Palmer Street Poets

A quietly intent group of people who care about poetry and theatre has come again to the surface of the not so esoteric world. Poets' Theatre brought Dame Edith Sitwell and Sir Osbert Sitwell to read their own work Sunday in Sanders Theater. The names have made headlines and aroused general interest, but for the five-year-old Poets' Theatre they are a small part of a movement that began weakly in 1950 and did not stay that way long.

The Theatre's beginning was in the heads of several Cambridge people who had written verse-plays. They had not been able to see them on a stage because no one with enough capital was very eager to risk it on verse-plays. Early in 1950 these writers drifted into a unit at poet Richard Eberhart's house and elected him president of Poets' Theatre: "Founded to produce original plays of literary and dramatic excellence."

The Theatre was more or less a parentless thing. The foster-father, if there was one, was the cast of the Brattle Theatre's stage company, which in those times had only one free night a week. The free night was Monday and it was donated by many to the infant Poets.

In that first season three programs were offered in the Christ Church Parish House and Peabody Playhouse. There was no office for the Theatre and almost no emphasis on professional production. It was a thing of, by, and for poets.

But by 1953 the original nucleus had begun to grow and in some ways to change. First, the early productions had drawn increasing support from Bostonians who were willing to support what publicity director Catherine Huntington calls "pure theater with no commercialism, which is attractive to the artist element." The mailing list has come to include 1,200 possible season members ($10) or patrons ($35). So the Theatre has moved onto very solid financial ground.

In October of 1953 the group used Agassiz to produce two plays by Archibald MacLeish, and in February used Sanders Theatre to read William Alfred's Agamemnon. Later that year verse-plays by Yeats were produced in the Fogg Court. The Poets waived the by-law which requires an author to be present when his work is being considered for production. "He was not exactly a member, but the pieces were excellent," Miss Huntington explained.

The following year Four Plays for a Bare Stage successfully appeared, proving that space and scenery are not necessary. Rockwell Film Studios provided the bare stage. But if the Poets found that elaborate staging could be dispensed with, they also agreed that professional direction could not. Edward Thommen was hired by the ever-growing bank account as Managing Director. He formed the center for a core of theater professionals which now includes Miss Huntington, designer William Hunt, and poet-president Lyon Phelps.

Thommen and Miss Huntington found a large dirty room with paint spilled over the floor in back of the Paul Schuster Gallery. The Poets took a lease and spent part of their fund getting the paint off the floor. George Montgomery designed a stage, the staff worked for six weeks, and a curtain was hung across the front. Palmer Street ended the wandering and pushed Theatre ahead of Poets.

There is a place now and professionals to run it, but casting is still sometimes difficult. Only enough money to retain a permanent reperatory company could solve the Theatre's problems. "We hope someday to be able to perform part of every week," Miss Huntington has said. Towards this the Poets' Theatre is working with the same quiet intent which it put into the Palmer Street space. That intent has done quite a lot in five years.