ANTA Matinee Series
During the mid-1950s, the board of directors for the American National Theater and Academy (this organization eventually evolved into the National Endowment for the Arts) was interested in creating a repertory theater of national standing. Ms. Lortel, then a member of the ANTA board, and feeling somewhat frustrated by the success of Threepenny Opera (because she wanted to bring more plays into her theater) persuaded ANTA to instead support a matinee series as a "laboratory for innovation" based on the model of the work she was doing at the White Barn Theatre. With the board's approval, she opened the ANTA Matinee Series in the spring of 1956 at the (then) Theatre de Lys. Ms Lortel acted as Artistic Director of the series and committed the series to presenting a program that was free of commercial influence. Plays were picked for the Matinee Series without regard for popular appeal and no monetary benefit was claimed in the event that commercial interest developed over a production. The series was presented every Tuesday afternoon and ran for twenty years. Of the Off-Broadway successes that were presented by the Matinee Series, most notable are: Margaret Webster's The Brontes, Langston Hughes' Shakespeare in Harlem and Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Two productions began in the Matinee series went on to the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy: Tennessee Williams' I Rise In Flame Cried The Phoenix and Meade Roberts' Maidens and Mistresses at Home in the Zoo, the latter of which also played Off-Broadway.
Other significant presentations of the ANTA Matinee Theatre Series include: Helen Hayes in Lovers, Villains and Fools; Eva Le Gallienne in Two Stories by Oscar Wilde: The Birthday of the Infanta and The Happy Prince; Siobhan McKenna in an experimental version of Hamlet; Peggy Wood in G.B. Shaw's Candida, a dramatic recital by Dame Sybil Thorndike and Sir Lewis Casson; Richard Burton, Walter Abel and Cathleen Nesbitt in An Afternoon of Poetry; and Orson Bean in A Round with Ring.
Read more about this topic: Lucille Lortel
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