Barbara Barrett and the magical basement
“Newfoundland has offered me lots of opportunities, and a chance to experiment,” Barbara Barrett once told a reporter. “It’s a great place to develop dreams.”
Barrett may have dreamed of a career in theatre at a young age, but felt it wasn’t in the cards for her right away.
Born Barbara Micklethwaite in Huddersfield, England, in 1922, she often wrote and directed school plays as a teenager and studies drama (and business and language) in college, but when the Second World War broke out, she was one of the first women to volunteer.
Barrett was an air-raid warden at night for three years, and served with the Women’s Land Army, earning the Defense of Britain medal. During a period working on a farm amidst the labour shortage, she met her husband, Flight-lieutenant Arthur Barrett, a Newfoundlander, at a dance.
“It was crowded, but I spotted this young Yorkshire lass across the room,” Arthur recalled later on, as quoted by The Globe and Mail. “I tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned around, I wasn’t disappointed. I asked her to dance and we’ve been dancing ever since.”
The pair married in 1944 and moved to Curling, near Corner Brook, when the war ended a year later. Barrett – who once described herself as “not a sitdown person” – began teaching dance lessons and writing columns for The Western Star. When the couple and their daughter, Helena, moved to Gander in the early 50s (where their son, John, was born), Barrett founded the Avion Players theatre troupe, performing on stage for radio and in drama festivals.
A few years later, the family moved to Stephenville, where Barrett started another theatre troupe, the Stephenville Players.
After relocating to Corner Brook in 1957, Barrett took up a position as artistic director of the Corner Brook Arts and Culture Centre, and director of the Playmakers Company.
Barrett wasted no time settling into the theatre community in St. John’s when the family moved there in the early 1970s, and was appointed artistic director of the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre’s Basement Theatre (which was renamed the Barbara Barrett theatre after she resigned 20 years later). More than 1,000 performances were staged under her supervision; among them were shows by CODCO, MUN Drama, Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador, the St. John’s Players and dozens of others.
Tommy Sexton, Greg Malone, Donna Butt, Joan Morrissey and Scott Goudie are among those who have presented works in the 75-seat or so theatre.
Barrett had a personal mandate to foster blossoming talent. She considered the Basement Theatre to be a good steppingoff point for young and emerging theatre artists, and it remains as such today.
“The thing I constantly try to remember is that all professional actors and directors were once amateurs, and for professional theatre to continue to flourish, we must give amateurs a chance to get on the stage,” Barrett told The Express in 1990.
Aiden Flynn knows this first hand.
“The Basement Theatre was that great incubator space that kind of allowed you to go over and try a couple things out,” he said. Flynn is an actor as well as director of programming and partnerships for the arts and culture centres across the province. In the past five years, he has noticed a resurgence in interest in the basement space, still in line with Barrett’s original vision.
“People are seeing that as a graduated production system: I’ll try it there, if it works there, then I might be able to move it to the LSPU Hall. If it works there, I might be able to move it to the road. They sort of see it as a good logical first step.”
Barrett was an award-winning director, a playwright, a producer, an adjudicator, and a casting agent, and was recognized over the years with inductions into the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Order of Canada, the Queen’s Jubilee Medal, the YWCA Women of Distinction Award, and an honourary doctor of laws degree from MUN, among other accolades, for her contributions to theatre in this province.
Barrett passed away in October 2014, just before her 92nd
birthday, after a short illness. At the time, her son, John, issued a statement to the media.
“The greater theatre community of Newfoundland has grown and flourished through
Barbara’s pioneering efforts,” he wrote. “Her loss will be greatly felt by all those involved.”