Theatre Diplomacy During the Cold War: The Story of Martha Wadsworth Coigney and the International Theatre Institute, as Told by Her Friends and Family Volume Ii

By William Wadsworth and Jim O'Quinn

This multi-volume work began as a biography of Martha Wadsworth Coigney, who was a pioneering thought leader and advocate of internationalism in the American theatre during one of the most challenging periods in modern U.S. history. Coigney served as President of the International Theatre Institute (ITI) from 1966 to 2011. An independent NGO, ITI was devoted to the UNESCO mission of peace through mutual understanding, and, after World War II, often single-handedly sustained cultural exchange between artists on either side of the Iron Curtain, across religious divides, and in war zones. ITI was consistently in the vanguard of UNESCO's multi-lateral aim to bring all voices to the table, including former colonial peoples, developing nations, and indigenous cultures.
In partnership with Rosamond Gilder and Ellen Stewart of La Mama E.T.C., Coigney led these landmark initiatives, including the representation of U.S. multicultural theatre leadership in Moscow in 1973. What was set in motion then is playing out today.
Owing to the scope of Coigney’s work, William Wadsworth and Jim O’Quinn interviewed a wide range of her dramatist friends and professional colleagues. These conversations illumined a liberal cultural epoch (1954-86) and the U. S. Culture Wars that followed. The authors also recovered substantive original materials from Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library and the Rockefeller Archives about the life and work of Coigney, her mentor Rosamond Gilder, and Coigney’s longtime employer, the producer Roger Stevens. These materials document a sustained political effort by theatre people to socialize and liberalize post-WWII America. For these reasons, the work became much more than the story of one amazing person. It became a living history about relations between great artists and their milieu, told by the artists themselves.
The Martha Coigney story has several key elements:

• Coigney embodied the principle of internationalism as a counterforce to nationalism and fascism.
• He career is a virtual how-to manual for re-visualizing and revitalizing American theatre.
• Her life demonstrates the power of people-to-people diplomacy, based on the principles of individual human rights as established by the United Nations, the support of artistic freedom of expression, and the concept that every policy and funding mechanism finds its essence in the individual artist.
• Coigney was one of the great theatre matchmakers and promoters of experimental and devised theatre work. Within this sector, she can be said to have revolutionized the theatre profession worldwide.
• Gilder and Coigney, in their roles at ITI, led the movement to establish international theatre festivals in Europe, the USA, and globally.
• Gilder and Coigney were collaborators with Roger Stevens, Donald Oenslager, Hal Prince, Nancy Rhodes, Edward Albee, and scores of other distinguished figures in the transmission of American dramatic art overseas.
• Coigney served as advisor to and instrument for private theatre funders determined to create a national theatre accessible to working-class citizens and the poor, an investment, they believed, that was necessary to U.S. ascendency and world peace. In this they followed the inspiration of President John F. Kennedy, who articulated that to be influential, a great nation must have a great culture to contribute to the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664139367

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Copyright © 2020 by William Wadsworth and Jim O’Quinn. 821817

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Rev. date: 12/18/2020

Contents

Volume 2. Martha Coigney, Director: ITI and the Experimental Theatre, 1966-1973

Chapter 10   Wadsworth and Gilder Steer the First ITI Congress in New York (1967)

Chapter 11   The American Theatre in 5 Essential Volumes

Chapter 12   The American Theatre and Its Gray Zone, Theatre 4 and 5

Chapter 13   Maurice McClelland at ITI—Robert Anton, Peter Brook Tour, the Grotowski Investment, Theatre for the Deaf, the Design Project

Chapter 14   An Interview with Jean-Claude van Itallie

Chapter 15   An Interview with Cecile Guidote: The Emergence of Global Theatre

Chapter 16   The Essential Ellen Stewart: An International La Mama Family

Chapter 17   The La Mama Global Family Expands

Chapter 18   A Conversation with Daffi: The Unknown Theatre

Chapter 19   Two Directors: Andre Gregory and Leo Shapiro

Chapter 20   Richard Schechner: The Early Years

Chapter 21   1973: A Transformative Year at ITI-USA

Chapter 22   The Moscow Congress, 1973

Chapter 23   An Interview with George White: Founder, producer, chair, The O’Neill Center, Waterford, Connecticut

Chapter 10

Wadsworth and Gilder Steer the First

ITI Congress in New York (1967)

We feel that there is an increasing rather than a decreasing need of international understanding, and very specifically a need to counteract the growing image of the U.S. as mad-brain rude boy full of spleen (Shakespeare). We need every possible intelligent, creative contact that can be established between people, particularly people who share a dedication to the arts. This has been the ITI’s raison d’etre since the beginning. We need it more than ever now and it can no longer be carried on as a side issue or afterthought, which means we need continuing support from our Advisory Council, the theatre’s professional organizations and the foundations. We are a small office, but we have a long reach and we believe we help.

