Robert Brustein was a critic, professor, and writer who was a fierce proponent of independent theater and who advocated for theater to value art over commerce.
- Died: October 29, 2023 (Who else died on October 29?)
- Details of death: Died at the age of 96.
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Robert Brustein’s legacy
Born in Brooklyn in New York City, Brustein was a lover of music and theater who once dreamed of leading a swing band. He studied dramatic literature at Amherst College, the Yale School of Drama, and Columbia University, before moving to England in the mid 1950s to direct plays at the University of Nottingham. Upon returning to the U.S., he taught at Cornell University, Vassar College, and Columbia, and later became Dean of the Yale School of Drama and founded the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1966.
During this period, Brustein became a renowned theater critic, writing for a wide array of magazines devoted to the art. His 1964 book, “The Theatre of Revolt: An Approach to Modern Drama,” was the first of 16 books he authored on the topic between 1964 and 2014. When not commenting on the state of theater as an art form, he was writing his own adaptations of such works as Henrik Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck,” Luigi Pirandello’s “Enrico IV,” and others. He also wrote his own plays, including his Shakespeare Trilogy, “The English Channel,” “Mortal Terror,” and “The Last Will.” Brustein founded the American Repertory Theater at Harvard in 1979, and he later founded Harvard’s Institute for Advanced Theater Training where he supervised over 200 productions.
Over the years, Brustein caused some controversy with his criticism of not-for-profit theaters that chose to develop commercial works that might move on to Broadway. However, his relentless promotion of independent theater also earned him numerous accolades and awards, including induction into the Players Club Hall of Fame, the National Medal of Arts, a United States Institute for Theatre Technology Lifetime Achievement Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, induction into the into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, and many others.
Brustein on the role of profit and art in theater
“The basic aim of the commercial theatre is to make a profit. The basic aim of noncommercial theatre, in its ideal form, is to create the condition whereby works of art can be known. And I don’t think these are compatible aims.”—from a 1990 interview in The New York Times
Tributes to Robert Brustein
Full obituary: The New York Times