Sesquicentennial Interview: Burnette Staebler

Tue, 11/12/2024 - 1:19pm

When: 1974

This interview was conducted in 1974 as part of the I Remember When television series produced by the Ann Arbor Public Library.

Transcript

• [00:00:11] TED TROST: We're talking now with Mrs. Burnette Staebler and we're going to be talking about theater in Ann Arbor. Thank you very much, Mrs. Staebler, for welcoming us into your home.
• [00:00:21] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Delighted to have you.
• [00:00:22] TED TROST: Mrs. Staebler as I understand it, you have served as president of the Ann Arbor Civic Theater, a member of the board of directors, and have been active in directing plays at the Civic Theater.
• [00:00:33] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes, that's right.
• [00:00:34] TED TROST: Tell us, has Ann Arbor always been a community with interest in theater?
• [00:00:39] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Since its very beginning it really has. Well, we were established what in the 1830s. We hadn't been a town for more than a couple of years when there's record of some group in town, the Thespian Society giving a performance of Pizarro in a place called the E M Terry Hall. Nobody knows where that was. But it was one of the big rooms upstairs over one of the hotels, probably downtown, as so many of the later shows were given in too.
• [00:01:11] TED TROST: This interest then continued to thrive.
• [00:01:13] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes. All during the 19th century, we had lots and lots of professional theater in Ann Arbor. First, there were traveling troupes that came, the first one as early as 1844. They gave a lovely combination of plays. Richard III, Shakespeare, of course and a thing called the Drunkards Warning. Evidently, the melodramas and Shakespeare were very big in those days. Traveling actors and troupes used to come all during the 19th century. We didn't have a real theater until 1871 when Hill's Grand Opera House was built on Main Street.
• [00:01:53] TED TROST: On Main Street.
• [00:01:54] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Near Catherine.
• [00:01:54] TED TROST: Saw a picture of it the other day.
• [00:01:55] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes. Then things really got going and many of the biggest stars in the world would come for two and three-night stands. All the famous names you can think of were here. Minnie Maddern Fiske and Modjeska and all the famous names, John Drew and so on, came for many performances. Then there were a lot of local groups that gave performances too. It got if you say, "Was Ann Arbor interested in theater?", Ann Arbor got so interested in theater that by 1899, in the year 1899, there were 95 legitimate plays given in Ann Arbor.
• [00:02:39] TED TROST: This attracted not only students and university people but the town's people.
• [00:02:43] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes, these were are this was largely town, not university. Now, the university, of course, was smaller in those days and they had dramatic groups, comedy clubs and this sort of thing. But I'm talking about town theater, which was mostly given downtown. The university finally began giving things in University Hall when that was built. Then but it wasn't until the 20th century that the university really got going in theater and of course, they've been going strong ever since.
• [00:03:13] TED TROST: Yes, indeed. Well, as the university got involved, then the opportunities for people to experience theater began to grow. There was not only community to watch it. What kind of lead did the university take in terms of theater? What did it build on, really?
• [00:03:30] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Well, there was quite a doldrum in town in the first ten years of the century because the old, the opera house, Hills Opera House which in its latter years became the Athens Theater, finally closed in 1904 and there was no theater.
• [00:03:46] TED TROST: Nothing here I see.
• [00:03:48] BURNETTE STAEBLER: In 1908, it reopened on the same site as the new Whitney Theater and this theater was in existence for many years. I saw performances at the Whitney Theater when I was a freshman in the university around 1930. I think the play production department of the University was established in 1916 and this was the real beginning of the university's major interest in theater. This was given a tremendous boost in 1928 when Valentine Windt, an extraordinary man, came to Ann Arbor to head the university play production department. He was here for a number of years. He built the department so that the plays they gave were excellent. Then, of course, in 1929, Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre opened and both university productions and town productions were given there. About that same time, we saw the beginning of the spring drama season, which brought professional theater again to Ann Arbor performing in Lydia Mendelssohn. There would be a five or six-week season every spring where the top stars in the country would come and perform five or six shows for a week each time.
• [00:04:59] TED TROST: We've certainly had a long history then of professional theater in Ann Arbor. Tell me, how did the Civic Theater, Ann Arbor Civic Theater as we know it today get started?
• [00:05:07] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Well, it's 43 years old.
• [00:05:09] TED TROST: It's 43?
• [00:05:09] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes. It's an old organization, as these things go. This was a group, as such as many of the groups that there had been earlier of citizens, people in town, often including many university people of course, because that's part of the town, to have fun giving plays for their friends. Well, it's grown over the years, until now everybody comes to see Civic Theater plays. They're very good.
