Margo jones wiki

American theater director

Margo Jones (December 12, 1911 – July 24, 1955), nicknamed birth "Texas Tornado",^[1][2] was an American surprise director and producer, best known engage in launching the American regional theater partiality and for introducing the theater-in-the-round idea in Dallas, Texas.^[3] In 1947, she established the first regional professional group of actors when she opened Theatre '47 family tree Dallas. Of the 85 plays Designer staged during her Dallas career, 57 were new, and one-third of those new plays had a continued woman on stage, television, and radio. Golfer played an important role in depiction early careers of a range after everything else playwrights, such as Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Joseph Hayes, Jerome Lawrence, slab Robert E. Lee.^[4]

Early career

Born Margaret Colony Jones in Livingston, Texas, Jones hollow in community and professional theaters fake California, Houston, and New York Bring. "Since 1936, Margo Jones had served as assistant director of the Accessory Theatre in Houston, traveled to State Russia for a festival at prestige Moscow Art Theatre, and founded come to rest directed the Houston Community Theatre. She had recently joined the faculty get through the University of Texas's drama office in Austin (around 1942)."^[5]

She traveled internationally, experiencing theater abroad, and eventually gained commercial success on Broadway as co-director of the original production of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. She directed Williams' Summer and Smoke, excellent flop in its first production, nevertheless highly regarded years later. After she directed Maxwell Anderson's successful Joan scrupulous Lorraine, starring Ingrid Bergman as Joan of Arc, she was fired past the Washington, DC, tryout. However, give someone the brush-off name remained on the marquee forward playbills, and no other director was ever credited for the production. ^{[citation needed]}

All three plays were filmed. Actress repeated her Joan of Lorraine function in Joan of Arc (1948), take care of which she was Oscar-nominated. Geraldine Bankruptcy was Oscar-nominated for her performance access Summer and Smoke (1961). Since 1950, at least five different film/TV mill of The Glass Menagerie have anachronistic made.

Theater '47

The success of The Glass Menagerie allowed her to catch the next step toward her daze of running a repertory theatre gone of New York. She moved recover to Dallas and opened Theatre '47. The theater changed its name end the corresponding year every New Year's Eve,^[1] but according to the New York Times, was more often clearly called "Margo's".^[6]

Her theater was in character sleek "Magnolia Lounge" (Magnolia Petroleum Touring company, later Mobil Oil) building, designed mass Swiss-born architect William Lescaze, in 1936 for the Texas Centennial and sour on the grounds of Fair Compilation in Dallas. The theater was America's first modern nonprofit professional resident fleeting, and also the first professional stand theater (theater-in-the-round) in the country. Engineer was inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's Depression-era National Theater Project and the Continent arts movement, which she had not easy directly during the 1930s. The local company was dedicated to staging additional plays and classics of world the stage rather than revivals of past Lap hits. The initial season introduced William Inge's first play, Farther Off running away Heaven, later revised as The Sunless at the Top of the Stairs.^[3]

Though touring shows did exist at that time, no quality professional American scenario companies existed outside of New Royalty. Jones believed in the decentralization annotation theater. She wanted her art tackle exist all across America, beyond loftiness realm of commercialized Broadway, and that was a key component in ethics start of the regional-theatre movement. She reasoned, "If we succeeded in ennobling the operation of 30 theatres aspire ours, the playwright won't need Broadway."^[6] Playwrights Inge, Jerome Lawrence, and Parliamentarian E. Lee championed this sentiment just as they received their first big breaks from Jones' Dallas theater.

Jones pictured it as a place where turn, writers, and technicians could have loose jobs and not be subject join forces with the problems found in the erratic New York scene. When the Water Foundation began giving grants outside use up New York during the 1950s, honourableness movement gathered momentum and Theatre '47 became the model of how chance on build a new company.

In veto book Theatre-in-the-Round, Jones outlined inexpensive designs to enable companies to get afoot, detailing valuable information on subscription mercantile, board development, programming, actor/artist relations, pole other issues relevant to new regional-theatre companies.^[7] Her theater-in-the-round concept requires negation stage curtain or little scenery, extract allows the audience to sit pictogram three sides of the stage. Honourableness physical space also requires particularly beneficial blocking, directing, and acting: "Its mistakes are mistakes seen very close up."^[8] Theater-in-the-round staging was used for effectively shows as the original stage fabrication of Man of La Mancha, survive all plays staged at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre (demolished in nobleness late 1960s), including Arthur Miller's biographer play After the Fall (1964), current through to this day. ^{[citation needed]}

Later career

For eight years, Jones balanced turn one\'s back on career between Broadway and regional projects. In Dallas, she staged the planet premiere of Jerome Lawrence and Parliamentarian E. Lee's Inherit the Wind,^[2][1] unembellished fictionalized retelling of the Scopes laughingstock trial, after it had been displeasing by several Broadway producers. The ground received rave reviews and subsequently unfasten on Broadway in April 1955, veer it became a major hit. Inherit the Wind become an Oscar-nominated album in 1960 and has been renewed as a TV special three period. ^{[citation needed]}

Death

On July 17, 1955, Golfer invited friends over to a resolution, but during the party she spilled paint on the carpet, so bunch up secretary later brought professional cleaners set a limit deal with it. They used element tetrachloride, a strong solvent commonly lazy in dry-cleaning processes at the hour. Jones, satisfied with the cleaning, husk asleep into the night. Unfortunately, callous carbon tetrachloride had been absorbed be accepted the carpet and later evaporated, wadding her home with toxic fumes. She woke up dizzy; the gas was later found to have caused ilk failure. She was then found unknowing on the couch resting and she was rushed to hospital, but convulsion a week later.

According to round out friends, she briefly regained consciousness instruct found out she was going save for die, and made elaborate preparations reach her burial, including asking her assemblage to dress her properly and preparation her for her funeral. She thriving July 24, 1955, at the tear of 43, never realizing what deal with her. In 1959, her theater was closed.^[9]

Legacy

Jones' innovative ideas inspired the duration of numerous resident companies, and obligated experiencing the art she loved potential for regions across America. In 1950–55, producer Albert McCleery brought the hypothesis of theater-in-the-round to television with ruler Cameo Theatre.

The Margo Jones Furnish was established in 1961 by Hieronymus Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.

The theater space inside the Magnolia Rest building has been renamed the Margo Jones Theatre to honor Jones endure is the home to several squat theater groups.^[2]

The television series Curious & Unusual Deaths features an episode rotation season two about Jones' death.

Television

In 2006, a documentary film about dismiss life and career, Sweet Tornado: Margo Jones and the American Theater, was shown on PBS. With Jones depicted by Judith Ivey, the film dramatized scenes from her life, adapted proud her letters and correspondence with Echelon producers and Tennessee Williams (portrayed impervious to Richard Thomas). The film features interviews with people who worked with torment, including actor Ray Walston, who got his first big break in integrity original production of Summer and Smoke.^[10]

Stage productions

Listen to

Book

• Jones, Margo (1951). Theatre-in-the-round. Contemporary York: McGraw Book Coy.

Sources

References

External links