R.I.P. Robert Brustein

That which you see here, with its conveniently timely Halloween color scheme, is my much-thumbed, frequently highlighted copy of Robert Brustein’s seminal 1964 book Theatre of Revolt. Helen Shaw of The New Yorker just sent out word that Mr. Brustein passed away yesterday. He was 97 of course, and I’d gotten into the habit every few months of checking the internet to see whether he still breathed, as, ya know, he had been an old man for several decades by now. All things remaining the same, I would have done this post on April 21, his birthday (tantalizingly close to the traditional one for Shakespeare).

Among Brustein’s many towering accomplishments, he was Dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1966 through 1979, founding the Yale Repertory Theatre the year he started. In 1979, he moved over to Harvard, where he founded the American Repertory Theatre, running that until he left in 2002. I am a product of the regional theatre that was in the geographic center of those two New England institutions, Trinity Rep in Providence. The ripples of his two institutions seemed to meet there in the middle. Brustein’s first book, along with Martin Esslin’sTheatre of the Absurd, and Eric Bentley’s The Playwright as Thinker were on the reading list at the conservatory and ended up forming the core of my own theatrical philosophy. I found his understanding of Strindberg and O’Neill to be particularly enlightening and I continue to see the work of those playwrights through the amplifying lens of his insights.

For better or worse, I was also very much influenced by Brustein’s 1994 book Dumbocracy in America: Studies in the Theatre of Guilt, 1987–1994. Brustein had been drama critic for The New Republic since 1959, and stepped down right around the time I began to publish my own reviews and cultural features inThe Village Voice, Time Out New York, American Theatre, and Reason. The essays in Dumbocracy were written at the height of the Culture Wars, a period which in retrospect seems gloriously untroubled. Imagine having nothing more dire to argue about than the size of budgets and the appropriate role of art! Brustein had a sort of public feud with August Wilson and others about the place of identity-based politics in theatre. I mentioned Strindberg and O’Neill above. There is a feeling many share that the highest role of theatre is to be a metaphysical exploration, rather than a political one. Over time I’ve gradually come to realize that for people who are unseen, the political struggle IS metaphysical.

At any rate, Brustein alienated a lot of people with his paleo-aesthetic stance in the ’90s. It was as true then as it is now that there is an unfair polarizing tendency in American politics that does not permit of nuanced discourse. So Brustein was unfairly associated in people’s heads with right wing attitudes he did not share. He was a liberal Jewish guy from Brooklyn. He was not a political conservative. I fear the stigma will mute whatever bells toll for him today. That and the din of the times.

One cool postscript that will only matter to me, I imagine, and it’s something I’d have loved to have discussed with him if I ever got to meet him, easily as much as any question of theatre or politics. Brustein attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy here in Great Neck and served on Liberty Ships! I just toured the campus of the Merchant Marine Academy about a week ago; see my post on that here.