Reassessing
The rotating repertory format had lasted for three full seasons, but by the end of the 1968-69 season everyone agreed that rotating the plays was costing too much money and was exhausting the actors. Students, who worked several nights a week striking and putting in sets, were in open rebellion. So the format changed to a schedule of six plays which would run consecutively.
Michael Flanagan departed for Purdue University at the end of the 1968-69 season, and his two hats were placed on separate heads. Walter Perner Jr., who had become business manager in 1968, was appointed managing director of the theatre. Peter E. Sargent was named chairman of the theatre arts department.
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| Twelfth Night 1972-73 Season Don Perkins, Arthur A. Rosenberg, Brendan Burke and Vance Sorrells. |
The theatre's format was altered so that plays would each run for three or four weeks, with an intervening week for booking an "outstanding attraction."" Outside talent might be brought in for a show or two, adding "considerable excitement to the new season," and resident company members would remain as part-time faculty in the theatre arts department. The most significant change was the theatre's acceptance of its responsibility to become self-supporting.
That season's memorable production of Othello, starring Earle Hyman, black Moor, and Marian Mercer, blonde Desdemona, may have been a milestone in St. Louis theatre. Imogene Coca played in You Can't Take It With You and the booked-in production of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris played to good crowds. Although attendance -- which had lagged below 50% of capacity during the previous seasons -- improved, the theatre barely managed to limp along.
Meanwhile, the college, besides being under financial pressure, was also in the throes of reorganization; having already left her order and secularized the school, Jacqueline Grennan resigned the college presidency in 1969 to marry. At the urgings of its financial advisors, the college suspended the theatre's operations before the end of its 1969-70 season.
By then, the theatre had produced over 30 plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Moliere, Tennessee Williams, William Saroyan, Bertolt Brecht, Luigi Priandello, George Bernard Shaw, Edward Albee, John Guare, Maxim Gorky, Eugene O'Neill and others -- and a $200,000 deficit on the college's books.
"There were more people on the stage some nights than there were in the audience, and we didn't have any cost controls at all. If we needed something, we were just handed a purchase order," recalls Peter Sargent, who was the resident lighting designer.
It was time to retrench if the professional theatre was to survive, so the lights went out on the company for a year. The Conservatory, however, produced Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, and brought in James Whitmore's one-man show about Will Rogers. But no plays were produced by the professional company in 1970-71.