—Martha Coigney, The Annual Report¹

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ITI global members, 1967

The Long Reach of ITI

THE HISTORIC 1967 INTERNATIONAL THEATRE INSTITUTE Congress in New York was the first to be held in the Americas. It served an introduction for leaders of the European and Russian theatre to that bad-boy nation on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and the Iron Curtain. For many theatre artists, this Congress was a first encounter with the great vitality of American theatre—academic, commercial, experimental, and classical—the whole national endeavor. The backdrop for the display was New York City. And the program was revolutionary in design, as it encompassed the historical sweep of theatre from Shakespeare to Broadway to off-Broadway, to the burgeoning new repertory-based regional theatre. The hemisphere was engaged. Latin America responded vigorously. Canada hosted a full-scale post-Congress conference in Toronto. The world received the full diplomatic treatment in a display of organizing power and financial generosity not seen at any previous theatre gathering.

Martha Wadsworth hit the ground running. Rosamond Gilder, as president of ITI International, had single-handedly levered this Congress, officially number XII, out of Europe and into her backyard. Martha helped—she knew everybody, from the producers to the actors, the playwrights, the stage designers; she had assisted on Broadway and knew the ropes off-Broadway. Personally, she had rediscovered her faith, and had been tested by the death of JFK, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, and she was resolved, like Roger Stevens and Harold Clurman, to insist on the martyred president’s call for international cultural engagement. Working for Stevens had trained her organizational power and leadership skills. Now, with another great mentor, Gilder, guiding her, she brought these trained assets together with her great love of fun and connectedness. The result was a transformative World Congress.

Theatre people gathered at the United Nations right in the teeth of the Six-Day War, a proxy conflict in which the U.S. backed Israel, while Russia was behind Egypt and Syria. The event almost seemed fated: It was set up by the previous Tel Aviv Congress, whose agreements were taking shape as a holographic alternative to war. Instead of conflict, a heterogeneous collection of Jews, WASPs, Africans, Asians, and Europeans worked and learned together next door to the UN, with symbolic import. ITI-US during Gilder’s presidency was truly global.

In 1966, when Gilder hired Martha, she was facing a moment of real desperation—the New York Congress was not the only thing on her mind. Gilder was in the midst of overseeing a major game-changing event occurring in Delhi, India, titled East-WestTheatre Seminar and Theatre Arts Festival. This festival brought together the entirety of Indian theatre through the Bharativa Natya Sangha, the Indian Centre of the International Institute, and it was underwritten by the giant TATA industries. Gilder recruited John Houseman and Prof. James Brandon of Michigan State University to participate. The advent of the Congress forced her to divert her attention to NYC, more abruptly than she would have liked.

It was thanks to the principled international setup Gilder established that delegates at the U.S. Congress managed to amenably handle difficult-to-negotiate situations—for example, when Nikita Khrushchev was hammering his shoe on a desk in the UN General Assembly, the head of the Russian theatre delegation concluded, "We are the diplomats!" Martha’s organizing role ameliorated the intense pressures on Gilder’s presidency, and her mentor was not the only one who recognized and attested to Martha’s huge social talent and status as a rising star at the Congress.

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Gilder executes the global vision of the United Nations via an ITI festival in Delhi

Martha learned that Gilder was also in something of a panic because her ITI-USA Director Ruth Mayleas had been chosen to go to Washington to help Roger Stevens. Mayleas had been a manager of operations at ANTA since the founding of the National Service Department in 1954, then, briefly, a capable arts manager at the Rockefeller Foundation. Starting in 1963, Mayleas was secretary, then associate director, of ITI. She was a capable administrator, editor of the ANTA Journal, and director of the ANTA Service Department, with good connections to off-Broadway theatre. A competent, hard-edged administrator of the arts, she was more organized and powerful as a grant-giver than Martha—but less daring culturally and interpersonally, less of an art visionary. Mayleas knew all the ANTA people, and for someone like her to move into ITI administration when she did showed the growing importance of ITI within ANTA. The two organizations had just had their best years of public and private funding support, and because of that, Whitehead and Stevens were in direct control of the New York regional development of a national theatre, which was in full swing.

It had been Mayleas who recruited Richard Schechner and Alan Schneider to go to the 1965 Tel Aviv Conference, and (at the same time, from her perch at the NEA) orchestrated national and private support for the New York Congress. Gilder was reluctant to let her move on to D.C.—she felt she was losing a valued liaison to postwar ANTA conferees and Rockefeller funders, and to a decade’s worth of international artists whom Mayleas had met and introduced to the American theatre. After the move, however, Mayleas continued to attend advisory board meetings, liaison with ITI, and show up in a few subsequent Congress delegations. Indeed, she became Stevens’ right hand in organizing of the theatre aspect of the NEA, where she presided as the queen of theatre funding in the USA; she had a hand in selecting peer committee advisors and determining grants and fellowships. Gilder and Coigney managed over subsequent years to consult with Mayleas regularly as she fulfilled those duties.

