Lucille Lortel

Queen of Off-Broadway

1900-1999

Sam and Joan McCready with Lucille Lortel and Vincent Curcio in the lobby of the White Barn Theatre, Westport, Connecticut

Lucille Lortel, actress, producer, and theatre owner, probably discovered and encouraged more theatre talent than any other American impresario in her time. Playwrights, actors, directors and designers owe much to this shy but determined woman. She almost single-handedly won for Off-Broadway the reputation that it enjoys today and she reveled in the honorary title bestowed on her in 1962 by Richard L. Coe of the Washington Post, "The Queen of Off-Broadway."

In 1947, when there were limited opportunities for actors and playwrights to do experimental work, she started the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut--to showcase new writers and performers, and to provide a laboratory where established actors might work in an atmosphere free of commercial pressures.

In 1955, she acquired the Theatre de Lys (now called the Lucille Lortel Theatre) in New York's Greenwich Village. Owning her own theatre enabled her to revive Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, which ran for seven years, and to promote the phenomenally successful ANTA Matinee Series.

And while many of the successful American writers continued to mine the well-worn seams of naturalism, Lortel travelled to Europe to see the innovative plays of Genet, Ionesco, Beckett, and Fugard. She negotiated the American rights, often in personal discussions with the authors, and brought the plays to the White Barn, to the ANTA Matinee Series, and to Off-Broadway, with no assurance that they would meet with success. Today, there is no disputing the impact of these playwrights on the history of the modern theatre, but Lucille Lortel took chances with them when they had little or no international reputation. Nor was her vision limited to the European writers. She produced a host of dramas by contemporary American playwrights, like Edward Albee, Anna Marie Barlow, Adrienne Kennedy, Terrence McNally, and Murray Schisgal, maintaining a commitment to innovation and experimentation on this side of the Atlantic.

The impact of other producers to the development of Off-Broadway cannot be underestimated, among them Theodore Mann at the Circle in the Square (1951), Norris Houghton and T. Edward Hamleton, founders of the Phoenix Theatre in 1953, Joseph Papp, who formed the New York Shakespeare festival in 1954, and Judith Malina and Julian Beck of the Living Theatre (1959). Nevertheless, it must be argued that no single producer has worked with the persistence and consistency of Lucille Lortel--over 50 years--to make Off-Broadway a viable alternative to Broadway.

She originated the showcase format at the White Barn Theatre in 1947--a format that is now commonplace in New York theatre, with its own Equity Contract.

She instituted the ANTA Matinee Series at the Theatre de Lys in 1956--and paved the way for Ellen Stewart of La Mama and the development of Off-Off Broadway.

More recently, she supported the production of serious plays on Broadway, earning herself the admiration of critics like Clive Barnes and John Simon, and the gratitude of playwrights Lanford Wilson, Lee Blessing, and William M. Hoffman.

Lucille Lortel was independently wealthy. She had the luxury of being able to produce what she liked. During her lifetime, her New York theatre, the Lucille Lortel, had a reputation for quality that made it the envy of other Off-Broadway houses. Her productions had a consistent social and political point of view. She used the theatre to fight for important causes, principally social injustice, and sexual and racial discrimination.

Lortel was not only interested in producing plays; she cared about the future of the theatre and the development of theatre talent. The list of writers, actors and directors who worked for her reads like a Who's Who of the Theatre.

I, myself, had the opportunity to share Lucille's generosity when I acted and directed in A Fantastic Voyage with W. B. Yeats at the White Barn Theatre in 1983. Although I had worked in Europe, this was my first production in the U.S. It enabled me to observe, at first hand, Lucille Lortel's extraordinary commitment to innovative theatre and to the encouragement of unknown talent (the production featured Kevin Spacey as Judas). This experience encouraged me to write a Bio-Bibliography of Lucille Lortel, published by Greenwood Press, detailing her theatre career. Since the publication of the book, in which Lucille took a keen personal interest, I continued to follow her career and hope to extend the bio-bibliography to include the most recent achievements of this remarkable woman.

Perhaps of all the many tributes she received during her lifetime, the most fitting was that of Athol Fugard, the South African playwright whom she nurtured from his arrival in the U.S. He wrote,
Lucille Lortel is an exceptional human being, essentially mysterious, who has been given a gift she has never abused, never neglected.

Much valuable research material on Lucille Lortel and the White Barn Theatre is available in the Lucille Lortel Theatre Collection at the Westport Public Library.

Those interested in Lucille Lortel's productions on Broadway and at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (formerly the Theatre de Lys) should consult the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive Material in the Lucille Lortel Room of the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

 If you have any comments or information you would like to share about Lucille Lortel, please E-Mail me:
mccready@umbc.edu