The Chicago Little Theatre was an American theater company formed in 1912. It spearheaded and lent its nameLock, Charles. "Maurice Browne and the Chicago Little Theatre." Modern Drama 31.1, 1988. p 109. to a historic, popular wave in American theater, the Little Theatre Movement. Founded in its namesake city by Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne, the company was an art theater formed in opposition to the commercial values which held sway at the time.Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955; p 111 . The company performed work by contemporary writers and Greek classics, as well as pioneering puppetry and puppet plays. Poetic dramas, restrained acting and new concepts in scenography were hallmarks of the Chicago Little Theatre.

History

Founding

Already well ensconced by 1911 in the literary circles of Chicago, husband-and-wife artistic partners Maurice Browne and Ellen Van VolkenburgBrowne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955; p. 110 ff. Browne's entré to the city's literary circles was in part due to his success as a lecturer in Chicago and partly to the connections he had developed in England and elsewhere visiting the city. Van Volkenburg was, as he notes "nearing the height of her popularity…" socialized with the Irish Players of the Abbey Theatre, led by Lady Gregory, when they toured the Midwest in that year.Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955; p 115. Inspired, they set out to create a theater company on that model, introducing European writers of the age whose work was not much produced in the United States, such as Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, Synge, Wilde, and Yeats.

After rehearsing extensively, in 1912 Van Volkenburg and Browne rented space for a theater in the Fine Arts Building (Chicago), bypassing the building's large auditorium In favor of a small space on the fourth floor that cost less than a quarter as much per year.Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955; p 119-20. The space was built out into a 91-seat house,Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955; p 120. its diminutive size the key to the company's name. Browne thought that "a small theatre would cost less than a large one; therefore ours was to be a little theatre."Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955; p 111.

Browne assumed directorship of the company, while Van Volkenburg, who was already an accomplished performer,Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955; p 110. became its leading actress. They were co-producers, with Van Volkenburg developing and directing the company's puppet productions. To the modern plays they were producing in the style of the Irish Players, the company added Greek classical dramas, which were well known to the Cambridge-educated Browne. Of the theater's repertoire, contemporary critic and founder of Theatre Arts Magazine, Sheldon Cheney, wrote, "The list bespeaks nothing if not breadth of view and courage. And these are qualities which the commercial producer so sadly lacks."Cheney, Sheldon. The New Movement in the Theatre. New York, Mitchell Kennerley, 1914; p. 180. Van Volkenburg pioneered "modern" puppetry in America, creating a puppet theater for the company that aspired to high artistic values, using new techniques she developed.Joseph, Helen Haiman. A Book of Marionettes. New York, B.W. Huebsch, 1920; 173-4. Browne summed up the mission of the company in this way:

It is a repertory and experimental art theatre producing classical and modern plays, both tragedy and comedy, at popular prices. Preference is given in its productions to poetic and imaginative plays, dealing primarily whether as a tragedy or comedy with character in action. … The Chicago Little Theatre has for its object the creation of a new plastic and rhythmic drama in America.Mackay, Constance D'Arcy. The Little Theatre in the United States. New York, Henry Holt, 1917; p. 104.

Among the notable productions of the Chicago Little theater were The Stronger and Creditors by August Strindberg, On Baile's Strand and The Shadowy Water by William Butler Yeats and Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler.Cheney, Sheldon. The New Movement in the Theatre. New York, Mitchell Kennerley, 1914; p. 180. In 1921, Browne and Volkenburg acted in the performance of George Bernard Shaw's The Philanderer at the Cornish School playhouse. The company's signature piece was the classic play by Euripides, The Trojan Women. Browne and Van Volkenburg not only revived the play in Chicago, but toured it throughout the Western United States.Mackay, Constance D'Arcy. The Little Theatre in the United States. New York, Henry Holt, 1917, p. 106. It was on this tour that Nellie Cornish, who would provide a landing spot for the two at her Cornish School some years later, saw their work and was "deeply impressed."Cornish, Nellie C. Miss Aunt Nellie: The Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish, Ellen Van Volkenburg Browne and Edward Nordhoff Beck, eds. Seattle, University of Washington, 1964; p. 104. Van Volkenberg played Hecuba, and Browne in later years counted it among the best performances of any actress he had seen in his life in the theater.