When Gilder had originally interviewed Martha in 1966, with Stevens’ support, the younger woman felt seduced by Gilder’s brilliance, voice, and humor. They spoke in French, nattering on about European repertory and favorite performances, and issues around avant-garde performance and American experimentation. They hit it off, of course, and the rest was history. Rosamond became Martha’s principal mentor, and Martha became Rosamond’s executive officer.

As late as 1991, Martha Coigney explained in a speech to ATHE why Gilder’s character and will to represent an American National Theatre identity abroad underlined exactly why ITI was so important at the juncture of the first U.S. Congress:

The part of her life that gave birth to the ITI was also the part of her life that began to insist that there is a National Theatre life in America. Whether it was because of the binding effect of Theatre Arts Monthly that she ran with Edith Isaacs, or whether it was her presence at the birth of the National Theatre Conference and the American Educational Theatre Association (ATHE) (or ATA . . . she never could figure out why people had to run around changing names all the time), whatever the actual vehicle for her passions, it was always clear that Rosamond had gathered the world into her soul and that the whole world was welcome there.²

Everything started at ANTA. Theatre Communications Group (TCG) had been recently founded, in 1961, as a membership service organization for regional theatres, and in the following decades the NEA and TCG superseded ANTA as mouthpieces for the nation’s theatres—and, owing to greater institutional strength, they began increasingly to represent U.S. theatre abroad. However, from 1968 to about 1976, Gilder, Coigney, and Mayleas continued to coordinate matters that touched on cold war cultural exchanges, providing some of the few official national connections across the Iron Curtain. The 12th ITI Congress in New York was a defining moment of emergence for ITI as an instrument of theatre policy in the USA.

First and foremost, credit is owed to the big private funders who supported the successful Congress. First on board was the Ford Foundation, based on the general understanding between Gilder and Lowry and negotiated between Joe Slater at Ford and Mayleas at ITI. The decision to hold the Congress in New York had to be finalized in Tel Aviv, and just on the eve of the ’67 event, Gilder wrote to Slater:

There are some things one never forgets, one of these was a telephone call from you just as I was taking off for Tel Aviv in June 1965, assuring me that our request for a grant for the XIIth Congress was well on its way, and that I could safely repeat my former invitation to the ITI to hold its next Congress in New York in 1967.³

Immediately after delegates approved the New York Congress, another letter from Gilder thanked Slater:

We have just received at ANTA the formal announcement of the grant of $90,000 for the ITI Congress in 1967. My warmest thanks again . . . Now it only remains to run the Congress, snag some additional current funds, and persuade the powers that be to bring over (and let in) the right people! (Russians, Poles, East Germans, etc.).

Ford’s support opened the floodgates for funding of this landmark event, and other public and private organizations stepped up, according to the ITI report (1967):

In addition, the U.S. Office of Education contributed support of $41,000 to a parallel and coordinated conference by AETA titled The International Conference on Theatre Education, borrowing expertise from more than twenty international specialists in the field selected by ITI. Rockefeller granted funds to the Advanced Institute for Development of American Repertory Theatres (AIDART) of Brooklyn College to assist in travel and lecture programs of certain foreign delegates attending the Congress (specifically, experts on Piscator from Russia and Germany).

The funding of the Congress was orchestrated to a large degree by Stevens from his new perch at the NEA, but clearly Lowry at Ford was a fellow mastermind. Miller at Rockefeller Brothers had by this point invested heavily in Michel Saint-Denis’s work on the development of Lincoln Center and Juilliard. The Congress program brought East and West together, and that focus engendered lifelong future support from Porter McCray and Richard Lanier at JDR 3rd Fund and later at the Trust for Mutual Understanding (TMU), all of whom would be instrumental, owing to connections made in sending Houseman, Gilder, and Norris Houghton to Korea, Japan, China, and India in 1971. Joint funding would soon send Martha Graham and other artists overseas through ANTA/ITI’s World Fair and Festival mandates. ITI, in effect, became a substantive part of a new postwar initiative to liberalize the USA through theatre diplomacy.

Against this background, Gilder explained to Ford representative Slater in a July 14, 1967 letter, her emotions at losing Mayleas to the NEA, and at the same time introduceed him to Mayleas’ replacement, young Martha Wadsworth:

This note is just to thank you most heartily for your interest and assistance. I remember with pleasure our meeting with Tom de Gaetani [scenographer] at the Tavern on the Green, which started the ball rolling once more, and our various consultations with Ruth Mayleas and yourself on the many details involved. I was, as you can well imagine, distressed when Ruth left the ITI after 10 years of work together, but I was fortunate indeed to have Martha Wadsworth free, at the moment—and most able and creative on a job new to her. She and the other members of my staff created an atmosphere of friendship, as well as competence, which made this one of the most successful Congresses in our ITI history.⁴

Host organizations for the Congress included:

New York Local Organizations:

