Laurie Metcalf in the 1979 Steppenwolf Theatre production of “The Glass Menagerie.” (Photo by Lisa Ebright)
1849 (175 years ago)
“Out of love of music, and out of curiosity to see the colored people exaggerate the peculiarities of their race,” Frederick Douglass attended a performance by a black minstrel troupe, Gavitt’s Original Ethiopian Serenaders, on June 28. Reviewing the performance the next day in The North Star, Douglass expressed disappointment in the troupe’s “reliance on burnt cork” and “visibly painted and exaggerated” lips. “Their singing is generally merely an imitation of the white performers, and does not tolerably express the character of the colored race,” he wrote. Douglass did see the potential for the troupe to “help to remove the prejudices against our race,” but only if they “stopped exaggerating the enemy, and portrayed the colored people as they really were, and not as Ethiopian minstrels usually portray them.”
1919 (105 years ago)
Uta Hagen was born on June 12th in Germany. The legendary actress immigrated to the United States with her family in 1924 and made her professional acting debut in 1936 in Massachusetts as Ophelia in Hamlet. Hagen won three Tony Awards throughout her career, including Best Actress in a Play in 1963 for her role as Martha in the original Broadway production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. She also taught acting at HB Studio in New York City for decades and published two widely read books on acting, “Respect for Acting” (1973) and “A Challenge for the Actor” (1991). Hagen passed away in January 2004.
1929 (95 years ago)
The Broadway premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude closed on June 15 after 426 performances at the John Golden Theatre and won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize. Directed by Philip Moeller, the experimental nine-act drama lasted more than five hours. Drama critic Brooks Atkinson reported that the production opened at 5:15 pm, had a dinner break at 7:40 pm, resumed at 9 pm, and ended at 11 pm. For Atkinson, the production “attracts the respectful attention of avid theatergoers who never tire of experimenting,” but he found the 1963 production “overwritten.” A 1932 film adaptation starred Clark Gable and Norma Shearer.
1979 (45 years ago)
On June 23, Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of The Glass Menagerie closed in the company’s original 88-seat basement theater in Highland Park. Company members John Malkovich and Laurie Metcalf starred as siblings Tom and Laura Wingfield. The success of the production prompted the company to move from suburban Highland Park to Chicago, and this was their final performance in the basement. According to Metcalf, it was “like the next little stepping stone in our decision to say, ‘Okay, let’s get out of our comfort zone and come back to the city.'” The company moved to a 134-seat theater at the Jane Addams Center in Chicago in 1980, before building their current location on Halsted Street in 1991.
1999 (25 years ago)
On June 24, “Sheer Madness” celebrated its 5,000th performance at the Kennedy Center Theater Lab in Washington, DC. This participatory murder mystery play premiered at Boston’s Charles Playhouse in 1980 and ran for years in Philadelphia and Chicago before its current incarnation at the Kennedy Center opened in August 1987. Though the Boston run ended in 2020, the play continues to run at the Kennedy Center to this day. Each performance involves improvisation and audience participation to solve “the scissor-stabbing murder of a famous concert pianist who lives upstairs at Sheer Madness, a unisex hairstyling salon.” It currently boasts more than 17,800 performances, making it the longest-running show in American theater history.
2004 (20 years ago)
Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation, or the Reeducation of Undine premiered at Playwrights Horizons on June 3. Directed by frequent Nottage collaborator Kate Whoriskey, the play stars Charlaine Woodard as a woman forced to return to her childhood home after her husband runs off with her money. Critic Ben Brantley wrote of the play, “A tale of the social downfall and moral rise of Undine Barnes Caress, née Sharona Watkins, Fabulation subverts its comic and sentimental frivolity with punchy social insights and firecrackers of unexpected humor.” The play won an Obie Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2005.
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