Sometime in the early 1980s, I was sitting at my desk at Samuel French (probably reading a script) when I received a call from the administrator of the National Repertory Theatre Foundation’s National Play Award, named in honor of Julie Harris, who asked me if I would like to read their five finalists.
Of course I would. A week later I received a package of five scripts, which I read in two or three days. I knew the work of three of the playwrights but had not heard of the other two. All five were worthy of the award, but one in particular stood out. It was called Anima Mundi, and it was by a guy named Don Nigro. It was about a young American named David Armitage, a poet, who comes to Europe to learn the answers to the Big Questions, such as, Is there a God? Armitage arrives in London, where he meets Madame Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, who reads his fortune using Tarot cards. Each scene then becomes a dramatization of a particular reading. He goes on a wild journey and meets Yeats, Pound, Wilde, Aleister Crowley, and a young American dancer named Elizabeth, with whom he falls I love. By the end, he is an old man who finds himself in a greenhouse, cared for by a dotty old curate, who is God.
This play was like nothing I had ever read. I wasn’t sure what I could do with it, but I wrote the playwright and asked to send me more of his work. In two weeks, I received a box of 25 scripts. I couldn’t believe my eyes. All were brilliant. I recommended that the president of our firm publish two or three a year, and suggested to Don that I submit some of them to professional theatres. In short order, I secured productions at the McCarter Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Capital Rep, the Hudson Guild Theatre, and the WPA (the latter two in New York City), and several others. Nigro’s work became better-known, but he was hardly “on the radar.” Why not?
Don lived in a small house in Northeast Ohio with his father, a disabled veteran who had been seriously wounded in the Battle of the Bulge and needed constant care, so he couldn’t travel, making it hard for Don to do the sort of networking so important for establishing a reputation. And anyway, he would rather stay home and write. Another factor: Most of Don’s plays have rather large casts, and these days few plays at professional theatres require more than four actors. Also, all his plays are set in the past, and this is increasingly anathema in much of the professional theatre. I once asked Don why he didn’t write about the present. “All my plays are about the present,” he replied. Fortunately, none of these strictures apply to theatres just about anywhere else in the world.
And then, after Don’s dad died, there were the cats. Word must have spread among the local stray population that if they showed up on Nigro’s back doorstep and meowed they would be fed and given a warm place to sleep. He couldn’t leave those cats, could he? Though his plays were produced regularly in the U.S., it was mostly at small amateur companies and schools. Then, about 10 years ago, he started receiving major productions all over Eastern Europe, taking in a considerable amount in royalties. He had a champion: a prominent Russian director and translator named Viktor Weber.
Don wrote two or three full-length plays a year and at least two collections of shorter works: one-acts, monologues, and 10-minute plays. He was a master of the 10-minute form and published several of these in annual anthologies. If he got stuck on a play, he would put it aside until he figured out what was missing. I once asked Don how many of these he had put aside. “37,” he replied.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Don’s plays is that when he finished one it was ready to go. It didn’t need any “development.” I have a small business helping playwrights make their masterpieces even better. With a Nigro play, I wouldn’t change a word.
By the end, the tally of Don Nigro plays published by Samuel French (now Concord) is 84 full-length plays, 225 short plays, 54 10-minute plays, and 64 monologues. Concord also handles the rights to 75 plays in manuscript. In all, that’s 437 licensable titles. (In addition, Next Stage Press publishes 13 plays in 5 volumes.)
In short, Don Nigro was the finest playwright you never heard of.
Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new-play acquisitions for Samuel French Inc., for over 30 years.
