The Rooted Stage: Beginnings (Part 1)

· 4 min read

“Meanwhile, back in the Year One…” – Jethro Tull, Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day

So how did the theater get where it is today? And how could it be different? These are the two questions that form the foundation for this series.

The importance of the first question is described by Alfred L. Bernheim, whose book The Business of the Theatre, published in 1932, is considered definitive by many. “To understand the theatre of today,” Bernheim writes, “one must go back and study the developments from which the theatre of today has evolved. Hence we must examine the theatre of yesterday and trace the evolution of present practices and customs.”

The second question–And how could it be different?– is my own, and reflects my own dissatisfaction with the economic environment in which theater is created today, one that is increasingly desperate, dysfunctional, and financially unsustainable for the artists who make it. And so as we examine previous forms that American theater has taken, it benefits us to keep an eye out for practices that were abandoned for historical reasons but that might be restored to our practice today.

The Starting Point

Jack Poggi, in his excellent book Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870-1967, is pretty blunt:

“Before 1870 most plays in America were performed by resident stock companies, groups that used the same actors and the same theater for a series of different productions. These companies were self- sufficient units, content for the most part to remain in one place and capable of producing old and new plays with the same nucleus of actors, augmented usually by a visiting star.”

Those characteristics are important to reiterate. Resident stock companies are:

  • rooted in a single place
  • in a single theater
  • using a consistent group of actors (occasionally augmented by a visiting star)
  • performed a variety of plays

Folks, a reminder: that was the original vision of the regional theater in the middle of the 20th century that was considered so innovative that Joseph Wesley Ziegler, an early Executive Director of the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) subtitled his history of the regional theater movement as the “revolutionary stage.” Well, he was right: the regional theater had its roots in the theater that arose around the American Revolution!

In addition to the dominance of the resident stock company in Early American theater, and (again) similar to the ideas advocated by the regional theater movement one hundred years later, the system was decentralized:

“Every community with a theater was a producing center. A new play might appear in Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, or San Francisco, as well as in New York. It is true that New York was already the leading theatrical city, but only because it had more and better stock companies and because most stars began their tours there.”

So rooted, decentralized, and, perhaps most importantly, independent.

Again, Poggi:

“Each local manager was virtually independent. He owned or leased the theater building, hired and fired actors, chose each play or booked a star in a particular play, cast the actors and directed the play— at least to the extent that direction existed in those days (and to the extent that he could wrest control from a visiting star, who was usually his own director).”

Be careful, though– the word “manager” didn’t have the same meaning that it has today. Bernheim writes, “The manager was in almost every instance an actor himself, and he was in complete control over every phase of the company’s activity. He was not responsible to any outside interest, for there was never any outside capital invested in the company which might claim a share in management or look for a share of profits.”

OK, so a manager was an early entrepreneur? Sort of, with one major difference. Again, Bernheim:

“In its internal financial aspects, the company was generally organized on a cooperative basis. It was not until after the Revolution that the system of paying regular salaries to actors became prevalent. Up to that time it was customary for all members of the company to get a pro-rata share of whatever surplus there might be at the end of a season after all costs, including living expenses, had been met.”

In other words, the artists in one of these companies had skin in the game–they benefitted from the artistic decisions made during the course of a season. They felt each success and failure in their pocketbook.

So let’s add that to our list of characteristics of resident stock companies:

  • Independent – the capital invested in the company came from those within the company
  • Organized as a cooperative

If you’ve studied your theater history, you’ll recognize this as the dominant model for European theater companies from the Elizabethan Era through the 19th century. And it serves as the basis for my own ideas described in Building a Sustainable Theater. So what happened in 1870 that Poggi hinted at?