History
Herford built the theater as a tribute to the London music halls that were typical for monologist's performances and in 1946, Herford donated the theater to the Vokes Players, a local non-profit group.
For the first 30 years or so of the theatre's life, it was not open to the public. Rather, Herford would invite her friends, who included leading actors on the English-speaking stage, singers, New England artists, and others (it was an eclectic mix) to be her guests at her estate in Wayland. In the theatre, performing only for their own amusement, leading lights of the New York and London stages would perform plays as an ensemble. A wall exists showing the signatures of some of those who came to Wayland including Ellen Terry, George Arliss, Florence Arliss, Katharine Cornell; the house archives show that other guests included diva Geraldine Farrar, and actors Ethel Barrymore, John Drew, Norah Bayes, and others.
Read more about this topic: Vokes Theatre
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)