but now I have it from the source: Orson Welles was playing Tybalt by the time the show came to Cleveland, which was one of its final dates before making the transfer to Broadway. Mercutio was performed here by Brian Aherne. Welles is praised by McDermott for his “fiery villainousness.”

The Alcazar Hotel

Located at the intersection of Surrey and Derbyshire Roads in the Cedar Hill neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, the "Moorish" styled and tiled Alcazar Hotel opened in 1923. The building is an irregular pentagon, has 175 rooms, and was inspired by the Hotel Ponce De Leon in St. Petersburg, Florida.

During the 1930s it was stylish hangout, where people could dine in the Patio Dining Room or have a cocktail in the Intimate Bar. You could take rooms by the evening or the month. During the Great Lakes Exposition, Johnny Weissmuller stayed here when he was performing in the Aquacade.

Was Cole Porter, in fact, inspired to write the lyrics to Night and Day when staying here in 1932? Who knows, I am just passing that along. But he, like Bob Hope, Mary Martin and George Gershwin did actually take rooms here, once upon a time.

And of course, William McDermott liked to drink here.

Alcazar means "home in a fortress."

Sources: cleveland.com
Alcazar website

It Cannot Happen Here

“Written? Too mild a word. The play was created by polygenesis.”
- Hallie Flanagan, Arena
Telegrams …

Denver: WHERE IS REVISED VERSION ACT THREE LEWIS PLAY RUSH IMMEDIATELY.

Chicago: NEW ENDING REVISED ACT THREE LEWIS PLAY DOES NOT MAKE SENSE PLEASE ADVISE

Tampa: SPANISH COMPANY RESTIVE CANNOT LEARN LINES BY OCTOBER 27 UNLESS RECEIVE FULL TEXT PLAY IMMEDIATELY

San Francisco: OBJECT TO CUTTING WHITE HOUSE SCENE ONLY GOOD SCENE LEWIS PLAY

Nebraska: PERSON IN HIGH PLACE CONSIDERS WHITE HOUSE SCENE QUOTE ILL-ADVISED UNQUOTE LETTER FOLLOWS

Los Angeles: MAKING SUPERHUMAN EFFORTS TO MEET OCTOBER 27 LEWIS PLAY STOP IMPERATIVE HAVE NO MORE REVISIONS STOP STOP

William Watts, San Francisco production director …

The chief obstacle was the script itself - because of its hurried and superficial writing.

Orders from Washington to all productions …

… avoid all controversial issues - political angles of any degree - special appeals - racial or group appeals - or inferences in any of these directions, since Federal Theatre is interested only in presenting good theatre, neither adapting nor assuming any viewpoint beyond presenting a new and vital drama of our times, emerging from the social and economic forces of the day …

Also forbidden in most positive terms are any references to any foreign power, any policy of a foreign power, the personalities of any foreign power or government; any comparison between the United States and any specific foreign power, system, personality, etc. Our business is with a play of our time and country by a great writer of our time and country and our job is wholly a job of theatre.

A phone call from Sinclair Lews on the morning of October 25 …

I haven’t slept all night - for the matter of that as yiou know I haven’t slept for weeks. Nobody can say I haven’t given everything to the Federal Theatre … Now it is all terrible - everybody has gone into a coma … I want you to get right on the train and come to New York and postpone the play a week and get new people to do everything, or do it yourself. It is all terrible. It is all a failure.

Dorothea Lynch, Florida Project director …

We didn’t have the last act until it was just about the time to start. Then it came, without who was to say what.

Telegram evening of October 27 …

Cleveland: RESPONSIVE AUDIENCE KEYING UP FOR PERFORMANCE APPLAUSE AFTER FIRST ACT TREMENDOUS

The Plain Dealer - October 28
Sometimes it moves slowly, but it moves. On the whole it is a satisfactory production of a propaganda play that is worth doing.
- William McDermott

Sources:
Arena by Hallie Flanagan (1940)
Showtime In Cleveland
Free, Adult, Uncensored

Call and Response

NEW THEATRE - November, 1935
A letter from Hallie Flanagan

The Federal Government allocated, as you know, $4.8B for relief under the WPA. This appropriation included $27M for putting back to work musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, and theatre people. Each Federal director plans to work through regional directors for some twelve areas throughout the United States.

It will be seen that while our immediate aim in all these projects is to put to work thousands of theatre people, our more far reaching purpose is to organize and support theatrical enterprises so excellent in nature, so low in cost, and so vital to the communities involed that they will be able to continue after Federal support is withdrawn.

During the next few weeks of planning, and later, as the various projects start, we need the active interest and help of every person who cares about the theatre and about the problem of unemployment; we need the support of people who believe, as we do, there is skill, experience, enthusiasm and intelligence in the theatre people now on relief rolls and in the thousands of theatre people who will cooperate with them.

We need the support of people who share our belief thatthe theatre horizon is not contracting, but widening to include Santa Fe Desert, the Rocky Mountains, and the valley of the Missisippi; windening to include a consciousness of the social scene as well as the social register; widening, in short, to include the impossible - that same impossible which has led our conetmporaries to soar to the stars, whisper through space, and fling miles of steel and glass into the air.

We need the belief of all you who care about the theatre in terms of the art and economics of 1935.


The Plain Dealer - January 2, 1936
McDermott on the Arts Dole
“Why not fan dancers? Theater project a bust. Not all can be Hamlets.”
by William F. McDermott

It is apparent that the federal theater project in its present status, and despite some earnest efforts of some copetent people, is a bust. There are not enough really experienced theatrical folks on the relief rolls to organize any practical theatrical project except, perhaps, in New York and, there, organization is held up by red tape and bickering between the groups involved.

