American writer and producer (1927–2023)
Robert Sanford Brustein (April 21, 1927 – October 29, 2023) was an American theatrical critic, producer, playwright, writer, and educator. He founded the Yale Repertory Theatre while serving as dean of the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut, as well as the American Repertory Theater and Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was a creative consultant until his death, and was the theatre critic for "The New Republic". He commented on politics for the "HuffPost".
Brustein was a senior research fellow at Harvard University and a distinguished scholar in residence at Suffolk University in Boston. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999, and in 2002, was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 2003, he served as a senior fellow with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, and in 2004/2005, was a senior fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts Arts Journalism Institute in Theatre and Musical Theatre at the University of Southern California. In 2010, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.
Life and career.
Robert Sanford Brustein was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 21, 1927, to Blanche Haft Brustein and Max Brustein. He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, residing in the same apartment building as Sergei Rachmaninoff. In elementary and high school, his dream was "to be Artie Shaw's successor as a swing band leader." He was educated at The High School of Music &amp; Art, and Amherst College, where he received a BA in 1948 (briefly studying in the medieval history graduate program), the Yale School of Drama for a year studying dramatic literature and criticism, and Columbia University, where he received an MA in 1950, and a PhD in 1957, in dramatic literature and cultural criticism, supervised by Lionel Trilling. His dissertation was on the playwright John Marston. During a break from university, he served in the Merchant Marine on tankers and Victory ships, and later at Kings Point Academy on Long Island. He also held a Fulbright Fellowship to study in the United Kingdom from 1953 to 1955, where he directed plays at the University of Nottingham. After teaching at Cornell University, Vassar College, and Columbia, where he became a full professor of dramatic literature in the English department, he became Dean of the Yale School of Drama in 1966, and served in that position until 1979. It was during this period, in 1966, that he founded the Yale Repertory Theatre.
In 1979, Brustein left Yale for Harvard University, where he founded the American Repertory Theater (ART) and became a professor of English. At Harvard, he founded the Institute for Advanced Theater Training. He retired from the artistic directorship of ART in 2002, and then served on the faculty of the institute. He was a distinguished scholar in residence from 2007, at Suffolk University, where he taught courses in Shakespeare Analysis. As the artistic director of Yale Rep from 1966 to 1979, and of ART from 1980 to 2002, Brustein supervised over 200 productions, acting in eight and directing twelve.
Personal life and death.
Brustein was married to actress Norma Ofstrock until her death in 1979. (Brustein was the stepfather to Norma Ofstrock's son from a previous marriage, Phil Cates). That marriage resulted in son Daniel Brustein. In 1996, he married activist and academic Doreen Beinart; through this marriage, he became the stepfather of journalist Peter Beinart and of Jean Stern.
Brustein died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 29, 2023, at the age of 96.
Critical writing.
Brustein was the theatre critic for "The New Republic" from 1959 to "about 2000", and later contributed to "The Huffington Post". He authored sixteen books on theatre and society:
Brustein was the writer and narrator of a WNET television series in 1966 called "The Opposition Theatre". He also commented on contemporary social and political issues for the "Huffington Post".
Conflict with August Wilson.
In 1996 and 1997, Brustein was involved in an extended public debate – through their essays, speeches and personal appearances – with African-American playwright August Wilson about multiculturalism, color-blind casting, and other issues where race impacts on the craft and practice of theatre in America. "The feud," wrote Bruce Weber in the "New York Times", "... reached a climax in 1997 with an extraordinary public debate in front of a sold-out house at Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan."
Other conflicts.
Brustein criticized the not-for-profit theaters for developing commercial work and becoming tryout houses for Broadway. His fellow directors of regional theaters felt betrayed. A series of articles and letters followed in the "New York Times" and elsewhere. Critics from the Boston Globe and the Boston Phoenix attacked Brustein for his dual roles as producer/director and theater critic, calling it a conflict of interest. The critic Davi Napoleon wrote an essay that included quotations from other critics who said that Brustein's dual roles made him uniquely qualified to review theater with insight and intelligence. Napoleon pointed out that while Brustein sometimes reviewed colleagues and former students, he did not always review them favorably.
Playwright.
As a playwright, Brustein both authored plays and adapted the material of other authors.
Adaptations.
During his tenure at ART, Brustein wrote eleven adaptations, including Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck," "The Master Builder", and "When We Dead Awaken", the last directed by Robert Wilson; "Three Farces and a Funeral", adapted from the works and life of Anton Chekhov; Luigi Pirandello's "Enrico IV"; and Brustein's final production at ART, "Lysistrata" by Aristophanes, directed by Andrei Serban.
Adaptations which he also directed while at ART include a Pirandello trilogy: "Six Characters in Search of an Author", which won the Boston Theatre Award for Best Production of 1996, "Right You Are (If You Think You Are)", and "Tonight We Improvise"; Ibsen's Ghosts, Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard", Strindberg's The Father, and Thomas Middleton's The Changeling.
Brustein also conceived and adapted the musical "Shlemiel the First", based on the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer and set to traditional klezmer music, which was directed and choreographed by David Gordon. After the original presentation in 1994 at ART and in Philadelphia at the American Music Theatre Festival, who co-produced the show, "Shlemiel the First" was revived several times in Cambridge and subsequently played at the Lincoln Center Serious Fun Festival, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, as well as touring theatres on the east coast of Florida and in Stamford, Connecticut. The play has also been produced at Theater J in Washington, D.C.. A remount of the original David Gordon production was presented by Peak Performances at Montclair State University's Kasser Theatre in January 2010, and went on to a three-week run at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.
Brustein's klezmer musical, with composer Hankus Netsky, "The King of Second Avenue", an adaptation of Israel Zangwill's "The King of the Schnorrers", was produced at the New Repertory Theatre in 2015.
Original works.
Brustein's full-length plays include "Demons", "Nobody Dies on Friday", "The Face Lift", "Spring Forward, Fall Back", and his Shakespeare Trilogy "The English Channel", "Mortal Terror", and "The Last Will."
"Demons", which was broadcast on WGBH radio in 1993, had its stage world premiere as part of the American Repertory Theater New Stages Season. "Nobody Dies on Friday" was given its world premiere in the same series and was presented at the Singapore Arts Festival and the Pushkin Theatre in Moscow. It was included in Marisa Smith's anthology "New Playwrights: Best Plays of 1998".
"Spring Forward, Fall Back" was produced in 2006 at the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard and at Theater J in Washington. "The English Channel" was produced at the C. Walsh Theatre of Suffolk University in Boston and at the Vineyard Playhouse in the fall of 2007. In the Fall of 2008, it played at the Abingdon Theatre in New York where it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
His short plays "Poker Face", "Chekhov on Ice", "Divestiture", "AnchorBimbo", "Noises", "Terrorist Skit", "Airport Hell", "Beachman's Last Poetry Reading", "Sex For a Change", and "Kosher Kop" were all presented by the Boston Playwrights' Theatre and form a play called "Seven/Elevens.
Brustein was also the author of "Doctor Hippocrates is Out: Please Leave a Message" an anthology of theatrical and cinematic satire on medicine and physicians, commissioned by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for its 2008 convention in Nashville. Brustein's musical satire, "Exposed", was performed in 2014 at the Martha's Vineyard Playhouse.
Awards and honors.
Brustein was the recipient of many awards and honors, including:
In addition, Brustein received the Pirandello Medal, and a medal from the Egyptian government for contributions to world theatre. His papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.
References.
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