Known as a passionate and provocative theater advocate who pushed for boundary-breaking works and for classics to be adventurously modernized, Brustein founded both the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard. He was dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1966-1979 and during that time founded the Yale Repertory Theatre. “They'll have an unresolved experience.”After a painful, highly publicized dismissal from Yale, Brustein in 1979 switched to Harvard, where he taught English and founded the American Repertory Theatre in 1980. At both Yale Rep and A.R.T., Brustein told The Boston Globe in 2012, he embraced popular theater with a nationalistic streak: “We were trying to liberate American theater from its British overseers. 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.

Source: The Nation October 30, 2023 06:02 UTC