Margaret Webster: Broadway Shakespeare Director, Gay Female & Civil Rights Advocate in 1940s America Margaret Webster was a British-American theater director in the 1940s who seems to be all but forgotten by history. Her directorial and production choices broke social barriers and affected the entire American theatrical community of her time. Ms. Webster stood out in her field as a gay female director in the male-dominated American theater industry in the 1940s. What become her life’s legacy, however, is that she directed the first Broadway production of Othello with a black American man, Paul Robeson, in the title role. This production of Othello would go on to be the longest running Shakespeare play on Broadway to date. “Margaret Webster’s achievements cannot be overestimated in a profession that continues to favor men as producers, directors, and managers. Her productions of Richard II and Hamlet made William Shakespeare a commercial commodity on Broadway; her production of Othello with Paul Robeson was a theatrical and political milestone…” (Barringer 2). Mrs. Webster has also been remembered for having an elegant style of directing Shakespeare’s plays that found a compromise between holding on to the traditions and original grace of Shakespeare’s work and adapting it for the modern world circumstances. In her obituary in The New York Times, it is mentioned that American theater critic George Jean Nathan once called Margaret Webster: “The best director of the plays of Shakespeare that we have” (New York Times Staff). Ms. Webster did not accept such high praise for her skills, however. In her book, “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage,” she humbly redirected the credit to Shakespeare himself: “It is mortifyingly easy for the director of Shakespeare, if he is not a complete bungler, to be hailed as genius. The genius is nearly always Shakespeare’s” (87). Born in 1905 and the only child of actors Dame May Witty and Ben Webster, Ms. Webster came from a family with deep roots in the world of professional theater in both America and England. She had first planned to follow her mother’s legacy and work as an actress, but her career path changed when famed actor Maurice Evans asked her to work with him in a different capacity. “In February of 1937, I directed Richard II for Maurice Evans in New York. It was my first wholly professional Shakespearean production and my first glimpse of the opportunities and challenges which confronted a producer of Shakespeare in the United States” (Shakespeare Without Tears 20). Thanks to her prolific nature, we have access to Ms. Webster’s writing on her approach and style of directing Shakespeare. Her instructive book, Shakespeare Without Tears, provides an excellent insight into her relationship with the works of Shakespeare and one of the points she makes most frequently is that: “The plays can be kept alive, in the fullest and most vivid sense, only through the medium of the living theater… They were written to be acted, to be seen and heard” (16). Above all other advice, she encouraged the idea of preserving Shakespeare’s plays not just in books, but more importantly in performance. She believed that only reading the plays made them difficult to understand, and the context can be found only when the work is put on a stage as it was originally intended. “When living actors play living characters to living audiences, the words put on flesh and become incandescent… It cannot be preserved in books: the lifeblood escapes, the skeleton alone remains. Production methods can, however, be described and analyzed” (Shakespeare Without Tears, 23). Because of her English and American upbringing, Ms. Webster was afforded a useful perspective when it came to directing actors in both England and America. In one interview, she was asked about the traditions of performing of Shakespeare and if American actors lacked certain qualities found in English actors. In a radio interview at a college in Chicago, IL, she addressed this question for the record: “I think there is a certain continuity in England more than there is here, because here they are professionally done so very seldom, and so very, very few people now throughout the length and breadth of the United States get to see them done professionally. And that necessarily means there is no continuity, and so far as that goes, no tradition” (Margaret Webster Interview). She identified the styles and habits of the actors from each country which she believed was based on upbringing, exposure, and what they were generally accustomed to. To her, neither was better nor worse. “English actors of course are much more glib, much more facile, they speak the verse much more easily, they wear the clothes as if they belong to them, but they tend, I think, (this is fallible as all generalizations are), they tend to be very superficial and it’s altogether too easy… what you have to try and do is make them dig down under it and really come up with some blood and some passion, you know” (Margaret Webster Interview). She contrasted the style of English actors to American actors and found that, while English actors could find Shakespeare too easy and had the habit of slipping into complacency, American actors tended to lack the refined speech and grace of their English counterparts. “American actors, I think, tend to have much greater vitality, much greater zeal; I think they work harder, and I think they come up with the performance which has … much more guts than English actors in spite of the fact that they find the verse difficult and they kind of plow through… you can’t expect them to have a great deal of gloss and elegance and period style, but they can… come through with a performance which has more bites and more passion. The American actors are apt to be crude in execution, but I think more vital in conception” (Margaret