Scope and arrangement
The collection contains interviews with many people that were actively part of, or associated with, The Trinity Reperatory Company. Recorded in the early 90's it exemplifies an organization during a transitional period; the tapes were recorded during the search for a replacement for long-time Artistic Director Adrian Hall.
The Trinity Repertory Company Oral History Tapes are arranged in nine series:
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Adrian Hall, born in 1927, is a actor, director, writer and founding artistic director of TRC, a position he kept from 1964 through 1989. Hall is an honorary life trustee of the company. Hall also served as Artistic Director of the Dallas Theatre Center from 1983 to 1989. The interviews took place in Providence, RI, Cambridge, MA and Van, TX.
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Hall began his tenure as Artistic Director of the Dallas Theatre Center (DTC) in 1983. He served both TRC and DTC posts for throughout the 80's. With his managing director, Peter Donnelly, fresh from the Seattle Repertory Theater, Hall first addressed the most pressing physical needs of the theater: a renovation of the original Wright building to improve the backstage area, the basement floor facilities and the traffic flow; to find, or build a second playing house with wide open space to accommodate innovative productions; to develop broader audiences and to keep more actors working with simultaneous or overlapping play runs.
The new Arts District Theater, designed by Hall`s associate, the distinguished stage designer, Eugene Lee, opened in 1985 and turned out to be an engaging metal barn which adapts to virtually any staging a director may devise. It is the most flexible performance facility in the country.
The idea of a permanent company was another major priority and Hall assembled DTC`s company by bringing some people from Trinity Repertory, using some local actors and importing others. He opened with a brilliant production of Brecht's Galileo in the Kalita Humphreys Theater and, as soon as he could, staged his own adaptation of the Robert Penn Warren novel All the King's Men, which inaugurated most of the facilities the new Arts District house could provide. [Cf. http://www.dallastheatrecenter.org]
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The American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) occupies a unique place in the American theatre. It is the only not-for-profit theatre in the country that maintains a resident acting company and an international training conservatory, and also an association with a major university. Over its twenty-two year history the A.R.T. has welcomed American and international theatre artists who have enriched the theatrical life of the whole nation. The theatre has garnered many of the nation's most distinguished awards, including a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. Since 1980 the A.R.T. has performed in eighty-one cities in twenty-two states around the country, and worldwide in twenty-one cities in sixteen countries on four continents. It has presented one hundred and sixty productions, over half of which were premieres of new plays, translations, and adaptations.
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The National Endowment for the Arts is the largest annual funder of the arts in the United States. An independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Arts is the official arts organization of the United States government.