IN THE BEGINNING…
IUTC Program Cover
In the fall of 1987, Seth Rozin was working at the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania as the assistant to his college mentor, Catherine “Kaki” Marshall, and one of his jobs was to facilitate student interaction with visiting professional companies. So when the Irish Universities Theatre Company – an amalgam of recent graduates of Irish theatre programs – visited Penn on a tour of the Northeast U.S. Seth helped them find housing, engage with theatre students, and publicize their performances of classic and contemporary Irish plays. During their brief stay in Philly, Seth became interested in the idea of launching a professional theatre to pursue this dynamic enterprise.
Seth brought together three of his Penn colleagues -- Brad Rosenstein, Erica Schwartz-Hall and David Goldstein – along with IUTC’s tour director, Terry Dixon, and in February of 1988 they founded InterAct with a broad and ambitious mission: To foster international cultural exchange through theatre. Their vision was to bring plays that collectively communicated essential American values, ideas, stories and characters to other countries; and to present plays produced by foreign theatres in Philadelphia for local audiences to learn about other cultures.
Inaugural season company: FRONT ROW (l to r): Grace Gonglewski, Bruce Robinson, Eric Marshall, Monica Helm, Amy Kitts; SECOND ROW (l to r): Ed Shockley, Brad Rosenstein, Bill Janczewski, Lillian Rozin, Elizabeth Cutthrell, Frank Wood, Erica Schwartz-Hall; BACK ROW (i to r): Terry Dixon, Seth Rozin, Judy Greenblatt, Terry Franceschi, Bob Stephenson, Luke Hardt
For its first season InterAct planned a reciprocal tour of ten cities and towns in Ireland and Northern Ireland featuring three full-length plays – SEASCAPE by Edward Albee, SEDUCED by Sam Shepard and THE EMPEROR JONES by Eugene O’Neill – along with a double-bill of one-acts – SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO by David Mamet and THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED by Tennessee Williams. The company was composed of 14 artists, including African American director Ed Shockley, actor Frank Wood (who went on to win a Tony Award for his role in SIDE MAN), Philadelphia favorite Grace Gonglewski and African American actor Bruce Robinson.
Raising money from local donors and funders to bring theatre overseas proved very challenging, and midway through rehearsals InterAct considered aborting the entire project, when they received this letter from Aer Lingus:
They couldn’t not go now.
In September 1988, to kick off the tour, InterAct performed each evening of plays once at the Annenberg Center, beginning with SEASCAPE as the company’s official opening night.
A few days prior to opening, Edward Albee responded to InterAct’s invitation, agreeing to attend the performance and meet with the company. Albee sat stone-faced through the entire evening but kept his word and met with the company the next morning.
Edward Albee & Grace Gonglewski
The tour itself was alternately exhilarating and fraught with seemingly every possible thing that could go wrong: from a wild and wacky performance of SEASCAPE in a hotel snooker (billiards) room in Clifden to a near-calamitous car accident on the way to Eniskillen… (left)
…to a performance of SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO that was banned by the local parish priest in Carrick on Suir to a bomb scare that forced the cancellation of a performance in Northern Ireland to a memorable publicity stunt in Dublin (above).
On the company’s final night in Dublin, as everyone dreamed about returning home the following day, the company truck was broken into and almost all of the videos documenting the tour were stolen. Considering that the oldest person in the company was 32, it was something of a miracle that InterAct was able to pull off a seven-week, 40+-performance tour of Ireland and Northern Ireland. But that is exactly how the company started.