Even to a sympathetic eye, the arts projects generally are plainly in a mess. They come up against two almost insuperable obstacles: First, the number of unqualified and inexperienced people who want jobs in arts projects and who will often have to be accepted because of a lack of better materials, second the fewness of competent art workers on the relief rolls.

William F. McDermott

William F. McDermott
(Feb. 17, 1891 - Nov. 16, 1958)

Born in Indiana, attended Butler College, McDermott came to Cleveland in 1921 to become drama critic for The Plain Dealer. In addition to writing theater reviews for the Cleveland and New York stages, and making travels to Europe to interview literary luminaries, he also wrote columns on various issues of the day.
The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History notes that he wrote against censorship in the 1950s, I'd like to know more about that. Much has been made of a certain doting actress restaging an entire production from the Hanna in his living room in Bratenahl when he was too ill to make it to the theater.

What McDermott and I disagree on - the value of federally funded theater. What we agree on - the brilliance of Tennessee Williams.

According to Dennis McDougal the young Louis Wasserman worked to ascend the rungs of Cleveland nightlife by plying local journalists with liquor ("buying them drinks, partying with them at the Alcazar Hotel, escorting them home") and occasionally writing their items for them when they got too loaded. The list of theater critics Wasserman claims to have ghosted for is all-inclusive, including Mr. McDermott.

Sources:
The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood
The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

R.U.R. - or - Rossum’s Universal Robots (1936)

Ja tvoi rabotnik.

HELENA
But man is suppsed to be the product of God.

DOMIN
All the worse. God hasn’t the slightest notion of modern engineering.
Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) was originally written in Czech in 1921, with a translation provided by Paul Selver and Nigel Playfair. It as produced by the Cleveland Repertory Unit of the Federal Theatre Project at the Carter Theater in September, 1936.

Inspired no doubt by the Frankenstein story, this tale establishes the template for all future stories about artificial intelligence. What happens when man plays God and creates a being stronger than itself?

The character of Rossum and his son, who created this biological creature (the notes state that “robot” is simply the Czech word for “worker”) never appear, they are this story’s pre-history. The character of Domin has taken their creation, and made a business out of it. His dream is to rid our species of toil. We will all be aristocrats, liberated from work. The robot does not feel, does not want, does not care. The perfect slave.

But this is all metaphor, right? We never want to think that those who work for us care, or feel, or want. They are happy where they are. They would not have it any other way. The worker does, however, rise up against its oppressor, to disastrous results - for everyone, including the robots.

"R.U.R." Program
(Carter Theatre, 1936)

Reading period plays, I am constantly amazed at how many ideas are, well ... old. As a result of the preponderance of substitute people (though we are reminded more than once, “robots are not people”) people ceased to be able to procreate. Nature is out of balance. We are creating life that replaces us, and the life-force assumes we no longer need to reproduce in the old-fashioned way.

Cleveland Plain Dealer - September 8, 1936 Federal Theater Here Produces Karel Kapek’s ‘R.U.R.’ Robot Play, review by William McDermott

McDermott spends over half of the review lamenting for-profit theater and lambasting this exercise in providing work to unemployed actors. Fourteen paragraphs in, he begins to discuss the play itself.

Neither the play nor the performance would have the slightest chance of success in the ordinary operation of the commerical theater.

Much better plays of this sort are written today by men like Odets. But "R.U.R.", in its time had a certain tension, excitement and significance. For two acts the author builds and atmosphere of universal ominousness - and when the roots (sic) finally revolt, there should be a scene of magnificent terror.

In this performance neither the preparation nor the denoument despite a couple a couple of worthy personations had any quality of the sinister or any feeling of passionate resentment, or any of that high note of dramatic awesomeness which is the very essence of the theme.

“Dramatic awesomeness.” With two words, I suddenly begin enjoying McDermott’s review.

The play, in short, escaped the actors. I suppose some of it was lost in the spacious, and largely empty recesses of the Carter Theater, for many of the lines echoed through the unoccupied reaches of the theater and were not clearly received by such ears as were there to receive them.

No, he’s a dick.

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes, (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, but spent most of his childhood with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. After her death, he eventually reunited with his mother and and they and his step-father moved to Cleveland, where he attended high school.

The Hughes' home in Cleveland was sold in foreclosure in 2009; the 2.5-story, wood-frame house on the city's east side was sold at a sheriff's auction in February for $16,667. - Wikipedia

Hughes had relocated to New York and gained success on Broadway with Mulatto, when he accepted the position of playwright in residence at Karamu House from 1936 to 1939, a position only recently-revived and currently held by Michael Oatman.

In 1936 alone several of his plays received world premieres, including Little Ham (opened March 24) about a Harlem numbers game. Plain Dealer critic William McDermott said, "as a folk-picture of Harlem life it is rich in character in humor."

Other premieres included When Jack Hollers (written with Arna Bontemps, the cast included Margaret Williams as Queen Esther, Jack Stewart as Bogator, Paul Banks as Rev. Lovelady, William Day as Jerico, Don McGregor as Sid Lowery and Nolan Bell as Arcie) and Troubled Island, a "historical panorama" about Haiti that had a cast of sixty-five and was later adapted into an opera by William Grant Still.

When I was an actor-educator at Karamu in 1991, the offices for the education department were in the space previously occupied by Hughes' old apartment.

To this day Karamu produces Langston Hughes' Black Nativity during the holidays.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Showtime in Cleveland