1906 (120 years ago)
The Majestic Theatre opened in Chicago’s then-tallest building on New Year’s Day, 1906. Occupying the lower floors of the Majestic Building, which also housed a hotel, the theatre was designed by Cornelius Rapp of the architectural firm Rapp and Rapp. Following Illinois’s legal regime of racial segregation, the venue’s design featured disparate entrances for white and Black audiences, who were seated in different levels of the theatre; spectators seated in lower-priced seats were obscured from the view of those in higher-priced seats. In its early years, the Majestic was known to host vaudeville acts by such performance icons as Harry Houdini. After an operational hiatus during the Great Depression, the Majestic was sold to the Shubert Organization and transitioned to presenting commercial plays and musicals, and was rechristened the Sam Shubert Theatre. The following years saw additional management transitions, renovations, and restorations. The theatre is known today as the CIBC Theatre.
1916 (110 years ago)
Novelist, essayist, civil rights activist, educator, and playwright John Oliver Killens (1916-1987) was born in Macon, Georgia, on Jan. 14. Killens’s novels, short stories, dramatic scripts, and screenplays often portrayed racism in the Jim Crow South and segregation in the U.S. military. The novels for which he is best known are Youngblood (1954) and And Then We Heard the Thunder (1962), both Pulitzer finalists. Outside his own writings, Killens championed Black art and co-founded the Harlem Writers Guild with John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, and Walter Christmas, which established a workshop dedicated to emerging Black writers. His students included performance artist and novelist Arthur Flowers and author-playwright Bebe Moore Campbell.
1926 (100 years ago)
On Jan. 23, Eugene O’Neill’s The Great God Brown opened Off-Broadway at Greenwich Village Theatre. A full-length exploration of theatrical expressionism, the play uses masks to interrogate conflicts between the characters’ private lives and their public-facing personas. O’Neill’s plot also features a love triangle between architect Billy Brown, artist Dion, and Dion’s wife Margaret. Further complicating these dynamics are themes of capitalist competition, materialism, betrayal, and deception. Over the course of its nine-month run of over 200 performances, The Great God Brown received mixed reviews, with some lauding O’Neill’s play as a work of exemplary dramatic experimentation and others critiquing the writing as convoluted and boring.
1931 (95 years ago)
Having completed two-week engagements in Boston and Philadelphia in December 1930, the inaugural production of Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs continued its out-of-town tryouts throughout January 1931, passing through Baltimore and Washington, D.C., before opening on Broadway at the end of the same month. Riggs, a gay man of Cherokee descent hailing from present-day Oklahoma, was praised for his nuanced characters and depiction of life in the Western United States. Set in “Indian territory” in 1900, seven years before the establishment of Oklahoma’s statehood, the play is uniquely structured as a set of six scenes, which portray farm life through the rivalries and infatuations of cowboy Curly, farmhand Jeeter, and farm girl Laurey. After the conclusion of its 64-show stint on Broadway, the play went on to inspire Rodgers and Hammerstein’s groundbreaking musical Oklahoma!, which premiered in 1943.
1996 (30 years ago)
In the early hours of Jan. 25, shortly after a dress rehearsal for his new musical Rent, Jonathan Larson died as a result of a misdiagnosed aortic dissection. The first preview of his adaptation of La Bohème, set in the East Village in the 1990s, was scheduled for that night, but was cancelled following news of the composer-lyricist-playwright’s sudden passing. In lieu of hosting public audiences, friends and family gathered at New York Theatre Workshop for a seated, reading-style showcase of Rent. Over the course of the reading, however, the event evolved into a more embodied performance, with actors channeling their recent loss into the work. This shift took hold when members of the cast spontaneously danced on tables during the musical’s iconic Act I finale track, “La Vie Bohème,” with the entirety of the second act being staged full-out. Following its run at New York Theatre Workshop, Rent transferred to Broadway, where it played for more than a decade. Larson would go on to posthumously win three Tony awards and the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
