The American Repertory Theater founder was fearless about taking on all comers be they Tom Stoppard, August Wilson or Tony Kushner.
He would rail, in his erudite way, about the perceived sins of the A.R.T.’s main rival in the Boston area, the Huntington Theatre Company, or the place where I worked, the Boston Globe, and its often scabrous critic
But when it came to the productions, Wheeler’s M.O. was to get out of the playwright’s way, Brustein’s was more to get in the playwright’s face, at least in the manner of staging. He embraced the European mode of high modernism, a more avant-garde or high-concept approach of presenting theater even when, or particularly when, staging the classics.
Personally, I was always eager to walk into the Loeb Drama Center or their second stage at the Hasty Pudding Theatre and was frequently, hardly always, entranced when I walked out. Beyond the names, what was most important was an aesthetic that by and large avoided what was considered kitchen-sink realism in favor of a more abstract, dream-like theatricality that didn’t try to modernize classics as much as find a timeless world that looked forward and back simultaneously.
On the other hand, one could argue that wearing two hats weakened Brustein as an artistic director. In some cases he would castigate artists in The New Republic and they’d never be seen again in Cambridge. It’s interesting that after Brustein critiqued a book by Shepard and Taymor’s “The Lion King,” neither artist returned to the A.R.T.
Black artists today obviously embrace Wilson, but his theories of American theater were not the dictionary definition of wokeness either. Black people, he thought, should form their own theaters, not rely on white-run theaters to let them in. He also opposed color-blind casting, saying that Black people should play Black characters and not give the pretense that we are living in a color-blind society.“In his opening statement, Mr. Brustein … described his differences with Mr.
At any rate, Brustein would carry on unbowed until he left at the end of the 2001-02 season, succeeded by Robert Woodruff, a brilliant director who, if anything, doubled down on Brustein’s aesthetic. But while critics, including me, heaped praise on his artistically aggressive choices, audiences were less impressed. He didn’t have Brustein’s charm or his instincts for keeping Harvard’s nay-sayers at bay.
For his part, Brustein turned more toward playwriting, without great results, and academia, particularly at Suffolk University. While there, he was awarded theby President Barack Obama, one of his many awards as a theater artist and critic. In an East Room ceremony, Obama presented the medal to Brustein “for his contributions to the American theater as a critic, producer, playwright and educator.
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