 Hedgerow Theatre on Rose Valley Road | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Theatre company |
| Founded | 1923 in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Founder | Jasper Deeter |
| Headquarters | , |
Hedgerow Theatre is a theatre company based in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, founded in 1923. It was "for many years the only true U. S. professional repertory theater." [1] The building is a contributing structure in the Rose Valley Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places. [2]
Hedgerow was founded in 1923 by New York-based director and actor Jasper Deeter in Rose Valley, less than 3 miles from Media and Swarthmore. The theatre building, originally a gristmill built in 1840, seats 144 spectators after an early twentieth-century reconstruction designed by architect William Lightfoot Price. Other sources note, however, that the Theatre building was "erected in 1807 as a snuff mill and later rebuilt as a hand-weaving mill." [3] It is a contributing structure in the Rose Valley Historic District. Hedgerow's green room showcases a staircase and table designed by Wharton Esherick, an acclaimed American craftsman and a one-time set designer for Hedgerow. Located a half mile from the theatre is Hedgerow House, used as housing for the residential company members as well as a rehearsal space, school, and office, accompanied by the costume and prop shops.
The Pennsylvania Guide, compiled by the Writers' Program of the Works Progress Administration in 1940, described the founding of the Theatre by Deeter and its early operations:
When at Swarthmore with a company of actors from the Provincetown Playhouse in the spring of 1923, Jasper Deeter, former Harrisburg newspaperman, took a stroll along Possum Hollow Road and came upon an old mill ... Brushing past the cobwebs, Deeter walked inside to rest; some years earlier the mill had been used for amateur theatricals, and Deeter saw its possibilities. He severed relations with the Provincetown company, and with a troupe of six actors launched Hedgerow as a permanent repertory theater, its first production being George Bernard Shaw's Candida. Local people constituted most of the cast and provided scenery, props, and lights. Today Hedgerow presents a well-rounded repertoire of significant plays, both tragedy and comedy. For one week in the latter part of July each year the theater stages a George Bernard Shaw Festival. In aiding Deeter with his advice and granting him special royalty arrangements, Shaw once said: 'I am interested in repertory theatres. That's where the whole thing is kept alive; in theaters such as the Malvern Theatre [in England] and in the Hedgerow Theater in the United States.'
— Federal Writers' Project, "Part III: Tours", Pennsylvania: A Guide to the Keystone State (1940) [3]
Throughout its long history, Hedgerow has helped to spawn other popular theatre companies, most notably People's Light and Theatre Company. Hedgerow has been the site of many play debuts and has received recognition by producing the plays of George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O'Neill, and Seán O'Casey. Its actors have included H. Foley, Richard Basehart, Ann Harding, Keanu Reeves, Stephen Lang, [4] and Austin Pendleton.
From 1990 to 2013, Penelope Reed assumed the artistic direction of Hedgerow; the company is currently led by her son, Jared Reed.
The company stages over two dozen productions annually, relying on members, volunteers, and the local community. Their Mainstage season offers diverse plays, including new works, farces and Shakespeare. The Horizons series frequently showcases new plays with younger company members. The company is committed to school tours, outreach programs, and features a Children's Theatre. Hedgerow provides fellowships for recent college graduates, offering practical experience in various theater disciplines. Hedgerow was awarded the Best New Play 2005 Barrymore Award for The Lives of Bosie by John Wolfson.
A repertory theatre, also called repertory,rep, true rep or stock, which are also called producing theatres, is a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation.
Rose Valley is a small, historic borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its area is 0.73 square miles (1.9 km2), and the population was 913 at the 2010 census. The area was settled by Quaker farmers in 1682, and later water mills along Ridley Creek drove manufacturing in the nineteenth century.
Ann Harding was an American theatre, motion picture, radio, and television actress. Harding was a regular on Broadway and on tour in the 1920s. In the 1930s Harding, was one of the first actresses to gain fame in the new medium of "talking pictures," and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931 for her work in Holiday.
