By Robert Simonson 13 Oct 2012 |Photo by Arena Stage| In the
mid-20th century, if you were a member of Actors' Equity
Association (the union that represents stage actors and stage
managers) you had two sources of work: New York and the road.
Professional regional theatre simply did not exist. The Little
Theatre Movement of the 1910s-1930s had sown a provincial hunger
for theatre, but those groups were amateur. It wasn't until the
decades that followed that the regional theatre movement began
to nurture local talent and disseminate theatre to every corner
of the nation — including New York, whose commercial producers
came to feed from its ever-flowing artistic trough. Margo Jones
was one of the first pioneers. In 1947 she established the first
professional company outside New York: Theatre '47 in Dallas.
Jones was intent on inspiring a nation of theatres where actors
and playwrights could find work outside Broadway and the touring
houses. Toward that end, she published a book in 1951 called
"Theatre-in-the-Rou