The theatrical world has lost a giant. Robert Brustein was a critic and playwright who founded two of the leading regional theaters in the country. He died Sunday at the age of 96. Brustein was known as a passionate and provocative theater advocate who pushed for boundary-breaking works and for classics to be adventurously modernized.
FILE - President Barack Obama presents a 2010 National Medal of Arts to New Republic theatre critic Robert Brustein, March 2, 2011, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Brustein, a giant in the theatrical world as critic, playwright, crusader for artistic integrity and founder of two of the leading regional theaters in the country, died on Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023. He was 96.
Born in New York City, Brustein earned a bachelor’s from Amherst and a master’s and Ph.D. from Columbia. A Fulbright scholar, he taught at Cornell, Vassar and Columbia, where he taught drama. He was dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1966-1979 and during that time founded the Yale Repertory Theatre.
A.R.T. has grown into one of the country’s most celebrated theaters and the winner of numerous awards, including the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2003, it was named one of the top three regional theaters in the country by Time magazine. Brustein’s own full-length plays include “Demons,” “The Face Life” and “Spring Forward, Fall Back” and “Nobody Dies on Friday,” based on the real-life relationship between Lee Strasberg and his student Marilyn Monroe.
Brustein, a tall man with a deep voice, also wrote “Shlemiel the First,” based on the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer and set to traditional klezmer music. The light, absurd comedy, which gently mocks the lavishness of other musicals, premiered in 1994 at the American Repertory Theatre and was close to making it to Broadway. It was revived in 2011 by Theatre for a New Audience.
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