A star falls from the firmament.
Sad news today for theatre lovers, especially Chicago Theatre lovers. Hope Abelson, a patron saint of many a Chicago off-loop theatre passed away at the age of 95. Ms. Abelson, and her husband, were key supporters of my early efforts in Chicago and I was always grateful for their support. There is hardly anyone who worked in Chicago Theatre who wasn't touched in some way by her generosity. Stage lights everywhere shine a little dimmer today. Below is a summary of her life by Chicago Theatre critic and journalist, Jonathan Abarbanel, which was sent to me by Gary Houston. (Thanks, Gary.)
Hope Abelson--Broadway producer, architect of Chicago's theatre rennaisance and a force majeur in North American theatre--passed away Friday evening, September 1 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. She was 95 and had been in declining health for several years. She'd been admitted to the Northwestern emergency room earlier Friday with a broken leg after falling at her Lake Shore Drive residence. While being treated, she lost consciousness and efforts to revive her were not successful.
Abelson's decade as a Broadway producer--even though she always remained a Chicagoan-was bookended by two towering successes, N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker in 1954 and Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun in 1965. She also was instrumental in the early development of Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre, and in creating a United States support group for Canada's Stratford Festival, of which she was a Life Governor.
But Abelson's most enduring contribution will be her enthusiastic embrace of Off-Loop theatre in Chicago, of which she was an early and stalwart patron, a wise advisor and a sharp critic. From Chicago Shakespeare Theater to Court Theatre to the Goodman Theatre, few major not-for-profit theatres in Chicago today have not been helped along the way by Hope Abelson, who also helped establish the League of Chicago Theatres. Her philanthropy also extended to the visual arts, music and dance, the particular passions of her children, Stuart and Katherine.
Born Hope Altman in the Chicago area, in 1910, she studied dance as a teenager and then theatre at Northwestern University. After Northwestern, she began a career in live radio drama, at that time still at its peak with Chicago as a major broadcasting center. She played occasional roles on the Ma Perkins soap opera and other national programs that originated here.
But it took World War II to bring out the organizational abilities that led to a successful producing career. By that time married to attorney and businessman Lester Abelson, she served as director of the Red Cross Speaker's Bureau, orchestrating pitches for blood and bandages. Soon after the war, she and three wartime associates--among them a young WGN newsman named Mike Wallace--each put up $1,000 to launch the Chevy Chase Theatre in suburban Wheeling. The area's first star-policy summer stock operation, the Chevy Chase Theatre hosted stars such as Imogene Coca, Arthur Treacher and Ruth Chatterton as well as local up-and-comers such as Studs Terkel and Merle Reskin.
Between 1948 and 1953, Abelson put Chevy Chase on its feet, and then was hired away by Music Theatre, a tent operation at the old Villa Moderne in Northbrook. By 1952 she was executive producer. Then, on a casting trip to New York, Abelson was introduced to legendary producer Cheryl Crawford (co-founder of the Group Theatre), who hired Abelson as her production assistant on Camino Real a new play by Tennessee Williams. Camino Real opened in March 1953, and Hope Abelson was on Broadway. By 1965, she'd produced a half-dozen Broadway shows and also worked Off-Broadway with the famous Phoenix Theatre repertory company.
Refocusing on Chicago in the late 1960's, Abelson spearheaded an effort to make Chicago the permanent home for William Ball's American Conservatory Theatre. She persuaded the Ravinia Festival to host an annual visit by the troupe for several years, but was not able to secure support to bring the company here permanently; one of the few unsuccessful efforts in her long and varied career.
Almost immediately, Abelson turned her abilities to support of the young artists of Chicago's emerging Off-Loop scene. She served on a number of boards, advised others and wrote quite probably thousands of checks, although she always insisted she was a producer and not a patron (gracefully, she was both). She was partnered in many of her cultural activities by her husband, Lester. The two finally allowed their names to be inscribed in bricks and mortar when then underwrote construction of a new building for Court Theatre at the University of Chicago (Lester Abelson's alma mater). The Lester and Hope Abelson Auditorium opened in 1981.
Those who knew her, however, recognized that Abelson didn't need to see her name in lights or on the sides of buildings. Good theatre management and creating opportunities for artists were far more important to her. Education not edifice might have been her mantra. To that end, she endowed the Abelson Fund for Artistic Development at the Goodman Theatre and the Hope Abelson Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University's School of Speech.
Perhaps her most extraordinary and creative program, however, was her development of the Chicago Associates of the Stratford Festival. Since 1983, the Chicago Associates has underwritten the participation of one or two young Chicago actors each year in the training program, and the full repertory season, of the Stratford Festival. Many of the artists have been invited back as full company members for one or more years after their initial season. These Stratford alums, returning to Chicago, have incalculably enriched acting, directing and producing within the Chicago theatre community. Among the several dozen local alums of the Stratford program are Kevin Anderson (Steppenwolf Ensemble member), Kevin Gudahl (Chicago Shakespeare Theater regular), Michael Halberstam (founder of Writers' Theatre, Glencoe) and Raymond Fox (Lookingglass Ensemble member).
Hope Abelson leaves behind her daughter, Katherine A. Abelson, son-in-law Robert Cornell, grandson Jessie Abelson and his mother Gail Forrest and gramdson Jamie Abelson and his mother Jude Tanter. Her husband, Lester, passed away in 1980; her son, Stuart, in 2003.
A private funeral will be followed by a public memorial at a date to be announced.
