T
by GIGI VAN DECKTER
he White Barn Theatre, founded in 1947 at the corner of Cranbury Road
and Newtown Turnpike on the Connecticut Norwalk/Westport border,
made theater history for over 50 years. Lucille Lortel, an actress,
producer, and artistic director, crowned The Queen of Off-Broadway by
Richard L. Coe, drama critic of the Washington Post, started the White Barn where she
staged hundreds of plays along with her other off-Broadway venue, The Lucille Lortel
Theatre (originally named The Theatre De Lys), in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
Born in 1900 to Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan, Lucille Lortel (left) studied acting at The American
Academy of Dramatic Arts, making her Broadway debut with
Helen Hayes. She made her way to Hollywood to star in one of
the first talking pictures with Sessue Hayakawa. After marrying
paper industrialist and philanthropist Louis Schweitzer, she
looked for a way to express herself that, at that time, was
acceptable to her husband. With the counsel of actor Danny
Kaye, she started the White Barn Theatre out of the horse barn
on her husband’s estate.