Actors Equity Association

AID-ART (Brooklyn College)

The Dramatists Guild

The Library and Museum of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center

The New York Shakespeare Festival

The Players

The Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center

The Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theatre Foundation

National Organizations:

The American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA)

The American Educational Theatre Association

The American Educational Theatre Association

The United States Institute of Theatre Technology

GILDER HAD LOCAL HELP ORGANIZING the successful social side of the XIIth Congress from the powerful New York chapter of ANTA, led by Mrs. H. Alwyn Innes Brown, and including in its membership such familiar allies as Robert Dowling, Robert Whitehead, Blevins Davis, and C. Lawton Canfield. The list goes on:

ANTA New York Leadership

Vice Presidents:V. Beaumont Allen, Mrs. Floyd W. Jefferson, and Mr. Samuel R. Walker

Treasurer: William Chadbourne

Asst. Treasurer: Vinton Freedley

Board of Directors: C. Lawton Canfield, Mr. Cass Canfield, Mr. Blevins Davis, Mr. Howard Dietz, Robert Dowling, John Stuart Dudly, Sherman Ewing, Byron C. Foy, Mr. A. Lockwood, Gerald Loeb, Lucille Lortel, Mrs. Robert Howe Baldwin, Ms. Ulcinda Ballard, Mrs. Anthony A. Bliss, Ms. Jackie Bright, Mrs. Gertrude Robinson Smith, Calre M. Senie, Mrs. Sypros P. Skouras, Mrs. Vivian Spencer, Mrs. Henry Steger, Roger L. Stevens, Jean Tennyson, Robert Whitehead, Mrs. Cornelius V. Whitney, Mrs. Clark William, Ms. Peggy Wood, and Ms. Blanche Yourka

Executive Director: Mr. Henry Hewes

Regional Director: Mr. Sawyer Falk

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Mrs. H. Alwyn Innes Brown, president of ANTA New York

With this backing and Gilder’s help, Regional ANTA published a popular and informative in-season theatre rag titled Chapter One. It was in this publication that Gilder, in an expansive and detailed account under the headline U.N. of Theatre Gathers Here (Vol. XLXII, No. 5, May–June, 1967), alerted everyone to the arrival of the Russians:

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The Russians are here.

And so are the Bulgarians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Indians, French, German, Turks, Canadian, Icelanders, Danes, Swedes, Finns, and many others.

Why this multi-national, multi-lingual invasion of actors, directors, playwrights, designers, critics, and teachers—theatre people all?

The occasion is the biannual meeting of the International Theatre Institute, scheduled for June 4th to 11th. This is the first time in the 20-year history of the organization that the gathering will take place in New York City.

Bat-Ami, from Israel; charming, benign, one of the great actresses of the Habima; Radu Beligan, who played among many roles a memorable Berenger in his own theatre in Bucharest; Rene Hainaux, fresh from his triumphs in After the Fall in Brussels, will be in attendance.

Mikael Tsarev, leading actor of Mali, interpreter of Lermontov and the Russian classics; Sembbu Mitra, actor, director, creator of the Bohurupee Theatre of Calcutta; and Jean Darcante, actor, director, producer, past President of the International Federation of Actors and of ITI, and at present Secretary General of the organization, are also among the many distinguished personalities who will take part in the Congress.

The Barbizon-Plaza will house most of the delegates and its theatre and assembly rooms will provide working space in the same building.

Delegates will concentrate on the business of organization during the first three days of the Congress, following a report by the Secretary General Jean Darcante on the world-wide activities of the ITI since it met in Tel Aviv two years ago.

A General Committee has been set up to discuss organizational problems, and three committees will go to work on other important phases of ITI interests, following discussion and approval of plans, projects, and budgets for the next two years.

The Publications Committee, which concerns itself with World Theatre, the ITI’s handsomely illustrated bilingual, bimonthly magazine, will make available for the occasion a special issue on United States theatre. This committee has issued two volumes on Stage Design Throughout the World since 1935, and, among other books, an International Vocabulary of Technical Terms in eight languages, most useful for traveling companies and the delegates and friends of the XIIth Congress. Other books and reports are in the works, most of them edited, as is World Theatre, by the Belgian actor Rene Hainaux.

The Committee on Acting, which came into being at the Helsinki Congress in 1959, will be guided by Michel Saint-Denis and Prof. Lewin Goff (University of Kansas), who has been its International Secretary. Mr. Saint-Denis has chaired symposia on this subject in Brussels, Bucharest, Essen, Venice, and Stockholm.

Discussions concerning the whole theatre outlook will occupy the delegates to the Congress Thursday, June 8th, and Friday, June 9th. This year’s subject will be The Theatre of Tomorrow. Four aspects of the problem involved will be debated at daytime meetings . . . culminating in an open forum . . . Space will be available for interested participants and spectators.

United States theatre organizations, all represented on the Advisory Panel for the Congress, have planned a series of receptions for the delegates, which will take place after working hours and before curtain time.