In American theater, summer stock theater is a theater that presents stage productions only in the summer. The name combines the season with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes. Summer stock theaters frequently take advantage of seasonal weather by having their productions outdoors, under tents set up temporarily for their use, or in barns.
Joseph Esherick was an American architect.
Everett H. Sloane was an American character actor who worked in radio, theatre, films, and television.
Ridley Creek is a tributary of the Delaware River in Chester and Delaware counties, Pennsylvania in the United States.
Francis Edward Paxton Whitehead was an English actor, theatre director, and playwright. He was nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for his performance as Pellinore in the 1980 revival of Camelot. He had many Broadway roles. He was also known for his film roles and was well known, especially to U.S. and television audiences in general, for his many guest appearances on several U.S. shows such as portraying Bernard Thatch on The West Wing and often appeared in recurring roles and guest appearances on major sitcoms of the 1990s, such as Frasier, Caroline in the City, Ellen, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Drew Carey Show, Mad About You, and Friends.
William Alexander Kirkland was a leading man in Hollywood during the early sound era as well as a stage actor who starred in productions of the Group Theatre in New York.
As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theater as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. The Little Theatre Movement served to provide experimental centers for the dramatic arts, free from the standard production mechanisms used in prominent commercial theaters. In several large cities, beginning with Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and Detroit, companies formed to produce more intimate, non-commercial, non-profit-centered, and reform-minded entertainments.
Sir Barry Vincent Jackson was an English theatre director, entrepreneur and the founder of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and, alongside George Bernard Shaw, the Malvern Festival.
People's Light and Theatre Company is a professional non-profit theatre company in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
Mary Gallagher is an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, actress, director and teacher. For six years, she was artistic director of Gypsy, a theatre company in the Hudson Valley, New York, which collaborated with many artists to create site-specific mask-and-puppet music-theatre with texts and lyrics by Gallagher. These pieces included Premanjali and the 7 Geese Brothers, Ama and The Scottish Play. In 1996-97, she directed the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, and she taught playwriting and screenwriting at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts from 2001 to 2010. She is a member of Actors & Writers, a theater company in the Hudson Valley, and the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, where she developed many of her plays and created and moderated the series, "You Can Make a Life: Conversations with Playwrights" from 1994 to 2001.
Birmingham Repertory Theatre, commonly called Birmingham Rep or just The Rep, is a producing theatre based on Centenary Square in Birmingham, England. Founded by Billie Lester , it is the longest-established of Britain's building-based theatre companies and one of its most consistently innovative.
The Provincetown Playhouse is a historic theatre at 133 MacDougal Street between West 3rd and West 4th Streets in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is named for the Provincetown Players, who converted the former stable and wine-bottling plant into a theater in 1918.
The Festival Theatre, now known as Malvern Theatres, is a theatre complex on Grange Road in Malvern, Worcestershire, England. Malvern Theatres, housed in the Winter Gardens complex in the town centre of Great Malvern, has been a provincial centre for the arts since 1885. The theatre became known for its George Bernard Shaw productions in the 1930s and from 1977 onwards, along with the works of Edward Elgar. Up until 1965, 19 different plays of Shaw were produced at the Malvern Festival Theatre, and six premiered here, including The Apple Cart at the opening Malvern Festival in 1929, Geneva, a Fancied Page of History in Three Acts in August 1938 and In Good King Charles's Golden Days in August 1939.
Eleanor Delaney Wilson was an American Tony-nominated actress and artist, known for her roles in Reds (1981) and the Gore Vidal play Weekend (1968).
Jasper Deeter was an American-born stage and film actor, stage director, and founder of Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, one of the first regional repertory theatres in the United States.
Lynn Milgrim is an American film, television, and stage actress. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is best known as an accomplished stage actress and has been in numerous Broadway, national, and regional productions. She has also appeared in many feature films, television series, and television movies.
39°53′51″N75°23′12″W / 39.8975°N 75.3867°W
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