HB Playwrights Foundation and Theatre

HB Playwrights Foundation

The HB Playwrights Foundation was founded in 1964 by actors Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen in New York City . The Foundation is a sister organization to HB Studio, a school that offers training to actors and other theater artists and was founded by Berghof in 1945. HB Studio had been staging productions since its inception as a forum to develop and showcase new talent. Founding HB Playwrights Foundation as a separate organization highlighted the importance of these productions and allowed the Foundation to have its own administration and operating budget.

The Foundation, along with HB Studio, is housed in a three building complex in the West Village and has a theater that can seat eighty people. Berghof and Hagen formed the Foundation to give playwrights, actors, and technical staff the opportunity to hone their skills in an environment that encouraged experimentation and was free from commercial pressures. To this effect, Berghof and Hagen did not invite critics to the performances, kept the performances free for audience members, and gave no payment to playwrights, actors, and technical staff. The Actors' Equity Association, recognizing the educational nature of the performances, granted the Foundation a special agreement recognizing that all work was pro bono and allowing longer than usual rehearsal periods. Works were selected by an application process and playwrights were afforded an intensive workshop with a director, full cast, and an invited audience for either a full production or a staged reading. While the Foundation was dedicated to promoted new playwrights and works, it would occasionally stage adaptations of more classic works. In addition to productions and readings, the Foundation hosted an annual Christmas play, The Second Shepherd's Play, from 1967-1989, and produced a number of special evening events including lectures from well-known experts and musical performances.

HB Playwrights Foundation is still an active organization at the time of this writing (2011) and upholds the beliefs and structures set in place by its founders. Playwrights who have worked with the Foundation include Neena Beber, Saul Bellow, Eric Bentley, Bertolt Brecht, Vincent Canby, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Donna de Matteo, Horton Foote, Marjorie Kellogg, Pavel Kohout, Romulus Linney, Kenneth Lonergan, Mark Medoff, Ed Napier, James Purdy, James Ryan, Willam Saroyan, Martin Sherman, Michael Straight, William Styron, Kathleen Tolan, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Sherman Yellen.

For a full list of productions and staged readings performed at HP Foundation since their first season in 1964, please refer to the "HP Playwrights Foundation Production History" that can be accessed online at http://www.hbplaywrights.org/PAST%20SEASONS.pdf

Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof

Uta Thyra Hagen (1919-2004) was born in Germany to Oscar and Thyra Hagen. Her father had begun the Handel Opera Festival in Göttingen and her mother was a Danish opera singer and teacher. When Hagen was six, the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin where her father founded the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin. Hagen was attracted to acting at an early age and trained briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1936. She made her Broadway debut as Nina in The Sea Gull (1938). That same year, she married actor Jose Ferrer and starred with Ferrer and Paul Robeson in the well-known production of Othello. Hagen and Ferrer had one daughter in 1940 named Leticia ("Letty"). Hagen met and married Berghof in 1947 when they were both in the Broadway production of The Whole World Over. Hagen went on to originate the role of Georgie Elgin in Clifford Odets' The Country Girl (1950), winning her first Tony Award in 1951. Hagen performed the title role in Saint Joan (1951), as well as starred in Tovarich (1952), In Any Language (1952), The Magic and the Loss (1954), and Island of Goats (1955).

In the early 1950's Hagen's liberal political views and activities caused her to be blacklisted from television and Broadway and subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1962, Hagen made her return to Broadway starring in the acclaimed Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, earning her a second Tony Award in 1963. Her subsequent Broadway appearances included The Cherry Orchard (1968), You Never Can Tell (1986), Mrs. Klein (1995), Collected Stories (1998), and Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks (2001). Hagen also appeared in the film The Boys from Brazil (1978), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and in Reversal of Fortune (1990). Her television appearances included the soap opera One Life to Live (1986) and television movie Seasonal Differences (1987); she received Daytime Emmy Award nominations for both.

Hagen continued to teach and her master classes became the basis for her two classic acting texts, Respect for Acting (1973), co-written Haskel Frankel, and A Challenge for the Actor (1991). Uta Hagen's Acting Class (2001) video captured Uta's classroom teaching on film. Also a gourmet cook, Hagen wrote a cookbook Love for Cooking (1976).

Herbert Berghof (1909-1990) was a born in Vienna to Paul and Regina (Sternberg) Berghof. His father was a railroad stationmaster. Berghof attended the University of Vienna and the Vienna State Academy of Dramatic Art and studied with Alexander Moissi, Max Reinhardt, and Lee Strasberg. He spent twelve years honing his craft on the European stage before emigrating to the United States in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. In the United States, Berghof found work as a teacher at Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research and at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Berghof first garnered acclaim in the United States in an adaptation of Nathan the Wise (1942), then appearing on Broadway in The Innocent Voyage (1943), The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), Hedda Gabler (1948), Miss Liberty (1949), The Deep Blue Sea (1952), The Andersonville Trial (1959), and In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1969). He appeared in summer stock productions such as Design for Living (1943) and The Guardsman (1951). Berghof was also well known for directing the first American staging of Waiting for Godot (1956).

In addition to their individual stage careers, the couple adapted, produced, and performed together works such as Cyprienne (1955), The Daily Life (1955), and The Queen and the Rebels (1959). They also toured with productions of The Play's the Thing (1952), The Lady's Not for Burning (1953), The Affairs of Anatol (1957), and Charlotte (1980), a play that was translated by Berghof and Hagen, produced and directed by Berghof, and starred Hagen. Berghof and Hagen lived in Greenwich Village and had a summer home in Montauk, Long Island.

From the guide to the HB Playwrights Foundation, Inc. records, 1909-2001, 1940-1988, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)