1924 (100 years ago)

Folk dramatist Eulalie Spence’s first produced play, Being 40, premiered at the Lafayette Theatre at the National Ethiopian Art School in New York City on Oct. 15. Directed by George Currie, the play centered on a family feud between a bachelor and his younger sister. Though no copies of the script remain today, it is regarded as one of Spence’s most popular plays in its time. It was later produced in Newark, New Jersey, by the Bank Street Players in 1927. Born in the West Indies in 1894, Spence moved to New York City with her family at age 8. Spence was a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance and won several awards for her plays. She was also a playwright and performer in W.E.B. DuBois’ theatre group the Krigwa Players.

1959 (65 years ago)

R.G. Davis started the San Francisco Mime Troupe with the show Games—3 Sets, which debuted on Oct. 29. From the beginning, the troupe valued experimental and politically relevant shows that tackled civil rights issues, workers’ rights, censorship, and more, drawing inspiration from commedia dell’arte and farce. In 1970, the troupe voted to become a democratic collective whose members all serve as artistic directors. Their guerrilla theatre approach won them the Tony Award for Excellence in Regional Theatre in 1987. Today their mission is “to create and produce theatre that presents a working-class analysis of the events that shape our society, that exposes social and economic injustice, that demands revolutionary change on behalf of working people.”

1984 (40 years ago)

In the spring of 1984, San Diego’s Old Globe’s outdoor Festival Stage was destroyed by arson. The Festival Stage was a temporary space erected after an earlier fire, in 1978, had destroyed the original theatre. After the 1984 blaze, “Community support rallied quickly to help rebuild the theatres,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Five months after the 1984 fire, the Old Globe opened the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, named in memory of a board member and president who had served the theatre for more than four decades and helped Old Globe gain national recognition. Today the Festival Stage serves as the home to the annual Old Globe Shakespeare festival each summer.

1989 (35 years ago)

Ojibwe playwright Drew Hayden Taylor’s play Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock opens at Da-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group on the Sheshegwaning Reserve, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, on on Oct. 3, directed by Larry Lewis (Da-ba-jeh-mu-jig artistic director). The play tells the story of Rusty, an Ojibwe teen who’s on a vision quest when he is visited by two other First Nations boys, one from the future and one from the past. Together the boys show Rusty the beauty and power of his Ojibwe heritage. Throughout the show, Taylor combines ceremonial practices with contemporary dialogue and issues to create a piece that still teaches young audiences today. Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock went on to win the Chalmer’s Playwriting Award for Best Play for Young Audiences and has toured across Canada.

2014 (10 years ago)

Suzan-Lori Parks’ trilogy Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, and 3) opened Off-Broadway on Oct. 28 at the Public Theater. The show was developed through the Public Lab and had workshops as early as 2009. Told in three short plays, the story follows Hero, an enslaved man who must decide whether to join the Confederate Army in exchange for a promise of freedom from the man who enslaves him. Sterling K. Brown starred as Hero and the production was directed by Jo Bonney. New York Times critic Charles Isherwood called the production an “epic dramatic poem” that provided “a seriocomic meditation on liberty, loyalty and identity.” Parks won the 2015 Obie Award for playwriting and the play was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.