Word: rabbe
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Being a Bemoaner. For all that, APA is only five years old, the inspiration and creation of Actor-Director Ellis Rabb, 34. Born in Memphis, Rabb studied drama at Carnegie Tech, where his Southern accent graduated sounding British ("The inflection patterns are very similar, if you think about it"). Small parts on and off Broadway followed until, in 1959, he was struck by Tyrone Guthrie's comment in A Life in the Theatre that anyone bemoaning the lack of first-rate classical actors should "take more energetic action...
...Rabb wrote to 78 acquaintances in the theater-actors, directors and designers-told them that he was starting a troupe; there would not be much money in it, but it would be creatively fulfilling. Not exactly a new concept, but Rabb was lucky. He found enough people who agreed with his dream and were willing to take the chance...
...smooth confidence. "Five years of percolating is better than instant," says one actress. Having done 30 productions (predominantly classical) since its start, the APA is now a well-integrated, well-trained troupe, one-third of whom have been in the company all five years. They are beginning to reflect Rabb's maxim that a rep company should be made up not of chameleon-like actors but of a group of stars who leave their individual mark on each role...
Among the APA's growing assets, the greatest is the emergence of a first-magnitude star among them. One month before forming APA, Rabb presciently married her. Rosemary Harris, 34, has played Desdemona to Burton's Othello, Ophelia to O'Toole's Hamlet, Elena to Olivier's Dr. Astroff and Redgrave's Uncle Vanya. In the U.S., she played opposite Jason Robards in the 1958 Broadway production of The Disenchanted. The British-born, India-reared actress stars in War and Peace and Judith, plays Violet in Man and Superman at alternate performances...
...embryo of a play. A sense of events and characters killed for lack of space, of people and relationships underdeveloped for lack of time is present in this Phoenix Theater presentation of the Tolstoy classic, but it has an evocative life that refuses to be smothered. Thanks to Ellis Rabb's inventive direction, a substantial fraction of the surge, scope and thematic intention of the novel comes over the footlights...