The Cherry Orchard

1927 – 2023

As founding director of the Yale Repertory and American Repertory Theaters, Robert Brustein supervised well over two hundred productions, acting in eight and directing twelve. He wrote eleven adaptations for the American Repertory Theater and was the author of many books on theater and society. Mr. Brustein also served for twenty years as director of the Loeb Drama Center, was a Professor in Harvard’s English Department, was a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University, and drama critic for The New Republic. He was inducted as a member in to the American Theatre Hall of Fame, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received numerous awards including the George Polk Award in Journalism, the Commonwealth (Massachusetts) Award for Organizational Leadership, and the Eugene O’Neill Foundation’s Tao House Award for serving the American theater with distinction, and the National Medal of the Arts.

At A.R.T., his produciton of Six Characters in Search of an Author won the Boston Theatre Award for Best Production of 1996. His play Demons, which was broadcast on WGBH radio in 1993, had its stage world premiere as part of the A.R.T. New Stages. His play Nobody Dies on Friday was given its world premiere in the same series and was presented at the Singapore Festival of Arts and the Pushkin Theatre in Moscow. His play Spring Forward, Fall Back was performed in 2006 at Theater J in Washington, D.C., and at the Vineyard Playhouse; The English Channel was produced in 2007 in Boston and at the Vineyard Playhouse, and played at the Abingdon Theatre in the fall of 2008, receiving a nomination for a Pulitzer Prize.

Brustein also wrote Shlemiel the First, based on the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer and set to traditional klezmer music, which was directed and choreographed by David Gordon. After the original presentation in 1994 at A.R.T. and in Philadelphia at the American Music Theatre Festival, which co-produced the show, Shlemiel the First was revived several times in Cambridge and subsequently played at the Lincoln Center Serious Fun Festival, the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, and toured theaters in Florida and in Stamford, Connecticut. The play has also been produced at Theater J in Washington, DC. His short plays Poker Face, Chekhov on Ice, Divestiture, AnchorBimbo, Noises, Terrorist Skit, Airport Hell, Beachman’s Last Poetry Reading, and Enter William Shakespeare were all presented by the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Brustein was also the author of Doctor Hippocrates Is Out: Please Leave a Message, an anthology of theatrical and cinematic satire on medicine and physicians, commissioned by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for its 2008 convention in Nashville.

Brustein served as a Professor of English at Harvard University, Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Suffolk University in Boston, drama critic for The New Republic, and former dean of the Yale School of Drama. In 2003 he served as a Senior Fellow with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, and in 2004 and 2005 was a senior fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts’ Arts Journalism Institute in Theatre and Musical Theatre at the University of Southern California.

He was the Founding Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theater and served for twenty years as director of the Loeb Drama Center, where he founded the American Repertory Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. He retired from the artistic directorship of A.R.T. in 2002 and subsequently served as Founding Director and Creative Consultant.

During his tenure at A.R.T., Brustein wrote eleven adaptations, including Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, The Master Builder, and When We Dead Awaken, the last directed by Robert Wilson; Three Farces and a Funeral, adapted from the works and life of Anton Chekhov; Luigi Pirandello’s Enrico IV; and Brustein’s final production at A.R.T., Lysistrata by Aristophanes, directed by Andrei Serban. He also directed numerous adaptations while at A.R.T. including a Pirandello trilogy: Six Characters in Search of an Author, which won the Boston Theatre Award for Best Production of 1996, Right You Are (If You Think You Are) and Tonight We Improvise; as well as Ibsen’s Ghosts, Strindberg’s The Father, and Thomas Middleton’s The Changeling.

Over the course of his long career as director, playwright, and teacher, he participated in the artistic development of such theater artists as Meryl Streep, Christopher Durang, Christopher Walken, Cherry Jones, Ted Talley, Michael Feingold, Sigourney Weaver, James Naughton, Mark Linn-Baker, Henry Winkler, James Lapine, Tony Shalhoub, Tommy Derrah, Rocco Landesman, Linda Lavin, Michael Yearga, William Ivey Long, Derek Maclane, Steve Zahn, Peter Sellars, Santo Loquasto, Tom Moore, Albert Innaurato, and many others.

Mr. Brustein was the recipient of many distinguished awards, including:

• Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Nottingham
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
• Twice winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism
• George Polk Award for Journalism (Criticism)
• The 2nd Elliot Norton Award For Professional Excellence in Boston Theatre (formerly the Norton Prize), presented by the Boston Theatre District Association
• New England Theatre Conference’s Major Award for outstanding creative achievement in the American theatre
• American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts
• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Association for Theatre in Higher Education Career Achievement Award for Professional Theatre
• The Commonwealth Award for Organizational Leadership
• Inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame
• United States Institute for Theatre Technology Lifetime Achievement Award
• National Corporate Theatre Fund Chairman’s Award for Achievement in Theatre
• Gann Academy Award for Excellence in the Performing Arts
• Eugene O’Neill Foundation’s Tao House Award for serving the American theatre with distinction
• National Medal of the Arts
• Players Club Hall of Fame

