1891 (135 years ago)
American playwright Clyde Fitch sailed to Europe to visit his friend Oscar Wilde. Fitch was the first American playwright to be regularly produced abroad. His canon includes original works as well as adaptations of Wilde, Victorien Sardou, and Edith Wharton. He attended Amherst College, where he mostly acted and painted scenery. Because of his effeminate nature, he was often cast in women’s roles. When Wilde’s homosexuality became less discreet, Fitch began keeping his distance from him. A close friend recalled an encounter between the men in which Wilde asked Fitch why he stopped visiting and Fitch replied, “Oh, Oscar, you know the reason perfectly well.”
1936 (90 years ago)
The Pulitzer Prize committee, consisting only of Mary M. Colum and William L. Phelps that year, penned a letter on April 3 recommending Idiot’s Delight by Robert E. Sherwood to win the Prize for Drama. In the same letter, the committee suggested that the clause that restricts the award to writers who have not won before be removed, claiming that “this condition is far more restricting in drama than in other fields.” This was Sherwood’s first Pulitzer for Drama, but the suggestion was taken and he went on to win the award again in 1939 and 1941.
1981 (45 years ago)
Annie Baker was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She studied at New York University Tisch School of the Arts and received her MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. Her plays, including Circle Mirror Transformation, The Aliens, and The Flick, often center small communities and human connections in the same fictional Vermont town. The Flick won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Baker has taught a playwriting workshop as an associate professor at the MFA in Playwriting Program at the University of Texas, Austin. She made her feature film debut in 2023 with Janet Planet, which she wrote and directed.
1986 (40 years ago)
August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, directed by Lloyd Rickards, opened at Yale Repertory Theatre on April 29 after a workshop at the O’Neill Conference. The play premiered on Broadway in 1988 with almost the entire cast from the Yale production returning, including Mel Winkler as Seth Holly and L. Scott Caldwell as Bertha Holly. Caldwell won a Tony for her role. Organized by decade, this is the second play in the Century Cycle, Wilson’s series of 10 plays set in each decade of the 20th century. Its second Broadway revival, directed by Debbie Allen and starring Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer, opens April 25.
1991 (35 years ago)
Steppenwolf Theatre Company opened their new location at 1650 Halsted. The opening gala was held on April 13 and sponsored by Citibank. Prior to this, the company performed in the North Shore Unitarian Church in Deerfield, located almost an hour north of their current location. The company moved to Jane Addams Hull House Center in 1980, and moved again to 2851 N Halsted in 1982, before finally settling in the current location. In 2021, the company expanded with the Lefkofsky Arts and Education Center, which included a new performance space and a dedicated education space.
