FROM GROUNDBREAKING TO ASHES
A timeline of Stratford’s American Shakespeare Theatre
“When Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by fortune fall into the fire?”
—William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”
From the 1950s through the 1970s, giants roamed the stage of the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford. It was founded by some of biggest producers of mid-20th century theater; featured major Broadway and Hollywood actors such as Katharine Hepburn, James Earl Jones, John Houseman and Christopher Walken; hired award-winning designers and composers; launched the careers of dozens of other screen and stage stars; and built its reputation on lavish productions of plays by the greatest playwright who ever lived.
Sadly, the theater was destroyed in a fire early Sunday morning.
The 1,534-seat theater at 1850 Elm St. was built in what is otherwise a residential neighborhood in downtown Stratford. Opened in 1955 by a prestigious group of theater professionals, it was built entirely with private funds. For a quarter century, the complex operated from May to September and attracted millions of tourists and theatergoers.
Countless schoolchildren were brought to shows there, and many Connecticut-raised actors, directors and designers say they were inspired to go into theater because of shows they saw in Stratford as kids. The theater declared bankruptcy in 1982 and closed in 1989.
Here are some of the highlights from the theater’s history:
1950 to 1954: Breaking ground
In 1950, Lawrence Langner, who had founded New York’s Theatre Guild in 1919 and the Westport Country Playhouse in 1931, starts planning a nonprofit theater that will present Shakespeare plays in Connecticut. Other towns, including Westport, are considered before Stratford (which happens to share its name with the British town where Shakespeare was born) is chosen.
In 1954, ground is broken on the American Shakespeare Theatre and Academy, which combines a professional theater with an actors’ training program. Katharine Cornell, “The First Lady of American Theater,” wields the shovel. Construction reportedly costs $1 million. Before it even mounts its first production, ASFTA starts handing out annual “Shakespeare Awards” to other theater institutions. Amongthe first group of winners is Yale University, which held its own Shakespeare Festival in 1954. Katharine Hepburn won one in 1958.
1955 to 1958: Early years
The inaugural production at the theater is “Julius Caesar,” directed by Denis Carey, starring Hurd Hatfied, Roddy McDowall and Christopher Plummer, and featuring Jerry Stiller, Raymond Massey and Earle Hyman in small roles. The only other show this summer is “The Tempest,” also staged by Carey.
At the end of the season, the eminent theater and movie producer/director John Houseman is named artistic director.
In 1956, the theater has its first full season, including three shows directed by Houseman with Jack Landau and two by the legendary actor/director/producer Norman Lloyd (“Alfred Hitchcock Presents”). Pulitzer-winning modernist composer Virgil Thomson composes music for “King John” and “Measure for Measure.” Among the student actors: future filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich and Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
Houseman recalls the year fondly in his memoirs: “Life was becoming leisurely on the banks of the Housatonic. It had been a good season: the weather was beautiful, morale was high and I was becoming visible, occasionally, to my wife and children.”
Timex donates “the world’s only properly calibrated sundial” to the theater.
In 1957, Katharine Hepburn plays Portia in “The Merchant of Venice” and Beatrice in “Much Ado About Nothing” (which goes on tour in 1958).
By the end of its fourth season, in 1958, the theater had produced 12 plays and welcomed more than half a million theatergoers.
1959 to 1962: Creative changes
Unable to agree with co-founder Lawrence Langner about the creative direction the immensely successful ASFTA should now take, Houseman resigns as artistic director. His final productions are “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” “All’s Well That Ends Well” and a return of 1958’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (with a score by radical theater composer Marc Blitzstein.) A new artistic director isn’t named for five more years, with Landau running things as an associate producer. Ed Asner, who decades later would be involved in efforts to reopen the theater, makes his Stratford acting debut.
In 1960, Hepburn returns in “Antony and Cleopatra.” In 1962, Helen Hayes and Maurice Evans perform the revue “Shakespeare Revisited.” That’s also the year that Langner dies. Newcomers that season include Hal Holbrook, Richard Basehart, Roy Scheider and Philip Bosco.
1964 to 1970: Artistic changes
In 1964, Allen Fletcher is named artistic director. He resigns two years later and the theater’s cofounder Joseph Verner Reed takes over for a few seasons. In 1967, Michael Kahn is named the new artistic director, serving for a decade. He later becomes the longtime leader of the Folger Theatre (now called Shakespeare Theatre Company) in Washington, D.C.
In 1970, John Tillinger, who would become a major Broadway director and the associate artistic director at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre, is part of the ASFT acting company.
1972 to 1974: A new name, longer season
The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre changes its name to American Shakespeare Theater/ Connecticut Center for the Performing Arts and becomes a yearround enterprise rather than just a summer theater.