At the American Repertory Theater Ron Daniels has directed Hamlet, The Seagull, Dream of the Red Spider, Cakewalk, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, The Cherry Orchard, Henry V, The Threepenny Opera, The Tempest, and Long Day's Journey Into Night on the Loeb Stage and Silence, Cunning, Exile and Slaughter City for the A.R.T. New Stages; he was also associate artistic director of the A.R.T. and director of the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University from 1992 to 1996. Mr. Daniels was a founding member of the Teatro Oficina in São Paulo, Brazil, where he was born. In 1977, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as artistic director of the Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon. His work in the U.S. includes Romeo and Juliet at the Guthrie Theater, Camille at Long Wharf, and Bingo, Ivanov, Man Is Man, and Mister Puntila and His Chauffeur Matti at the Yale Repertory Theatre. At the RSC, his productions included The Tempest, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pericles, Timon of Athens, Richard II, A Clockwork Orange, and many more, as well as world premieres of works by David Edgar, David Rudkin, Stephen Poliakoff, Pam Gems, and others. Mr. Daniels has staged Titus Andronicus and Hamlet in Tokyo, Japan. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Frances Aronson's work at the American Repertory Theater includes Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Cherry Orchard (for which she received a Boston Theatre Award for 1994), Henry V, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Hamlet, Dream of the Red Spider, The Homecoming, and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Recent work in New York includes Entertaining Mr. Sloane for CSC and Arts and Leisure for Playwrights Horizons. She designed Falsettos on Broadway and counts among her numerous off-Broadway credits Das Barbecu, Through the Leaves, Painting Churches, The Kathy and Mo Show: Parallel Lives, and The Dining Room. Her work is seen in resident theaters across the country. She received an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Lighting Design.

Christopher Walker has composed music and designed sound for We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!, Phaedra, Beckett Trio: Eh Joe, Ghost Trio, and Nacht und Traüme, and An Evening of Beckett, and designed sound for The King Stag, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Charlie in the House of Rue, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Taming of the Shrew, The Bacchae, The Wild Duck, Woyzeck, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Wild Duck, Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, Buried Child, Ubu Rock, The Threepenny Opera, The Accident, Demons, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Hot 'n' Throbbing, The America Play, A Touch of the Poet, The Cherry Orchard, What the Butler Saw, and Those the River Keeps at the A.R.T. Previously he composed music and designed sound for productions at the Intiman Theatre, the Bathhouse Theatre, and the Alice B. Theatre. He also scores for dance and has composed for the Allegro Dance Festival, the Bumbershoot Festival, and On The Boards.

Amy Spencer was a member of Twyla Tharp Dance from 1981 to 1988. During that time she worked on the films Amadeus, Zelig, and "The Catherine Wheel," and appeared on Broadway in Singing in the Rain. She was a collaborator and performer in Martha Clark's Vienna: Lusthaus and Miracolo d'amore at the Public Theater, and has been a guest artist with Pilobolus and the White Oak Dance Project, directed by Mikhail Baryshnikov. Ms. Spencer co-directs, creates work for, and performs in SPENCER/COLTON, a company of dancers and actors based in Boston. The company has been presented by Jacob's Pillow, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Dance Theater Workshop, Boston Dance Umbrella, and Harvard Summer Dance Center. She has choreographed productions for the American Repertory Theater, Trinity Repertory Theatre, and the Boston Ballet. Ms. Spencer has taught movement to actors at N.Y.U. through Playwrights Horizons and taught dance at Barnard College, Sarah Lawrence College and N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts.

Richard Colton performed with Twyla Tharp Dance from 1977 to 1988 and was a member of the Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. He was a guest performer and teacher with the White Oak Dance Project, directed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, and has staged the works of Twyla Tharp for the Paris Opera Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and Twyla Tharp Dance, where he served as rehearsal director. Mr. Colton appeared in the films Hair and Amadeus, directed by Milos Foreman, the PBS Great Performances presentation of "The Catherine Wheel," and on Broadway in Singing in the Rain. Mr. Colton currently co-directs SPENCER/COLTON, a company of dancers and actors formed in 1989 to perform his work in collaboration with Amy Spencer. The company, based in Boston, has been presented by Jacobs Pillow, Boston Dance Umbrella, the American Repertory Theater Fall Festival, Harvard Summer Dance Performance Series, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and New York's Dance Theater Workshop. Mr. Colton has choreographed the A.R.T. productions of The Cherry Orchard; Henry V; The Threepenny Opera, directed by Ron Daniels; and Ubu Rock, directed by Andrei Belgrader. Each year since 1989, in collaboration with Amy Spencer, he has created an original dance-theater work with the actors of the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. Mr. Colton has choreographed productions for Trinity Repertory Theatre, Boston Conservatory Dance Theatre, and the Boston Ballet. He is currently on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory and co-directs the dance program at Concord Academy.