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Lillian Groag co-founded the Antaeus Company with me over eight years ago--back then it was called the Antaeus Project and we were working out of the Mark Taper Forum. It was meant to be an experiment, really, to see if the goals we shared for theatre were attainable in this strange and wonderful industry town. What goals were those? A resident ensemble of classically trained actors doing a repertory of great plays at a professional--even world-class--level. The experiment turned into a company a year later, and has
grown by fits and starts ever since. Along the way, our disappointments
may have outnumbered our successes, our hopes and energies may
have flagged from time to time, but our goals have remained the
same. The wonder of it is, on such a journey, that any of us
are still faithfully trekking along at all. For eight years, Lillian has been a leader on this frustrating
jaunt. And all that time, unflaggingly, she has had her own personal
goals to pursue and her own achievements to celebrate--achievements
that most of us could only dream of--or envy. She has become
a kind of one-person Antaeus Company all to herself. She has performed the classics at major regional theatres,
she has taken a hit show to Broadway. She has directed opera
across the country, and when the need arose, she has written
the occasional opera libretto. She has directed great plays all
over America, and when the need arose she has translated them.
And in her spare time she has continued to write, her efforts
culminating--but surely not ending--in her most recent award-winning
memory play The Magic Fire, which after its debut in Ashland,
is scheduled for upcoming productions at the Kennedy Center,
the Guthrie, the Old Globe, and Berkeley Rep. Just for starters. The time has come for her to dedicate more time to her personal artistic pursuits. She's packing her bags (with more manuscripts, I hear) and about to head off on a grueling schedule of directing more operas and overseeing further productions of her plays; but before she leaves, we wish to salute her eight years of hard work with a celebratory reading of one of those wonderful pieces written during her now-ended tenure as Associate Manager of the Company--a paean to idealism, romanticism, and self-sacrifice even in the most trying of circumstances, a play called The White Rose.
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