Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater

8. The American Repertory Theatre

chapter 8  The American Repertory Theatre What did I have to get me here? A ton of nerve and the same philosophy a gambler has. —cheryl crawford Nineteen forty-‹ve began on a high note for Margaret Webster. Despite the frissons among the players, Othello was a landmark production in American theatrical and racial history. Webster had previously been recognized with two honorary degrees, the ‹rst, from Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin , and the second from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York. That year, Smith College in North Hampton, Massachusetts, awarded her an honorary doctor of humanities degree. She also received an award from the Interracial Councils of New Jersey for her contribution to interracial understanding . The Women’s National Press Club in Washington, D.C., gave her its annual achievement award for 1945, and, a year later, the Women’s National Press Club of America named Margaret Webster one of “Ten Outstanding Women of the Year.” A candid pro‹le of Webster in the New Yorker the previous year had caused some consternation among her friends. She was described as oddly contradictory in appearance, resembling “a high-school teacher who has dipped herself giddily into a pot of mascara. . . . although her clothes are dowdy, her shoes are sensible, and her haircut is mannish, her voice—full, resonant, and glossy—is as theatrical as her eyelashes.” This is one of several portraits of Webster as the knowledgeable, no-nonsense, opinionated, cigarette -smoking doyenne of modern Shakespearean production: “Pacing 155 moodily back and forth, her hair tangled, her cheeks smudged, a cigarette slanting from her lips, she will brood over the meaning of a line.” Her outbursts , reported by a deeply impressed stagehand, take on seismic proportions . “She drips that cigarette and smoke comes out of one eye just like she was a volcano,” he reports. Despite the cavils, Webster emerged as the preeminent interpreter of Shakespeare: “Whatever her methods, the critical consensus has been that no other director in America has so successfully brought Shakespeare’s plays to life for present-day theatergoers.”1 A great deal has been written about the American Repertory Theatre by historians, by biographers, and by the principal women themselves. Despite ‹nancial failure, their work in a for-pro‹t theater in the late 1940s prepared the way for the nonpro‹t regional theater movement in the United States. A decade later, women emerged as producers and artistic directors at many of the new theaters. The successes and failures of Margaret Webster, Eva Le Gallienne, and Cheryl Crawford served as guideposts for those who followed . The ART had its inception in Le Gallienne’s successful Civic Repertory Theatre, a nonpro‹t theater in lower Manhattan in the late 1920s, and in Webster’s experiences with the Old Vic about the same time. Both the Civic Repertory Theatre and the Old Vic were not-for-pro‹t theaters with serious repertoires, performing in true repertory, with a resident company of actors, directors, and designers. Having emerged from the English system, Webster believed in the value of playing the classics in this way. Perhaps the most idealistic of the three women, she argued that both actors and audiences bene‹ted. The appearance of the Old Vic company, directed by John Burrell and Michel Saint Denis with Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, and Margaret Leighton as leading actors, on Broadway in 1945 also impassioned Crawford, by then a commercial producer. “Their visit had convinced me that only a repertory organization could take the theatre and actors out of mere ‘show biz,’” she said, “and put them into the cultural haven they deserved. With plays rotating, the actors could stay fresh and develop their talents in a variety of roles.” To watch Olivier play Hotspur and Justice Shallow (in Henry IV), Dr. Astrov (in Uncle Vanya), and a double bill as Oedipus and Mr. Puff (in Oedipus and The Critic) was “a revelation of the actor’s art to me.”2 Audiences and critics received the company with such enthusiasm that Crawford fervently desired a similar American company. If England could have an Old Vic, why not the United States? During late-night discussions, Webster and Le Gallienne drew up complex plans for the American Repertory Theatre as a touring circuit to three 156  Margaret Webster theaters located in the Southeast, Midwest, and on the West Coast. After playing several weeks in the home city, the three...