Equity entertained the delegates at a reception and cocktail party Monday afternoon at 6 o’clock. The Players, the Dramatists Guild and the New York Shakespeare Festival will be hosts to the Congress. In conjunction with the City, the latter organization has planned a reception, and a peek at Shakespeare-in-the-Park (weather permitting).

Under the sponsorship of Ambassador and Mrs. Arthur Golderg, ANTA and the U.S. Centre will entertain the Congress at the United Nations, where the representatives of the countries included in the Congress delegation will be on the receiving line.

A final hospitable gesture will be a visit to the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Conn., and to the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Foundation. A typical New England Feast, the Great American Clambake, will climax the pilgrimage.

It is the hope of all those concerned that this Congress will increase America’s interest and participation in international theatre affairs and act as a stimulant to mutual understanding and good will among theatre artists the world over.

A great event was planned. But at the last minute, a problem surfaced. In a reversal of past history, wherein Israelis or Koreans or Filipinos were hard-pressed to obtain a special visa for a U.S. visit, or Iron Curtain countries like Russia or Poland denied travel to their citizens, the shoe was suddenly on the other foot. The U.S. State Department announced its unwillingness to approve a visa for the Cuban cultural ambassador. In an interview years later, Coigney described her Cuban visa crisis to Anne Bogart:

In 1967, we invited the 46 current ITI member Centers to our Congress in New York. We were told by the Department of State that we shouldn’t have invited Cuba, although we recognized Cuba—but Cuba was being boycotted. Then we were told that we could invite the GDR, because while they were not a country as far as we were concerned, they could apply for visas in West Berlin and were, therefore, free to come. We heard nothing from Cuba until three days before the Congress—which, incidentally, took place the same week as the Six Day War in the Middle East. On the Wednesday before the opening, we received a cable from Havana: Please arrange visa for three-person Cuban delegation. We said the equivalent of OH MY GOD and called Robert Kennedy’s office. The Senator’s aides said: Cable back and ask where the visas should be issued, Montreal or Mexico City. Return cable from Cuba: Both. Well, there were consular officials who had the joy of spending the June 3 weekend at work. We heard nothing—until the middle of the Congress, when the last cable arrived: Sorry, missed the plane. But, you see, what was also missed was an international incident lying in wait to happen. In the years that followed, other incidents of exclusion were threatened.

The mission of the institute and its Congress was to deliver funding and informational support to theatre artists regardless of their nationality or politics, but political exigencies sometimes interfered with that mission or stymied efforts to carry it out. Nevertheless, Coigney—owing to her work with Stevens, Gilder, and her ANTA colleagues—began her life’s work aware of such challenges, savvy about ways to contend with them, and immersed in a practical, non-bureaucratic liberalism that would prove effective over the long haul.

Gilder’s first official outreach to the theatre world about the Congress, on March 1, 1966, raised some important points early on. She noted that ITI remained legally part of ANTA, the National Theatre-inspired not-for-profit-focused lobbying group. She noted ITI’s affiliation with UNESCO, adding (perhaps for shock value or to engender interest), The last two Congresses have taken place in Warsaw and Tel-Aviv, that is, behind the Iron Curtain and in Israel. In a departure from previous conferences, and in order to diplomatically accommodate the Russians, she wanted the guests on their rare and expensive journey to gain a wider view of our theatrical scene. She proposed that universities and other theatre entities invite, engage with, and pay for travel expenses for foreign experts, and bring their own experts to the conference as well—they could approach ITI with proposals and, through ITI, acquire State Department reimbursements for appropriate programs. She concluded the letter, I do not know whether this idea is practical or not, but I felt that it might be a way in which more people could benefit by the presence of our distinguished guests than if the Congress were limited to its usual one-week sojourn. Little did she imagine at that point that ITI would achieve a four-week, fully hosted program that included travel, residence, and programs in every region of the country and Toronto, Canada, as well.

Over the next year, Gilder and Coigney sought and received support from every level of U.S. society, including letters of support from President Lyndon Johnson, Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller, Senator Robert Kennedy, and, of course, Roger Stevens in his capacity as chair of the NEA.

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President Lyndon B. Johnson welcomes ITI delegates.

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A welcome from Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York

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Official support from Roger L. Stevens, National Council on the Arts, NEA

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Best wishes from Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller

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A worldwide promotion by the ITI-International’s World Theatre publication

Behind the Scenes: Planning the 1967 Congress

IN HER OFFICIAL INFORMATIONAL COMMUNIQUE, on Congress Advisory Committee letterhead in the spring of 1967, Gilder listed herself and John Houseman as co-chairs of the committee, and Martha Wadsworth is listed for the first time as director. Mayleas had succeeded in extracting a promise (note that it was verbal, and was made prior to the Tel Aviv gathering) from Lowry for $90,000 to support the congress, which was confirmed in minutes from an April 15, 1967, advisory panel working meeting. The minutes baldly stated:

The invitation to New York was made possible through assurances from the Ford Foundation (Mac Lowry) that the U.S. Center’s petition for funds would be approved. The grant in the sum of $90,000 was received by ANTA for the U.S. Centre in December 1965. The chairman thanked Ms. Nan Martin and Mrs. Ruth Mayleas for their efforts in securing this grant.

