Richard Barr: The Playwright's Producer

by David A. Crespy, Edward Albee (Foreword by)

Overview

In Richard Barr: The Playwright’s Producer, author David A. Crespy investigates the career of one of the theatre’s most vivid luminaries, from his work on the film and radio productions of Orson Welles to his triumphant—and final—production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Explored in detail along the way are the producer’s relationship with playwright Edward Albee, whose major plays such as A Zoo Story and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Barr was the first to produce, and his innovative productions of controversial works by playwrights like Samuel Beckett, Terrence McNally, and Sam Shepard. Crespy draws on Barr’s own writings on the theatre, his personal papers, and more than sixty interviews with theatre professionals to offer insight into a man whose legacy to producers and playwrights resounds in the theatre world. Also included in the volume are a foreword and an afterword by Edward Albee, a three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and one of Barr’s closest associates. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809331406
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	03/28/2013
Series:	Theater in the Americas
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 6.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

 David A. Crespy is professor of playwriting and dramatic literature at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He is the author of Off-Off Broadway Explosion.

Table of Contents

Foreword Edward Albee ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: "You Have to Hock Your House: The Story of a Producer" 1

1 Privilege with a Price: Washington, Princeton, and Early Theatre Efforts 4

2 Playing with Martians: Stage and Screen with Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre 12

3 A Theatrical Warrior: Lieutenant Richard Barr 39

4 Learning the Director's Craft: Stock, Broadway, and City Center 49

5 Broadway Beginnings: Ethel Waters, Ruth Draper, and Theatrical Collage 66

6 The Zoo Story: Discovering Edward Albee 78

7 Producers at Work: On Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway 95

8 Experimenting with Edward: Malcolm to All Over 139

9 Hocking the House: Seascape to Sweeney Todd 165

10 Brightening Broadway's Lights: Barr's Legacy to the American Theatre 195

Afterword Edward Albee 225

Notes 227

Bibliography 261

Index 269

Editorial Reviews

“Thank you, David Crespy, for turning a brilliant and long overdue spotlight on the life and career of Richard Barr, one of the seminal figures of twentieth-century theater. Crespy reminds us how much of today’s theater finds its roots in Barr’s work as a discoverer, nurturer, and producer of new work, as a man who restructured a sclerotic commercial theater, as a man who changed the rules—in short, all the daring he learned as Orson Welles’s assistant in the legendary Mercury Theatre. Everyone working in theater today owes a debt to the remarkable Richard Barr.”—John Guare, playwright

“David Crespy’s book is a stellar parade and a fascinating portrait of a producer as a young, then mature, man. Richard Barr is a ‘present at the birth’ character, as he crosses our theatre’s history in too many ways to count. Now, thanks to Professor Crespy, we can be present too. We’re with him on his opening nights, including the joyous bloodlettings of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd on Broadway. We can stumble upon an intrepid line of gay men waiting for tickets to the pre-Stonewall run of The Boys in the Band and grieve a community decimated by AIDS. We can witness the passion of a man who would hock his house to put a play up. If you care about the American theatre, Barr is a man to know.”—Todd London, artistic director, New Dramatists

From the Publisher