Laurie Metcalf in “The Glass Menagerie” at Steppenwolf, 1979. (Photograph by Lisa Ebright)
1849 (175 years in the past)
“Partly from a love of music, and partly from curiosity to see individuals of colour exaggerating the peculiarities of their race,” Frederick Douglass attended a efficiency by Gavitt’s Unique Ethiopian Serenaders, a Black minstrel troupe, on June 28. In his overview of the efficiency in The North Star the subsequent day, Douglass expressed disappointment within the troupe’s “recourse to the burnt cork” and “evidently painted, and in any other case exaggerated” lips. “Their singing usually was however an imitation of white performers, and never even a tolerable illustration of the character of coloured individuals,” he wrote. Douglass did see the potential for the troupe to “be instrumental in eradicating the unfairness towards our race,” however provided that they “stop to magnify the exaggerations of our enemies; and characterize the coloured man slightly as he’s, than as Ethiopian Minstrels often characterize him to be.”
1919 (105 years in the past)
Uta Hagen was born on June 12 in Germany. The legendary performer moved to the US together with her household in 1924, making her skilled performing debut as Ophelia in a 1936 manufacturing of Hamlet in Massachusetts. Hagen received three Tony Awards over the course of her profession, together with Greatest Actress in a Play for her work as Martha within the authentic Broadway manufacturing of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1963. She additionally taught performing at HB Studio in New York Metropolis for a number of many years and printed two broadly learn books on performing, Respect for Performing (1973) and A Problem for the Actor (1991). Hagen died in January 2004.
1929 (95 years in the past)
The primary Broadway manufacturing of Eugene O’Neill’s Unusual Interlude closed on June 15 after 426 performances on the John Golden Theatre, having received the 1928 Pulitzer Prize. Directed by Phillip Moeller, the experimental nine-act drama ran over 5 hours. As reported by theatre critic Brooks Atkinson, the manufacturing began at 5:15 p.m., gave audiences a dinner break at 7:40 p.m., resumed at 9 p.m., and completed at 11 p.m. For Atkinson, the manufacturing “instructions the respectful curiosity of the enthusiastic playgoer to whom experiment is rarely boring,” although a 1963 manufacturing left him with the impression that the play is “profusely overwritten.” Clark Gable and Norma Shearer starred in a 1932 movie adaptation.
1979 (45 years in the past)
On June 23, Steppenwolf Theatre’s manufacturing of The Glass Menagerie closed within the firm’s authentic 88-seat basement theatre in Highland Park. Ensemble members John Malkovich and Laurie Metcalf starred as siblings Tom and Laura Wingfield. The success of this manufacturing pushed the corporate to maneuver from the suburban Highland Park into the town of Chicago, making this the ultimate efficiency within the basement theatre. In accordance with Metcalf, it “was like the subsequent little stepping stone to our saying, ‘Nicely, let’s step out of our consolation zone, and let’s try to head again into city.’” The corporate moved to a 134-seat theatre within the Jane Addams Heart in Chicago in 1980 earlier than constructing their present location on Halsted Road in 1991.
1999 (25 years in the past)
On June 24, Shear Insanity reached its 5,000th efficiency on the Kennedy Heart’s Theater Lab in Washington, D.C. An interactive homicide thriller, the play originated on the Charles Playhouse in Boston in 1980 and had years-long runs in Philadelphia and Chicago earlier than the Kennedy Heart opened its incarnation in August 1987. Whereas the Boston manufacturing closed in 2020, the play continues to run on the Kennedy Heart to today. Every efficiency depends on improvisation and viewers participation to unravel “the scissor-stabbing homicide of a famed live performance pianist who lives above the Shear Insanity unisex hairstyling salon.” Now with greater than 17,800 performances, it’s the longest-running play in American theatre historical past.
2004 (20 years in the past)
Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation, or the Re-Training of Undine premiered at Playwrights Horizons on June 3. Directed by Kate Whoriskey, a frequent collaborator of Nottage’s, the manufacturing starred Charlayne Woodard because the titular character compelled to return to her childhood dwelling after her husband absconds together with her cash. Critic Ben Brantley wrote of the manufacturing, “In charting the social fall and ethical rise of Undine Barnes Calles, nee Sharona Watkins, Fabulation subverts its comedian and nostalgic glibness with punchy social insights and the firecracker snap of sudden humor.” The play received a 2005 Obie Award for Playwriting.
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