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SINCE 1949!
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THE FORMATION OF PLAYERS
For more information about Father Hartke, Catholic University of America, and National Players please read Father Hartke, His Life and Legacy in the American Theatre, by Mary Jo Santo Pietro (Catholic University Press, Washington D.C., 2002).
The following is an excerpt from this great book: (Father Hartke had often attempted new projects while he was head of the Speech and Drama department at Catholic University, but often these new projects were rejected by his superiors. In 1948, there was a new treasurer at the university by the name of Msgr. James Magner, and "he didn't want to get the university into something they couldn't pay for," Father said, "And I couldn't convince him it would pay for itself. He nixed me over and over again.")
Suddenly, the idea for a vehicle for producing plays professionally hit [Father Hartke], on the altar, like divine inspiration. "On January 23rd, 1949, I was sitting on the altar as deacon to Archbishop Schulte at St. Mary-of-the-Woods in Terre Haute, Indiana, because Mary Olive O'Connell, who had finished with us in 1938-39 and stayed on to teach children's theater for me, had entered the Providence community and was about to take her final vows. So as I was watching the postulants, and then the novices, and then the sisters come up to take vows, suddenly the light came on in my mind. The concept came to me clearly: If I became my own nonprofit corporation, and if I toured instead of depending on a permanent theater, I wouldn't have to get the university's permission to have a professional company. If I got the start-up money myself, and then the company made enough money to keep going. I wouldn't have to ask the university for anything. I'd be independent. So I thought, I'll put together a touring company.
And with the single-mindedness that marked all of his major endeavors (and often exasperated those around him), he set to work immediately to put together the touring company. Unable to fly back to Washington for a speaking engagement the next day due to heavy rains, he caught an overnight train: "From my childhood, I could not sleep on a train. I abhorred the thought, but I got my sleeper berth and set out for Virginia. My mind was going like a trip hammer about the idea of getting my own touring company. I had with me, I can still see it, this big yellow foolscap paper, and through the night in my rockety-rickety moving berth on the railroad, I jotted down ideas as to what I could do to get a touring company started."
The touring company started the minute he got back to Washington. the first thing he did was to visit his old friend, Judge Rover, to see whether he could legally create a nonprofit corporation independent of Catholic University. Rover saw no reason why not. All Father needed legally were three persons to sign as the incorporators. Josephine Callan and Walter Kerr agreed to sign.
The second thing he did was to ask Walter if he would re-mount his crowd-pleasing 1947 production of Much Ado About Nothing. But Walter said no, and Father attributed his refusal to lack of faith in the project. "Walter and Josephine and Leo [Brady]," he recalled, "being a little more balanced than I , were a little doubtful whether this kind of thing would work."
Years later, Kerr himself could not remember exactly why he said no. But Leo Brady had no trouble remember that he didn't think the tour was a good idea. In 1955 he wrote in Theatre Arts,
Father Harke's staff spends a great deal of its time trying to dissuade him from carrying out all the enterprises he conceives. The argument is generally to the effect that there are 24 hours in a day, 365 of these in a year, and to every man but one life. At least one of the staff--myself, to be exact-- was convinced the touring company wouldn't work. Hadn't other, more affluent producers sent out companies in recent years? Hadn't they all come to grief? Didn't New York directors complain they couldn't find enough good actors when they had the whole range of [Actor's] Equity to choose from? Father Hartke, who is a great talker but a restless listener, granted the merit of the objections, expressed a charitable sympathy for the companies that had fallen by the wayside, nodded understandingly--and went ahead and organized the touring company" (Brady 1955)
Walter did agree to allow them to use his version of Much Ado About Nothing, even though he would not direct the show. He was determined to take his sabbatical. Father was undeterred. He decided to direct the production himself, and since he know his student actors so well, he decided to cast the production without auditions. He simply walked up to the people he wanted and asked them if they would be interested in performing in a touring production.
By mid-February, Father had fully cast Much Ado. Not only had he cast it, but he had given offices and jobs to his hand-picked company. Bill Callahan became president of the newly formed Players, Incorporated. Teddy Marie Kinsey (later herself a faculty member) became vice-president, and Nick Wanamaker was secretary. Ada May Brady was the treasurer. The group embraced their roles with the fervor of religious converts. "We fell back on our 1941 experience of writing to schools where our work was known and I was known and Walter was known," Father remembered. "And we started selling the program."
"Selling the program" was a massive undertaking in 1949. In the pre-Xerox era, volunteers had to type each of the initial 375 invitations on the valuable donated stationery. Ada May donated $54 for stamps. They offered the production to institutions for a fee of only $300 a performance, the same fee as the 1941 tour of God's Stage, again requesting $150 up front to pay expenses. By April they had received thirty-three applications, a good start, but not enough to cover the truck, station wagon, and other equipment. They began combing phone books, calling Chambers of Commerce, and contacting Catholic parishes to find additional bookings in locations they could reach. By the time they were ready to leave in September, they had accepted eighty-nine bookings in fifteen states, sixty-five of them one-night stands.
Players, Incorporated seemed to fill a need in postwar America. By 1949, vaudeville and touring repertory companies had all but ceased to exist. There were only two similar drama companies on record as operation in the United States in 1949: Barter State Theater in Virginia was sending companies to perform around Virginia and some neighboring Southern states, and a newly formed company headed by Father's friend Margaret Webster was just beginning a second season, touring Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night. Applications for performances of Much Ado came from colleges, high schools, civic groups, hospitals, and parishes from Boston to Kansas City. Players, Incorporated accepted invitations from institutions as large as the Cleveland Civic Center, Boston College, and the University of Notre Dame, and as small as the St. Francis Sanatorium for Cardiac Children. They planned a final performance in the Elizabethan Theatre of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.
With the application fees they received, Father purchased a truck. Then Adah May sat down and figured out the finances, calculating that they could afford to pay the actors per diems of six dollars. In 1985, Father beamed when he remembered how well it went. "We didn't have salaries. Couldn't afford salaries. But we did manage to pay all our expenses. I never even went to take a loan. I mean, we were in business without having to borrow a cent, without me going to Josephine, without even so much as 'by your leave' from the university."
Father did not even inform the administration of the university that he was embarking on this adventure. He was careful to tell the press and the people who booked the company that Players, Incorporated had no connection whatever to Catholic University, other than the fact that the actors were graduate students and former students. He wasn't taking any chances. The fact remained, however, that the group rehearsed on university property and was inextricably associated with Catholic University. How did Father Hartke reconcile this? "Epikeia," Father explained. "Epikeia in theology means that if you have good reason for whatever you're doing, you can interpret the will of the person in charge benignly.... I also knew that I could do the university a great good because as we moved about, we'd be recognized as representing the Catholic University drama department, so the university would be getting the benefit of tremendous advertising. Which they did."
(For more please purchase Mary Jo Santo Pietro's book, Father Hartke His life and |
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©2006 Olney Theatre Center
(T/A National Players)
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