In 1974, company members for the 20th anniversary season include Keir Dullea, Elizabeth Ashley, Christine Baranski, David Birney, Fred Gwynne, Roberta Maxwell and Carole Shelley. Its production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” starring Ashley, Dullea and Gwynne moves to Broadway.
1977 to 1978: Beginning of the end
In 1977, experiencing financial difficulties, the theater does not produce its own shows for the summer season and instead brings in outside productions of the musicals “Li’l Abner” and “Wonderful Town.” Kahn leaves, and Gerald Freedman is named the artistic director of the summer season.
In 1978, a young actor named Mark Lamos makes his AST debut as Feste in “Twelfth Night”; he will later become the artistic director of Hartford Stage and Westport Country Playhouse. The Michael Bennett musical “Ballroom” has a pre-Broadway tryout during the theater’s “Winterseason” program.
There’s one final artistic director to come: Peter Coe, taking over from Freedman in 1981. James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer star in “Othello.” One of the new company members is Kelsey Grammer.
1982 to 1989: The final years
In 1982, the American Shakespeare Theatre holds its last full season, including Christopher Walken in “Hamlet.” But the theater still has national cred: its 1981 “Othello” (with Dianne Wiest as Desdemona) moves to Broadway.
In 1983, facing foreclosure, the theater is sold to the state of Connecticut for a million dollars, folded into the state park system and leased to the newly formed American Shakespeare Theatre Corp., which will stage shows there.
In 1984, the renowned Massachusetts theater Shakespeare and Company brings its production of “Romeo and Juliet” and in 1986, Chris Noth (later of “Sex and the City” and “The Good Wife”) stars in “Hamlet” as part of the spring student season, but there are no summer productions this year.
In 1987, a task force recommends a change of name (to “American Heritage Theatre”) and a change of direction (to newer plays), and the AST board of directors resigns. The theater is still a place to see future big names: a tour of “The Tempest” by New York’s Theater for a New Audience is directed by Julie Taymor (a decade before she did Broadway’s “The Lion King”) and stars Avery Brooks (between seasons on “Spenser: For Hire”) and Thomas Gibson (the future star of “Dharma & Greg”).
In 1988, there is another befuddling name change, to “American Festival Theatre,” as the theater stops producing its own shows altogether and becomes a presenter of touring productions.
The new format lasts for just one season, which offers Shaw’s “Saint Joan” starring Andrea Marcovicci, the Sondheim musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” a Michael Feinstein concert and theater’s last-ever event, a one-man “The Tempest” performed by Fred Curchack.
The theater closes in 1989.
1992 to present
Over the years, renovations are made to the theater building, yet it never reopens to the public.
In 1992, the state of Connecticut, which stopped funding the theater in 1991, issues a call for proposals to redevelop it. Most of the proposals aspire to ASTFA’s original model of a summer theater and an acting school, but many involve other elements such as hotels, restaurants or a marina.
In 2005, the town of Stratford takes ownership of the long-dormant property and issues its own call for proposals. One recent round of proposals, in 2015, includes one that suggests demolishing the building, leading to protests from townsfolk.
The building is unused, but the Shakespeare tradition is continued on the acres of lawn surrounding it. The Bridgeport-based Connecticut Free Shakespeare Company brings its outdoor Shakespeare production of “Henry V” to the AST grounds as part of the Stratford Festival. The company continues to perform there until 2014. The ShakesBeer Festival, an annual ale-friendly outdoor gathering on the theater grounds, begins in 2013 as a fundraiser for the restoration of the theater building.
In 2012, The Mighty Quinn Foundation is founded by the family of Quinn Rooney, an actor and Stratford resident who died at age 19 of brain cancer. The foundation supports an annual Shakespeare Academy at Stratford program, which brings students from around the world to study and perform Shakespeare outdoors.
The academy is held in a house on the American Theatre Festival grounds; the company was not allowed access to the shuttered theater building but performed near and around it. The house was not touched by the fire that destroyed the theater, and spokesperson Susan Wright says the Shakespeare Academy at Stratford intends to proceed with its scheduled 2019 season.
On Jan. 13, 2019, like Shakespeare’s own home theater — The Globe in London centuries before it — the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre is consumed by flames.
Sara Holdren, recently appointed as the new artistic director of the Shakespeare Academy at Stratford, releases a statement: “Wemourn for the theater because it was a gorgeous, communally meaningful monument — a space full of history and legend and a proud, beautiful symbol of a legacy of art-making in Stratford. ... We’ll miss our big, beautiful, storied old friend and all that it meant to us, to the town of Stratford, and to Shakespeare lovers and theater makers across the country. And we will continue the work. ... ‘ Be cheerful; wipe thine eyes. Some falls are means the happier to arise.’ ”
David Owens contributed to this story. Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com