The Stage: The Rise of Rep

THE STAGE The Rise of Rep Repertory theater, never much of an institution in the U.S., has grown in recent years in every region of the country, and the movement is overdue. Rep companies are the tap source and five-foot shelf of theater in other nations; they give actors unmatchable experience, they try new forms, and they keep the so-called classics dusted.

A Rembrandt can be seen and Mel ville can be read; but Marlowe or Moliere are pale shadows in paperback. They must be performed on the stage to come alive, and the commercial theaters are not going to underwrite such performances. Only professional repertory companies, through constant revivals, can preserve the history of the drama in a meaningful form. Similarly, when the art of theater is to be advanced, only a company that is not hooped to commerce can try something new and almost certainly unpopular without fear of financial ruin. By and large, the American theater ignored the obvious need of rep groups until it could ignore them no longer.

Out of the Quagmire. The rise of repertory owes much to Broadway, in a negative sort of way. Broadway has got itself into such an economic quagmire that only its most negotiable shows last very long. Hence acting jobs are few and dispiriting, and actors with big names as well as small ones are more than willing to sign on with rep companies, in most cases abandoning New York. They want to act—in three or four different plays a week sometimes—and they want to know what they are going to be doing a month from now. They don't mind the lower pay; at least it is steady. One good reason that it is steady—beyond the well-demonstrated popularity of rep groups with local audiences—is that the Ford Foundation believes in repertory theater perhaps even more than actors do. In the last four years, Ford has given almost $7,000,000 to various repertory groups.

Rep companies across the country are shown in the adjoining color portfolio. An index of how advanced the movement has now become is the fact that New York is catching up with it. Biggest event of the 1963-64 theatrical season was the debut last month of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center.

On paper, the group is an assembled dream. The permanent acting company consists of 26 actors working under 2½year contracts, and includes such names as Jason Robards Jr., David Wayne, Hal Holbrook, Ralph Meeker, Mildred Dunnock, Zohra Lampert and Salome Jens. About half the actors are young newcomers who are being trained as they go, both in productions and in daily classes that have been going on for more than a year. The group's guiding lights are Robert Whitehead, who was one of Broadway's most successful producers (Member of the Wedding), and Director Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire). Its "executive consultant" is Critic-Director Har old Clurman (Waiting for Lefty). Its stage designer is Jo Mielziner, like the others one of the top men in his profession in the U.S.