The Congress’ Advisory Panel members at the time of this meeting were:

Administrative

Rosamond Gilder and John Houseman, Co-Chairs

Nan Martin, Vice-Chair

Judy Minoff, Secretary

Panel Members

Richard Barr, Louis Chapin, Marc Connolly, Marjorie Dycke, Eldon Elder, Elizabeth Elson, Robert Epstein, Mills T.E. Eyck, Jules Irving, Stanley Kauffmann, Edward Kook, Mateo Lettunich, Michael Mabry, Robert MacGregor, Ella Malin, Nan Martin, Robert Morris, Donald Oenslager, Henry Popkin, Joel Rubin, Dorothy Sands, Muriel Sharon, Martha Wadsworth, Stanley Young, Joseph Anthony, Paul Baker, William Ball, John Beaufort, Warren Caro, Harold Clurman, Joseph Chaikin, Thomas DeGaetani, George Freedley, William Gibson, Andre Gregory, Jean Gust, Lewin Goff, Henry Hewes, Theodore Hoffman, Norris Houghton, John Houseman, Walter Kerr, Sidney Kingsley, Howard Telchmann, Sanford Meisner, John Mitchell, Ruth Mayleas, Adrian Larkin, Frederick O’Neil, Joseph Papp, Arthur Penn, Harold Prince, Russell Porter, Oliver Rea, Richard Schechner, Barrie Stavis, George Alan Smith, Henry Williams, Milton Weingraub

The advisory panel’s ITI Planning Committee, headed up by Theatre Guild Executive Director Warren Caro, was something of an American theatre who’s-who, especially after some thirty-five big names were invited to join up in anticipation of the necessary 1966 planning push. By 1968, however, after the Congress’s successful conclusion, the Advisory Committee changed in terms of both membership and mission: It became a much-expanded resource that remained active in support of ITI interests, which had the effect of exponentially leveraging the influence of what was in point of fact a tiny organization with a budget under $300,000 per year. In the interest of future reflections, the post-Congress makeup of the advisory committee is shown in this list:

Richard Barr, producer, President of the League of New York Theatres

Peggy Clark, lighting designer, President of United Scenic Artists

Harold Clurman, director/critic, Theatre Development Fund

Eldon Elder, designer, AIDART/ Brooklyn College

Elizabeth Elson, actress, United Nations liaison

Bernard Gersten, Executive Director, New York Shakespeare Festival

Rosamond Gilder, President, ITI-USA

Lewin Goff, President, American Educational Theatre

Lewis Harmon, public relations

Norris Houghton, Dean of School of Arts, State University of New York at Purchase

John Houseman, producer/director, Executive Director, Juilliard School of Drama

Jules Irving, Director, Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre

Sol Jacobson, public relations

Adrian Larkin, Institute of International Education

Judith Leabo, Assistant Director, ITI-USA

Karl Leabo, editor/art director

David E. Levine, Executive Secretary, Dramatists Guild

Frederic M. Litto, Director of the International Theatre Studies Center, University of Kansas (ITI-affiliated)

Robert MacGregor, Publisher, Theatre Arts Books

Nan Martin, actress, Chair, Drama Panel of State Department Advisory Committee on the Arts

Ruth Mayleas, Program Director for Theatre, National Endowment for the Arts

Donald Oenslager, designer, UNESCO liaison

Frederick O’Neil, actor, President of Actors Equity Association

Russell Porter, Chairman, Department of Drama, University of Denver (ITI-affiliated)

Joel Rubin, technical consultant, Vice President of IOSTT

Dorothy Sands, actress, Equity Executive Council member

Alan Schneider, director, Catholic University, ANTA, Arena Stage, Netherlander

Ellen Stewart, La Mama (making her first appearance in ITI documents)

Roger Sullivan, director, Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers Workshop Foundation

Howard Teichmann, playwright, Dramatists Guild Council

Martha Wadsworth, Director of ITI

Douglas Turner Ward, playwright, Artistic Director of the Negro Ensemble Company

George White, Director, Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theatre Foundation

Henry Williams, Chairman, Department of Drama, Dartmouth College

This list of names is extraordinary by any measure, but becomes more so when you consider the tiny group that one year before, on February 22, 1966, met under the rubric of planning committee—it consisted only of Gilder, Chairman; Judy Minoff, Secretary; and members Tom Degaetani, Eldon Elder, Jean Guest, Ella Malin, Nan Martin, Russell Porter, George Alan Smith, Martha Wadsworth, and Stanley Young. Helping this small team in the background to make connections were Lewin Goff, Henry Popkin, Harold Prince, Oliver Rea, Richard Schechner, and Alan Schneider. It was noted that Gilder approached Zelda Fichandler, who regretfully declined. Edward Albee was unapproachable (though later Albee did participate in the Congress itself).

