R.I.P. Theodore Mann

[Reza]

Theodore Mann, Off Broadway Producer, Dies at 87:

by David Rooney NY Times 2/25/2012

Theodore Mann, a producer and director who, as a founder of the
influential Circle in the Square, was a driving force in the rise of
Off Broadway theater in the 1950s, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 87.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his son Jonathan.

Founded in 1950 by Mr. Mann, the director Jose Quintero and others,
Circle in the Square significantly expanded New York's then
Broadway-centric theater landscape, notably with 1952 production of
Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke." A series of acclaimed
productions directed by Quintero and produced by him and Mr. Mann was
widely credited with reviving Eugene O'Neill's reputation as
America's pre-eminent dramatist.

Both through the theater and the Circle in the Square Theater School,
which was founded in 1961, Mr. Mann had a hand in discovering or
nurturing many stage actors who would go on to celebrated careers.
Some, like Colleen Dewhurst, Jason Robards and Geraldine Page, had
major professional breakthroughs with the company.

Other actors linked with the theater over the years have included
George C. Scott, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Alexander, Laura
Linney, Kevin Kline and Raul Julia. Kevin Bacon and Philip Seymour
Hoffman are among the school's alumni.

"All of us who covered the embryonic Off Broadway theater movement in
the mid-1950s knew Ted as among its earliest galvanizers," said
Arthur Gelb, a former culture editor and managing editor at The New
York Times and a biographer of O'Neill. "It was amazing to witness
how year after year his Circle in the Square paved the way for a
parade of gifted actors to Broadway and Hollywood."

The Circle's 1956 revival of "The Iceman Cometh," starring Robards,
is widely viewed as a landmark in the re-evaluation of O'Neill's
legacy and a prime example of the company's attention to neglected plays.

The positive response to that production prompted O'Neill's widow,
Carlotta Monterey, to release Quintero and Mr. Mann the rights to the
playwright's other works, including "Long Day's Journey Into Night."
Produced by Mr. Mann with Quintero and Leigh Connell, and directed by
Quintero, the Broadway premiere won the 1957 Tony Award for best play.

Mr. Mann was born Theodore Goldman on May 13, 1924, in Brooklyn. (He
changed his name in the late 1940s.) He spent World War II in the
Army medical corps stationed at Fort Ord in Monterey, Calif. His son
Jonathan said it was during this period that he became acquainted
with people in the arts like Robinson Jeffers, Ansel Adams and
Langston Hughes, who fueled his desire for a career in the arts.

Returning to New York, he followed the wishes of his father, Martin
Goldman, a lawyer and jazz club owner, and enrolled through the G.I.
Bill at Brooklyn Law School. But though he passed the bar exam, he
was never drawn to a career in law.

His association with Quintero began on a visit to Woodstock, N.Y.,
where Quintero invited him to stay on as business manager of a
Woodstock company, the Loft Players. An offshoot of that company,
Circle in the Square, had its original home in a former nightclub in
Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village.

The theater opened in 1951 with "Dark of the Moon." But it was
"Summer and Smoke" the following year -- starring the unknown
Geraldine Page in a drama that had been a commercial disappointment
on Broadway just three years earlier -- that put the company on the map.

"Nothing has happened for quite a long time as admirable as the new
production at the Circle in the Square," Brooks Atkinson wrote in The
Times. When the original premises were demolished in 1960, the
theater moved to a new location on Bleecker Street.

After Quintero left the company, Mr. Mann in 1963 teamed up with Paul
Libin, who became his co-producer on work that included classics,
mid-century American drama and plays by emerging voices like Terrence
McNally, Jules Feiffer and John Patrick Shanley.

At the invitation of Mayor John V. Lindsay in 1972, Circle in the
Square moved uptown into a new Broadway theater on 50th Street. The
theater opened with Dewhurst in "Mourning Becomes Electra," one of
many productions directed by Mr. Mann, who returned frequently to the
work of O'Neill and Williams.

Circle in the Square ceased operating as a producing entity in the
late 1990s, but its Broadway theater continues to carry its name. The
Circle School continues, with about 200 students a year.

Circle in the Square received a special Tony Award in 1976 for 25
continuous years of quality productions. Mr. Mann's memoir, "Journey
in the Night: Creating a New American Theatre With Circle in the
Square," was published in 2007.

Mr. Mann was married in 1953 to the lyric soprano Patricia Brooks,
who died in 1993. Besides his son Jonathan, he is survived by another
son, Andrew, and five grandchildren.