Innovations The Chicago Little Theatre's stage in the Fine Arts Building, in a room never having been designed to hold a theater, had very little wing space and had large pillars to contend with.Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955, pp, 119-26. So as a matter of practicality as well as aesthetics, the company embraced the new, non-representational forms of staging coming out of Europe utilizing "simplicity and suggestion."Cheney, Sheldon. The New Movement in the Theatre. New York, Mitchell Kennerley, 1914, p. 180. Turning also to Asian sources for inspiration, the Little Theater was perhaps the first theater to use screens in the Japanese style as scenic elements.Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955, p. 172. But the theater's greatest achievement, arguably, was in lighting. Browne and his designers made revolutionary use of light to create space by pioneering in the use of dimmers to control their instruments.Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955, p. 123. The Trojan Women, in the eyes of one contemporary writer was "a scenic triumph made possible through its remarkable lighting."Mackay, Constance D'Arcy. The Little Theatre in the United States. New York, Henry Holt, 1917, p. 106. The full, combined effect of simplicity, forced perspective and variable lighting were evident in that production:

The Trojan Women had one scene throughout: a massive stone wall lost to view beyond the line of the proscenium arch, formed the background. This stone wall, jaggedly cleft in the center, showed the sky beyond. Not only were the massive square of stone that formed the wall played on by different lights as the play proceeded; but the sky beyond the jagged cleft changed gradually from the intense blue of full day to the softer colors of dusk, thus giving differentiation. The red of the flaming city also flared beyond this cleft, and characters entered or leaving the scene stood out in dark silhouette against the fiery background.Mackay, Constance D'Arcy. The Little Theatre in the United States. New York, Henry Holt, 1917, p. 106.

Closing and legacy

Money had been hard to come by from the first days of the Chicago Little Theatre, and as the United States became involved in the First World War in 1917, interest in the company dropped off dramatically, placing the company in an impossible financial position.Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955, pp. 209-10. After only five years of operation, the theater was forced to close is doors.

Word of the closure of The Chicago Little Theatre reached Sheldon Cheney late in 1917. It had survived only a short time, but was highly influential. Cheney rendered an assessment of the importance of the company in unequivocal terms in the pages of Theatre Arts Magazine: "As this issue was going to press, we received a formal notice of the disbanding of the Chicago Little Theatre company. … With this dignified announcement there closes the most important chapter yet written in the history of the art theatre movement in this country."Beard, DeAnna M. Toten. Sheldon Cheney’s Theatre Arts Magazine: Promoting a Modern American Theatre, 1916-1921. Plymouth, Scarecrow Press: reprinted in "Selected Articles": "Closing of the Chicago Little Theatre," by Sheldon Cheney, Theatre Arts Magazine, December 1917. p. 59.

The aesthetic and practice developed by Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne at the Chicago Little Theatre traveled with them to a number of other ventures, most notably to the Cornish School of Music (later the Cornish School) in Seattle.Cornish, Nellie C. Miss Aunt Nellie: The Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish, Ellen Van Volkenburg Browne and Edward Nordhoff Beck, eds. Seattle, University of Washington, 1964; p. 107. Nellie Cornish approached them about joining her faculty on a visit to Chicago, but was rebuffed. Arriving at Cornish in 1918, after the collapse of the Chicago Little Theatre, the two accepted; they co-founded the Drama Department at the school. Van Volkenburg also instituted a program in puppetry.Cornish, Nellie C. Miss Aunt Nellie: The Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish, Ellen Van Volkenburg Browne and Edward Nordhoff Beck, eds. Seattle, University of Washington, 1964; p. 109.

References

Sources

Beard, DeAnna M. Toten. Sheldon Cheney’s Theatre Arts Magazine: Promoting a Modern American Theatre, 1916-1921. Plymouth, Scarecrow Press, 2010: reprinted in "Selected Articles": "Closing of the Chicago Little Theatre," by Sheldon Cheney, Theatre Arts Magazine, December 1917. Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. London, Gollancz, 1955. Chansky, Dorothy. Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience. Carbondale, Seattle, Southern Illinois University, 2004. Cheney, Sheldon. The New Movement in the Theatre. New York, Mitchell Kennerley, 1914. Cornish, Nellie C. Miss Aunt Nellie: The Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish, Ellen Van Volkenburg Browne and Edward Nordhoff Beck, eds. Seattle, University of Washington, 1964. Joseph, Helen Haiman. A Book of Marionettes. New York, B.W. Huebsch, 1920. Lock, Charles. "Maurice Browne and the Chicago Little Theatre." Modern Drama 31.1, 1988. Mackay, Constance D'Arcy. The Little Theatre in the United States. New York, Henry Holt, 1917.