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Firehouse Theater

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The Firehouse Theater of Minneapolis and later of San Francisco was a significant producer of experimental, theater of the absurd, and avant guard theater in the 1960s and 1970s. Its productions included new plays and some world premieres, presented often with radical and exploratory directorial styles. The Firehouse introduced playwrights and new plays to Minneapolis and San Francisco. It premiered plays by Megan Terry, Sam Shepard, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and others, and presented plays by Harold Pinter, John Arden, August Strindberg, John Osborne, Arthur Kopit, Eugene Ionesco, Berthold Brecht, Samuel Beckett and others.[1] Writing in 1968, The New York Times points out that The Firehouse Theater "has been doing avantgarde plays in Minneapolis nearly as long as the Tyrone Guthrie Theater has been doing the other kind, and with much less help from the Establishment."[2]

History

The Firehouse Theater began in Minneapolis in the summer of 1963. Director Marlow S. Hotchkiss, artist James F. Faber, actor John Shimek, and director Charles Morrison III joined forces, and raised funds to renovate an 1894 fire station. The theater space, located at 3010 Minnehaha Avenue near the corner of Lake Street, was a 166 seat amateur theater on a proscenium stage with a small thrust into the audience. It was envisioned as a place for new playwrights and avant-garde drama. The first production was The Connection by Jack Gelber, which opened August 22, 1963. After the performance the audience and company stayed for a discussion, and that became a standard feature of The Firehouse Theater.[3][4]

In 1965 the theater faced funding problems, and another kind challenge was the theater’s desire to be part of the community with a dependence on open auditions with amateur actors drawn from the local pool. The theater then regrouped and found new vision. It became a non-profit organization and received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Some important members of the company left, and Marlow Hotchkiss invited Sydney Schubert Walter to be the artistic director. Walter had been part of New York’s Open Theatre.[5][6]

The theater experimented with the playing space — it evolved into a flexible modular space, with a less defined playing space and audience area. It developed a new style known as transformational theater, in which the performers, like shape-shifters, could transform from character to character.[7] [8] Audience involvement and improvisation were often featured.[9] Directorial ideas took the form of wild explorations, strobe lights, film projections, and nudity.[10] The theater would go on the road and tour other cities in the United States and also Europe.[11][12]

In the spring of 1968, The Firehouse Theater toured Europe with its production of Megan Terry’s play with music, Jack-Jack, described as a "wildly physical satire on American life." The European tour of Jack-Jack was preceded by a seven week run in Minneapolis, and when the theater returned it ran for another three weeks. According to The New York Times, the nude scene in Jack Jack "…is far more explicit than anything on the New York stage this season. But at the same time it is so much like a classical painting come to life, of nymphs and satyrs frolicking on the green, that no one in Minneapolis seems to have objected loudly enough to attract the censors."[13]

The following July the theatre was presenting Brecht’s A Man is a Man in the parks of Minneapolis, and it attracted controversy when some, including a police officer, objected to a scene in the play that enacted a man’s genitals being shot off. The theater was known for protesting the Viet Nam war, and in October of 1968, the artistic director, Sydney Schubert Walter, received an induction notice from the military. He was, at 33, older than the usual maximum age to be drafted, which was 26. Walter went to the federal building in Minneapolis to refuse the induction, claiming that his civil right were being violated. Walter was accompanied by the theater company, and others, who staged a protest in support of him. Walter expected that he would face further trouble.[14]

The theater lost their lease at the 19th century fire station in 1969, and moved to California Street at Polk San Francisco. The company lived as a commune. Their first season in San Francisco began with a production of Blessings on March 20, 1970. In 1974 the theater faced a budget crisis, lost their space, and the members disbanded.[15][16][17]

Production history

References

  1. ^ [1] Gottlieb, Saul. "Awkwardness Is Not a Bad Thing: An Interview with Sydney Walter and Marlow Hotchkiss of the Firehouse Theater, Minneapolis." The Drama Review. Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1969), pp. 121-127
  2. ^ Sullivan, Dan. "Theater: Even Minnesota; Avant-garde Jack Jack, a Hit, Surprising Management of Experimental Stage". The New York Times. June 22, 1968
  3. ^ Hotchkiss, Marlow. "A Spiritual History". Firehouse Theater. Published by: The Firehouse Theater. 1969
  4. ^ Harding, James M. ed. Rosenthal, Cindy. ed. "The Sixties, Center Stage: Mainstream and Popular Performances in a Turbulent Decade". University of Michigan Press. 2017. pp. 263-265. ISBN 9780472073368
  5. ^ [2] Gottlieb, Saul. "Awkwardness Is Not a Bad Thing: An Interview with Sydney Walter and Marlow Hotchkiss of the Firehouse Theater, Minneapolis." The Drama Review. Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1969), pp. 121-127
  6. ^ Sainer, Arthur. The New Radical Theater Notebook. Applause Books. 1997. p. 22-25. ISBN 978-1557831682
  7. ^ Szilassy, Zoltan. American Theater of the 1960s. Southern Illinois Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0809312276 pp. 38-40
  8. ^ Schechner, Richard. "Six Axioms for Environmental Theater." The Drama Review: Thirty Years of Commentary on the Avant-garde, ed. Brooks McNamara and Jill Dolan, 151-171. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986.
  9. ^ Shank, Theodore. American Alternative Theater . New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1982. ISBN 978-0394179636
  10. ^ Walsh, Richard. Radical Theater in the Sixties and Seventies. Halifax, England: British Association for American Studies, 1993. ISBN 978-0946488148
  11. ^ Innes, Christopher. Carlstrom, Katherine. Fraser, Scott. Twentieth-Century British and American Theater: A Critical Guide to Archives. Publisher: Routledge (2019) ISBN 978-1138359802
  12. ^ Sainer, Arthur. The New Radical Theater Notebook. Applause Books. 1997. p. 22-25. ISBN 978-1557831682
  13. ^ Sullivan, Dan. "Theater: Even Minnesota; Avant-garde Jack Jack, a Hit, Surprising Management of Experimental Stage". The New York Times. June 22, 1968
  14. ^ "Theater Director Balks at Draft; Head of Minneapolis Group Calls His Rights Violated. The New York Times. Oct. 20, 1968. P. 8
  15. ^ Walsh, Richard. Radical Theater in the Sixties and Seventies. Halifax, England: British Association for American Studies, 1993. ISBN 978-0946488148
  16. ^ Harding, James M. ed. Rosenthal, Cindy. ed. "The Sixties, Center Stage: Mainstream and Popular Performances in a Turbulent Decade". University of Michigan Press. 2017. pp. 263-265. ISBN 9780472073368
  17. ^ [3] The Firehouse Theater Company Archives, 1963-1974. Online Archive of California.
  18. ^ [4] The Firehouse Theater Company Archives, 1963-1974. Online Archive of California.
  19. ^ [5] Gottlieb, Saul. "Awkwardness Is Not a Bad Thing: An Interview with Sydney Walter and Marlow Hotchkiss of the Firehouse Theater, Minneapolis." The Drama Review. Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1969), pp. 121-127
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