The larger, more generally tasked advisory committee met six times, and responsibilities were widely dispensed, such as hosting and caring for specific distinguished guests, arranging displays, giving lectures, scheduling performances, scouting venues for mini-performances, obtaining tickets, acting as liaisons with theatre unions and actors’ unions, seeking out named people to attend specific events, contacting board members and funding sources of allied organizations, and so on. Many did yeoman service and all fifty or so advisory committee members contributed, though they may not have attended all meetings.

High on the list of priorities was the care and feeding of yet another group, designated the honorarycommittee, invited to the Congress on the basis of their history of theatrical support or positions of influence. On this roll, listed with their designated ITI contacts, were:

Harvie Branscomb, Chief Officer of the U.S. National Commission, UNESCO (Gilder)

Ernest Brooks, Old Dominion Foundation (Stanley Young)

Charles Frankel, Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs (Gilder)

Sen. J. William Fulbright (Nan Martin)

John Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (Young)

Ambassador Arthur Goldberg (Young)

Kenneth Holland, IIE (Gilder)

Vice President Hubert Humphrey (Martin)

George Irwin, Arts Council of America (George Smith)

Sen. Jacob Javits (Young)

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (Martin)

Seymour Knox, New York State Council on the Arts (Gilder)

Mayor John V. Lindsay (Hal Prince)

Norman Lloyd, Rockefeller Foundation (Young)

Harry McPherson, Assistant to the President (Martin) Senator Claiborne Pell (Young)

Alan Pifer, Carnegie Corporation (Margaret Mahoney)

Donald R. Seawell, founder, Denver Center for the Performing Arts (Wadsworth)

Roger L. Stevens (Mayleas)

Among the designated contacts on the list above are two of Martha’s youthful cohorts, Stanley Young, a writer for BBC’s Sunday Night Theatre and ITV’s Television Playhouse; and film and television actress Nan Martin, who appeared in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) and The Mugger (1958, and later played regularly in a range of television series, from the Untouchables and Twilight Zone to Star Trek: The Next Generation and Columbo. Martha was tasked with soliciting the participation of ITI-USA sympathizer Donald R. Sewell, whose wife Eugenia Rawls had played Tallulah Bankhead’s daughter in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes on Broadway in 1939. There was little chance Sewell could refuse, given the formidable women’s network behind Martha’s call.

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Eugenia Rawls and Tallulah Bankhead in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes on Broadway (1939).

The Congress’ event brochures were graphic masterpieces that illustrated the carefully worked-out themes of the discussions. The distinctive ITI logo remained in use on ITI-USA letterhead for three decades.

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Congress brochure cover

ANTA’s Playbill generates a document that repeats the logo with various sources of information about the International Theatre Institute, supported by the usual advertisers. Best of all is the glossy ITI brochure designed by Karl Leabo that cleverly lays the outline of the logo in conceptual blocks, designed like environmental stages laid over caricatures from Shakespeare, with Central Park and skyscrapers in the background.

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Inside the brochure, beside a simple black-and-white International Theatre Institute title, is a signed letter of welcome from the President of the United States. The statement is accompanied by a generous array of brilliant photographs that offer unusual urban perspectives on the city and frame useful information about the Congress’s programs, locations, and people. First up is a European view from over the water of the whole city, which introduces a concept of time and history—the connection to Europe is emblemized by the wake of the boat. Then comes the iconic Empire State Building, photographed to emphasize the verticality of the city seen from below, as the visiting artists will. Finally, a view of the Empire State from above looking down introduces abstract geometrical patterns involving light and shadow, good and bad, human and mechanical.

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Of course, urban complexity and post-Eiffel Tower deconstructed multipurposemodernism gets an image as well. Every detail is resonant. Toward the end of the promotion, these photos are thematically consolidated into a graphic mixture that perfectly matches the booklet’s central purpose, which is to communicate the vast scale and historic (perhaps even European) complexity of U.S. theatre organizations, which the Congress committee proceeds to list.

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XIIth ITI Congress Official Documents and Reports

LET US EXAMINE NOTES AND IMAGES FROM VARIOUS official reports about the activities of the XIIth ITI Congress. The ANTA Newsletter had this to say about the Congress’ opening night:

The opening meeting took place at the ANTA Theatre on the evening of June 4. Assistant Secretary of State Charles Frankel gave an excellent address. Roger Stevens, Chairman of the National Council of the Arts, presided, and Arthur Miller, President of P.E.N. and representing so much of the best in the American scene, spoke wisely and cogently, as always. Frederick O’Neal, President of Actors Equity, read messages of welcome from the President of the United States and the Governor of New York. Jean Darcante spoke for ITI, and Rosamond Gilder, as President of ITI and director of the United States Centre, cordially welcomed the XIIth Congress. Afterwards, a coup de champagne provided an occasion for introductions.