• [00:05:35] TED TROST: Were the plays originally performed in Lydia Mendelssohn or was there another theater?
• [00:05:39] BURNETTE STAEBLER: They gave them in the high school and in various smaller halls. But we've been giving our plays in Lydia Mendelssohn pretty much for quite a few years now.
• [00:05:50] TED TROST: Well, bearing in mind how closely you have worked with the Civic Theater as you look back just to that group, are there particularly memorable performances that stand out in your mind or plays in.
• [00:06:02] BURNETTE STAEBLER: In Civic Theater?
• [00:06:03] TED TROST: Yes. Why you tell us about them?
• [00:06:04] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes, I'm sure. Well, I think the first one that I ever saw Civic Theater do 15, 20 years ago before I joined it, was a performance of Major Barbara and beautifully done. Then later one of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. Is it Arthur Millers?
• [00:06:22] TED TROST: All My Sons?
• [00:06:23] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes, which was a beautiful production. It was those things that sold me on participating in Civic Theater. I decided this was a group that was interested not just in being a little social club that gave plays for fun, but were interested really in doing the very best job that amateurs can do and this is what they do.
• [00:06:42] TED TROST: Acting, directing, performing, crewing and so on. The people that participate in that are members of the Ann Arbor Community, not just the university community.
• [00:06:50] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Oh my, we have school teachers and secretaries and firemen and policemen, just about all kinds of people and all kinds of occupations participate in Civic Theater. I'm just amazed that many of the men and particularly the women, many of whom have full time jobs all day and families to take care of. Then they come down there night after night and build scenery and costumes and act and direct and so on and put on really, very good performances.
• [00:07:22] TED TROST: Have you had an opportunity to be at the Power Center yourself?
• [00:07:25] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes. I have not acted in the Power Center myself or directed there, but of course, I've seen many productions there. This is a great lift and Ann Arbor was really needing the Power Center. We were ready for it. We were bursting at the seams in Lydia Mendelssohn and the Trueblood Theater and the high school auditoriums. There just wasn't room enough.
• [00:07:44] TED TROST: Yes, I know I've been to some place where they're very crowded.
• [00:07:48] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Yes.
• [00:07:48] TED TROST: The professional theater in Ann Arbor has been a help to students in some ways. Of course they get an opportunity to see how some of the best directors and best performers. [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:07:58] BURNETTE STAEBLER: Work with them in some instances, yes. There have been ever since the spring drama season, which, as I say, started in 1929, it went on with a brief interlude in World War II. Then it went on into about 1950. That finally died because it wasn't economic anymore. It wasn't that people didn't want to see the professional plays. But after that, a number of us have been interested in seeing that we could keep professional theater going in Ann Arbor. There were two interesting little movements in the 1950s. There was the Arts Theater Club, a little equity company followed. Well, it lived for three years and did some very exciting things in a loft downtown. Then there was the dramatic art center which followed it for another three years. I was involved in that one, I acted in some plays and helped with the management of it. This again lasted three years, little professional company and the old Masonic Temple, which became an arena theater. But we soon discovered that the only way that Ann Arbor was going to maintain professional theater was to have it connected with the university. When the professional theater program started, this was the direction we felt Ann Arbor needed to go as far as professional theater was concerned. Of course, professional theater groups, the PTP is an excellent organization now bringing us all kinds of good professional theater. They work with Civic Theater. We cooperate in a great many ways, because I've always felt that theater is all of a piece. People say, well, don't you compete you different theater groups for audiences? Well, of course we do, to some extent. But for example, last weekend, the professional theater or the university players were doing a big thing with a professional star there. They sold out their houses for Cyrano de Bergerac at that Power Center. At the same time, over at Lydia Mendelssohn, Civic Theater was playing Ernest in Love, a little delightful little musical based on the old play, The Importance of Being Ernest. I directed that show. We had excellent audiences too, even though there were also big things going on at Hill Auditorium in the musical field. Theater is a piece. If you develop theater audiences in a town, they want to see all kinds of theater and they support all kinds of good theater.
• [00:10:13] TED TROST: Well, thanks so much, Mrs. Staebler for talking with us about theater in Ann Arbor and for giving us just a little background about the foundations upon which theater has grown in Ann Arbor. Appreciate your talking with us. I certainly feel theater in the future is in good hands.