2025 Theses Doctoral

Becoming Great Lakes Theater: R(E)volutionary Shakespeare R(E)volutionizing American Theater

Redlin, Anne Elizabeth

This dissertation speaks to and illuminates the process of the theatrical work in development, in rehearsal, and in performance done by the professional theatre company of Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival and its growth over the past six decades into Great Lakes Theater.

Located on the American north coast community of Cleveland, Ohio its journey includes interconnections through its series of artistic directors to the northeast’s tristate area, particularly Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, including associations with Carnegie Mellon University, Princeton University and McCarter Theatre, The Public Theater, New York, and internationally with The Globe Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon,The Royal Shakespeare Company in London, and The Abbey Theatre in Ireland.

Through the primary lens of an ensemble framework, emerging from highly innovative rehearsal work, performances, and educational programs and outreach with “Shakespeare” and “classic theatre” as a through line and catalyst for inspiring the development of modern drama and performance, transcending boundaries of how they should be defined, new visions are manifested theatrically. What is studied and uncovered reveals a process of dynamic discovery and choice making in drama, in theatre arts, and in both professional and educational performance.

Through a critical analysis and discussion of the four preliminary major artistic directors and their work with the Great Lakes Theater, leading into the 21st century, this inquiry also aims to identify some of the innovative best practices that become so intrinsic to effective and transformative ways of understanding and knowing dramatically, and that lead the art forms of theatre, performance, and education forward in vital and responsive ways to the society they serve.

A key component to what has been discovered in this part of the research process was the further revelation of the correlation between McCarter Theatre's beginnings at Princeton and its direct connection with the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival's beginning and development. Its provenance began with Arthur Lithgow, who was the first artistic director for both theatres (with the Great Lakes preceding his work with McCarter) where each would eventually share the production work of the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival ensemble that would go to McCarter for limited runs, becoming their primary company, as well, for some shared seasons.

Thereafter, the creative work of the Great Lakes Theater’s subsequent artistic directors and the theatre's history illustrate the further developments of linking it to other outstanding theatres, theatre companies, and educational theatre programs: including in neighboring Pennsylvania, through the work of Artistic Director Lawrence Carra, and extending into the tristate area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and with its affiliate, Cain Park Theatre, in Cleveland, Ohio, and in a unique way, to the Globe Theatre, London through the Great Lakes artistic director, Gerald Freedman, and to the Abbey Theatre, Ireland, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, England through the Great Lakes artistic director, Vincent Dowling.

Through the Great Lakes Theater's innovations in theatrical performance, drama, dramaturgy, and educational programs, and incorporating the groundbreaking work of its artistic directors and guest artists, its unique totality as a theater has impacted in its own microcosmic way, the larger American theatrical landscape in some profound macrocosmic ways: especially in terms of how Shakespeare and what may be considered classic theatre may become a catalyst for inspiring and creating revolutionary ideas and new works in contemporary theatre, in performance, and in education, for a new day.

Situated on the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio, in a much larger way, Great Lakes Theater is situated in spirit at the heart of the American Theatre, shaping its future in profound ways, yet to be imagined, and thereafter, to be realized….