Stevens was rightly acknowledged as the presiding spokesman for the nation’s theatres, having supported and orchestrated ANTA/ITI’s aspirations to achieve this moment for fifteen years—by backing the creation of a northeast regional repertory hub, a plan that included Boston and New Haven theatres as well as the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, where he was a trustee; by underwriting the ANTA Theatre on Washington Square and the Lincoln Center Repertory; by developing and building the Kennedy Center for the Arts in D.C.; all of which happened quite apart from his stunning work as a producer on and off Broadway.

Gilder also draws attention to the powerful opening-night events in her report on the Congress:

At nine o’clock in the evening on June 4, the ANTA Theatre was lit and unusually animated. Delegates and guests from 44 countries—some 170 people who had arrived from the four corners of the world, from Europe, East and West; from Asia and Africa; from Canada and South America—were received by the Advisory Panel of the United States Center and several honored theatre people who had helped to plan and launch the First International Theatre Congress ever held in New York. On the platform to greet the delegates were Assistant Secretary of State Charles Frankel; Roger Stevens, Chairman of the National Council on the Arts; Arthur Miller, President of International P.E.N.; Frederick O’Neil, President of Actors Equity; Rosamond Gilder, ITI President; Enrique Fulchignoni, representative of UNESCO; and Jean Darcante, Secretary General of ITI. Because of the acute state of the Mideast crisis, Senators Javits and Kennedy were in Washington, but the Israeli Ambassador to the UN and several others of the permanent representatives made an appearance to emphasize their concern with cultural relations in general, and especially to celebrate the success of the XIIth ITI Congress as a symbol of friendship, intelligence, and unity, as one of the delegates expressed it.

The speeches were variously important and meaningful in this moment of crisis. Because of the situation, they were mainly improvised, except for the notes prepared by the President of ITI and the Secretary General. The important fact was the cordial welcome expressed by the speakers and in the telegrams received from President Johnson and Governor Rockefeller.

A coup de champagne in the foyer of the ATA Theatre permitted contacts, introductions and reunions.

Designated themes at the Congress included:

• The Responsibility of the Theatre to the Progress of Society

• The Problems of the Actor

• The Aesthetic and Technical Problems of the Open Stage

• After the Theatre of the Absurd, What?

It is difficult to capture the wonderful dynamics of these discussions among great minds of U.S. and international theatre, but a few captioned photographs from the ANTA Newsletter convey some of it.

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Arthur Miller meets Robert deVries of the Netherlands

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ITI stalwarts meet: from left, Barrie Stavis, Gerard Resil, Rosamond Gilder,

Cecile Guidote, Joel Adedeji, and Okot p’Bitek, among other delegates

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Alan Schneider and Richard Schechner meet with the Warsaw Pac

The American liberal imprint and the high level of political and artistic support for U.S. international engagement demonstrated at the New York Congress galvanized the Russians into taking ITI seriously as cultural diplomacy, and resulted in the necessity of a future Congress in Moscow to showcase socialist theatre.

In response to Mikhial Tsarev’s formal Soviet request for more focused themes for each Congress and his attendant appeal to avoid dogmatism and propaganda, Gilder and Wadsworth recruited John Houseman, who was both a theatre historian and the soon-to-be head of drama at the Juilliard School. Houseman, known to the Russians and respected in his capacity as a producer, arranged a series of roundtable events with an innovative format for managed open discussions. This worked effectively to unite some of the greatest minds in world theatre, in keeping with the American tradition of freedom of speech—Zelda Fichandler, Edward Albee, and Alan Schneider took part. Harold Clurman, also admired by the Russians owing to his leadership of the Russian-inspired Group Theatre, surprised some by criticizing the state of American theatre as it relates to actor development and cultural values. These remarks came in the final of a series of four entretiens, a technique designed to facilitate discussion among potentially dissenting partners:

A new technique for the Congress, Entretiens, was inaugurated at the XIIth Congress. It had been felt increasingly that the Congress was getting too large to devote itself as a body to one subject for two days. The idea evolved by the U.S. Centre was to have one overall topic, The Theatre Tomorrow, and break it up into four sub-divisions all aimed at the future of the theatre [see designated themes, above].

This new procedure was proposed to the various Centers a year before the Congress and official approval was secured. The Director of the U.S. Center then corresponded with a number of leading theatre people around the world asking them to chair the appropriate roundtables. In certain cases where the person desired was not one of the delegates, the U.S. Center offered them a travel grant. To further ensure the effectiveness of the entretiens, John Houseman was asked to undertake the production of the series and to help secure the stars—foreign and American—who would best reflect the various aspects of the subject and stimulate lively discussion. The final casts for the four events were fairly spectacular.

Some of the dynamics within the entretiens are described in the U.S. Congress report:

Entretien 1: "The