Webster Interview). The fault, she claimed, fell on America’s insufficient access to classical theater, an issue that would also eventually inspire her to start her theatrical touring truck company. “Well, because of their lack of either training in or experience of playing or even of seeing the classic end of the range of the scale… they never get a chance at it if they see practically no Shakespeare” (Margaret Webster Interview). A lack of exposure to the classical works is not the only impediment an American actor can face. Ms. Webster had a great deal of experience with American actors who were learning Shakespeare which helped her to understand why they came off as “crude in execution.” She once wrote: “American actors are not brought up on lyric poetry or Biblical prose and they seldom hear it spoken… words confuse them and make them nervous, when set out in iambic pentameters” (Don’t Put Your Daughter on The Stage 90). An interesting challenge when bringing Shakespeare to America is the management of the accent. Some American actors will try to do Shakespeare with a faux English accent because they feel it makes the language sound better. When asked about how she approached the challenge of the performer’s accent in her productions, she said: “We tried to obtain some homogeneity of speech that was neither dude English nor localized American pertaining neither to Oxford University nor Akron, Ohio” (Shakespeare Without Tears 21). Even in Ms. Webster’s time, it seemed difficult to get actors to forget the intimidating feeling of trying to take on a Shakespearean role and ease into a character. The habit was, as it can sometimes be now, to feel disconnected from a part because they don’t speak or follow the same social conventions that we do in our own time. “We found, also, that our actors were disinclined, at first, to tackle the characters as real people, flesh-and-blood human beings closer to themselves” (Shakespeare Without Tears 21). Another crucial element of Ms. Webster’s style of directing was her belief that the correct pacing of a Shakespeare play is vital. “I used to try for the simple virtues; for instance, to make the plays march, to make them exciting… Sometimes I sacrificed introvert detail and the lingering caress in the cause of impetus, energy and tempo” (Don’t Put Your Daughter on The Stage 89). Ms. Webster stressed that trying to conform Shakespeare’s work to the style of theater we are more accustomed to in modern day productions would cause problems with the natural flow of the play. For example: the delay between scene changes. She made the point that Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be fluid, as they would have been on the Globe stage, and when we overburden a Shakespeare text with elaborate scene changes, we hurt the integrity of the work. “We must not impede Shakespeare’s spatial freedom nor interfere with his fluid manipulation of the element of time. Speed is vital; for he himself used the flexibility of his unrestricted stage to establish conventions of place and time subtly and meticulously fitted to his dramatic purpose. His time rhythm is badly jarred by our scene waits, which in his theater did not exist” (Shakespeare Without Tears 68). She believed so much that pacing was critical to maintaining attention of the audience that she developed a technique to gauge the interest level of the audience. In Shakespeare Without Tears, she shared the idea of what she called a “coughing chart.” “I used to keep a constant check, using, for one thing, a coughing chart. The stage management kept it for several weeks. My theory was (is) that an audience coughs and shuffles more because it is bored or can’t hear than because it has a cough. My chart always bore this out. ‘Much coughing’ meant a slow, slack scene” (15). Ms. Webster’s directing style appeared to conform to the idea that she should not reinvent Shakespeare’s work but find ways to carefully enhance it. Her admiration and respect for Shakespeare is consistently mentioned in her writing and can be seen in her artistic choices. She recognized that Shakespeare wrote his plays the way he did for a reason. She understood the context of Shakespeare, the audience and the stage he wrote for, and found the beauty within the work rather than what she could do to the work. “The physical resources on which he was able to draw were meager in the extreme; he used their paucity to stimulate his own dramatic imagination to an overwhelming richness” (Shakespeare Without Tears 62). She consistently reinforced that working within Shakespeare’s text and allowing it to do what it was designed to do so well was the secret to successful Shakespeare. Ms. Webster felt Shakespeare’s plays should be able to sustain themselves and not rely on extensive theatrical devices or gimmicks to make them interesting. She had no desire to set Shakespeare in modern settings or the use of spectacle to engage the audience. “I never found it desirable to ‘gimmick’ the plays in order to bring them up to date or make them what is hideously known as ‘relevant.’ You can only be contemporary for a year or so at a time” (Don’t Put Your Daughter on The Stage 89). Ms. Webster wanted her work to be fresh and entertaining because of what the actor and the director could bring to the play that was new, interesting, and inventive. For example, rather than changing the period clothing, she wanted to change the interpretation of the character. “I don’t mean adapted in the sense of put into modern dress or trying to make it like us or all of those which seem to me false and denigrating; belittlement really, of the plays themselves but passed though the crucible of an actor, a different actor’s, creative ability and understanding and a different audience’s receptible ability and understanding” (Margaret Webster Interview). While Ms. Webster did not like changing the way Shakespeare was performed to any extreme, she was also not a believer in the Original Practices style of Shakespeare. She wanted her work to reflect a balance: The plays should be left alone and delivered purely, but attempting to spend too much time on recreating and embracing Elizabethan structures and practices in performance would distract a modern audience from the play itself. “In Shakespeare’s day the spectators took one look at the stage surroundings and instantly forgot them… But for us, the reverse is true. We examine with curiosity the strange arrangement of galleries and platforms and pillars and doors.... Given time, we shall ignore them and concentrate on the play; but they are sufficiently obtrusive to delay us” (Shakespeare Without Tears 64). Ms. Webster wanted her productions to blend the honored classical traditions of Shakespeare with the evolving style of theater. To achieve such a combination would mean the play would not require overt special effects or spectacle to keep the audience engaged. It would seem her tactics worked; her plays were well-received by critics and audience alike. Many accounts of her performances detail how her plays were appreciated by everyone who attended and not just those who already had some knowledge of Shakespeare. “One cab driver asked Uta Hagen, who played Desdemona, if someone had rewritten the play, he was so surprised he had understood it” (Epstein 388). After seeing a performance, a soldier wrote a letter to Ms. Webster to tell her: “I saw five soldiers sprawled over the seats, feet in the air, sleeves rolled up, shirts open talking not about the babe they met in the Broadway Brewery, but of all things, a thing called Othello” (Epstein 389). Often in her writing, Ms. Webster reflected on how she felt many directors of Shakespeare try too hard to make the play their own rather than working with what was given to them by the author. She felt this to be arrogant and a wrong approach that took away from the inherent beauty of Shakespeare’s work. “I think nowadays… the play has begun to appear as a vehicle for directors. I think, as I say, there are directors who think… ‘what can I do that is different?’ because then it must be the director that’s done it ...You almost inevitably think ‘what can I do that hasn’t been done before?’ Instead of thinking ‘what can I truthfully do to interpret what appears to me be the author’s intention?’” (Margaret Webster Interview). Ms. Webster did not subscribe to the notion that Shakespeare was only for the intelligent, educated audiences. Nor did she express that Shakespeare needed to be adapted to be understood, it just needed to done well. When asked if she felt it was a condescending attitude toward the audience to fear they might not accept Shakespeare undiluted, her response was: “I think it is, yes.” Her voice was full of sarcasm as she went on: “I think it’s even more condescending attitude towards poor old Shakespeare, who they think was always getting himself in such a terrible jam and we must be cleverer and rescue him because after all we know more nowadays” (Margaret Webster Interview). After an unsuccessful attempt to found and operate The American Reperatory Theater with her fellow theatrical females, Cheryl Crawford and Eva La Gallienne, Ms. Webster pursued a new way to bring Shakespeare to America. “In November 1947… She began to make plans to create her own touring company which she eventually called the Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company, shortened to Marweb” (A Life in the Theatre 180). Touring what was referred to as the “gymnasium circuit” because of its frequent performances in high school gymnasiums and auditoriums, Marweb was a bus and truck touring company prepared to perform Macbeth and Hamlet at venues across the country. Her aim was to bring Shakespeare to areas of the United States that had not had access to professional Shakespeare. The ambitious idea became a company that was unable to sustain for more than a few seasons and national tours, but in spite of the struggles and disappointing end, it is the project that Webster maintained as, “the most valuable contribution I ever made to theater in America” (Barringer 187). The concept of a national bus and truck touring company was a significant contribution to the theatrical community in America. Because so many places are far from large cities or professional theater, the idea of bringing professional theater to rural areas developed into a very common practice that is still used today. “Webster’s prophecy for the road was soon realized in resident theaters and touring companies of musicals to civic centers. The ‘road was revitalized in the 1980s by commercial producers sending out companies of Broadway musicals to perform in major American cities where the grosses were guaranteed and the civic theaters were reasonably well equipped” (Barringer 187). While Ms. Webster’s productions were applauded on the merit of her directing, she was simultaneously challenging many of the social norms America in the 1940s and could be credited for blazing an important trail for female Shakespeare directors in the future. As an openly gay professional woman, her very existence defied the traditional concepts of a woman’s role in American society. As a director of Shakespeare, Ms. Webster is primarily remembered for her production of Othello on Broadway with Paul Robeson in the title role opposite white actress Uta Hagen as Desdemona. Prior to working with Ms. Webster, Robeson had performed the role opposite Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1930 and was the first actor of African descent to portray Othello in London since Ira Aldridge in the mid-nineteenth century. (Swindall 12). But interracial casting of Othello had not been done in professional theater in America