Robert Brustein, theater critic and pioneer who founded stage programs for Yale and Harvard, dies

FILE - President Barack Obama presents a 2010 National Medal of Arts to New Republic theatre critic Robert Brustein, March 2, 2011, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Brustein, a giant in the theatrical world as critic, playwright, crusader for artistic integrity and founder of two of the leading regional theaters in the country, died on Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023. He was 96.

Even in his 80s, Brustein continued offering his opinions on everything from art to politics, lashing out at the Tea Party and describing the pain of breaking ribs on his own blog. He was a distinguished scholar in residence at Suffolk University, a professor of English emeritus at Harvard University and longtime critic at The New Republic.

After a painful, highly publicized dismissal from Yale, Brustein in 1979 switched to Harvard, where he taught English and founded the American Repertory Theatre in 1980. Then in 1987, he founded the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, a two-year graduate program. He retired as artistic director from A.R.T. in 2002 but continued serving as its founding director.

“I was looking for the energies of popular theater applied to traditional work. I was also looking for new American plays. This was a very important function of ours, to encourage and develop new American playwrights.” Brustein was a staunch believer that theater should be first and foremost an art form, not just a political platform. He once criticized the African-American playwright August Wilson for declaring that Black people should not participate in colorblind casting but should form their own separatist companies. The pair then aired their differences in 1997 in a high-profile confrontation at New York's Town Hall.

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