before. Racial tensions were high in the States in the 1940’s. Segregation was not ruled unconstitutional until 1954 and racial discrimination was still common and accepted in many areas of the country. She wrote: “Above all, I was engaged in a task which today sounds ludicrously unnecessary: that proving in print, on the air, through press interviews and by every known propaganda means, that Othello was really intended to be a black man from Africa, not a coffee-colored gentleman who has been spending the winters in Tunisia” (Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage 112). The production faced many obstacles before it found success. The earliest hurdle was securing a venue. Othello originally opened in Massachusetts rather than New York because venues did not want to take on the production due to its controversial casting choices. “The premiere took place at The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA in 1942. The Brattle was selected since no theater in New York would agree, at that time, to take on a production with an interracial cast” (Swindall 65). But Ms. Webster challenged the tradition of discrimination that her contemporaries had been afraid to approach. The production of Othello featuring Paul Robeson would play a role in ushering in a new age of dignified and respected roles for actors who weren’t white. Dan Burley of Amsterdam News wrote: “Othello on Broadway with Paul Robeson in the leading role represents the most concrete step taken by the Negro on the American stage. In fact, it is of far greater significance that the ability of a Negro has finally been judged more important than his color and the consequences are exciting [and] thrilling to contemplate” (qtd. in Swindall 76). The choice to cast a black man as Othello continued to present challenges, especially when the production was on the road. Ms. Webster wrote of the experience in Don’t Put Your Daughter on The Stage: “We would not play in any theatre where there was discrimination in the seating of Negroes. This mean we could not, for instance, play Washington” (117). Ms. Webster consistently came up against the racism and inequality in the United States and would not relent when it came to fighting discrimination. When she later formed Marweb, she employed two black actors in the repertory cast. Her reasoning was that she “wanted to establish a precedent of having African American actors who were not stars in the road company traveling coast to coast. She enlisted the NAACP in matters of housing and restaurants” (Barringer 182). But parts of America would stubbornly resist change. In the early part of the second year of Marweb’s tour between 1949 and 1950, she received a letter from Northwestern State College in Natchitoches, Louisiana where they were scheduled to perform. It read: “Unfortunately, we feel that we are entirely too far in the Deep South to have them appear on the stage,” he continued, “Negroes have not appeared in our auditorium (in companies of their own, much less in mixed groups), and we feel that the time to begin the practice in this area has not yet arrived” (Barringer 183). In spite of the financial stress her company had been under at the time, Ms. Webster decided that her troupe would completely bypass Natchitoches. Margaret Webster’s artistic style as a director reflected her awe and respect for the work of Shakespeare, and her technique constantly sought to enrich the work, not overshadow nor recreate it. She allowed Shakespeare’s plays to do what they’ve done so well throughout history and did not presume that she could change them for the better. She successfully brought Shakespeare to the professional American stage in one of the most difficult periods of our history and overcame obstacles of her society, racism, and her own gender to deliver some of the most well-received Shakespearean productions in American history. The way she felt Shakespeare should be presented could be emulated by directors and actors today by honoring the work and finding ways to enhance it rather than reinvent it. Most importantly, to emulate Margaret Webster’s style is to fully understand the work and make it accessible to every member of the audience. If we are to continue to direct Shakespeare in the style of Ms. Webster, she leaves us with a lofty goal. In her own closing words in Shakespeare Without Tears: “Shakespeare’s stamp and seal of honor has been set on every actor who has won a lasting reputation and on every theater company of enduring accomplishment. Shakespeare is not only the glory of the language which we speak; he is part of the stuff from which our civilization has been forged. It is for the theater to accept the high responsibility of preserving his work; then only can we claim our rightful share in his immortality” (P 305). Work Cited Barranger, Milly S. Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater. University of Michigan Press, 2004. Epstein, Norrie. The Friendly Shakespeare: a Thoroughly Painless Guide to the Best of the Bard. Penguin Books, 1994. “Margaret Webster Interview Theatre Director Shakespeare.” YouTube, uploaded by EvrythingandtheMusic, 4 Oct. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4Mr7f1W1b0. The New York Times Staff. “Margaret Webster Dies at 67; Stage Director and Ex‐Actress.” NYTimes.com, 14 Nov. 1972, www.nytimes.com/1972/11/14/archives/margaret-webster-dies-at-67-stage-director-and-exactressi-her.html. Accessed 5 March 2018. Swindall, Lindsey R.. Politics of Paul Robeson's Othello, University Press of Mississippi, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bham/detail.action?docID=619224. Accessed 13 April 2018. Webster, Margaret. Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage. Knopf, 1972. Webster, Margaret. Shakespeare without Tears: a Modern Guide for Directors, Actors and Playgoers. Dover Publications, 2000.