About
Us
Leonard
Jacobs Clyde
Fitch
Leonard
Jacobs (artistic director) has been working in and
writing about the theatre since 1990. He has been published in The Village
Voice, Back Stage, Marie Claire, Encore, Brooklyn Bridge, TheaterWeek,
and the Resident publications. He is the former executive editor of
TheaterMania.com.
His
directing credits include Hurlyburly, Crimes of the Heart, one-acts
by Tennessee Williams, Martin Duberman, and Frederick Stroppel, and
original plays for The Metro Playhouse, Third Eye Rep, and the 11th
Hour Company. He directed and choreographed the long-running cabaret
revue The Musical Enquirer among 40 productions overall.
His
plays include adaptations by W.S. Gilbert, Clyde Fitch, and Mark Twain,
plus original one-acts, full-lengths, and musicals: The Barbra Streisand
Comedy Hour, Maude Lynn, and What a Royal Pain in the Farce among them.
The
Clyde Fitch Group, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, was founded
in 1997. Past projects include 150 Years of The Next Big Thing, a trilogy
of one-act satires of the entertainment industry, and, through a grant
from the Puffin Foundation, a performance of The Truth, a 1907 Clyde
Fitch play, at the Woodlawn Cemetery in New York. The Clyde Fitch Group
will next produce Revivals!: The Famous Flop Festival, a series of concert
readings of famous "flop" plays, in 2001. The Clyde Fitch
Group also produces the Great Theatre Debates series at New Dramatists.
Mr.
Jacobs is a member of the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, American
Theatre Critics Association, and the Players Club.
Clyde
Fitch
William
"Clyde" Fitch (1865-1909) wrote some of the most important
plays of the late 19th and early 20th century: Beau Brummell (1890);
The Moth and the Flame (1898); Nathan Hale (1898); Barbara Frietchie
(1899); Sapho (1900); Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901); The
House of Mirth (w/Edith Wharton, 1906); The Truth (1907); and The City
(1909).
Until
his death, Fitch was regarded (and often derided) as the most popular
theater artist in America. Never before had a homegrown playwright been
taken seriously until Fitch managed to have 5 plays running simultaneously
on Broadway. One of the first playwrights to regularly stage his own
work, Fitch's workaholic tendencies were legendary; one made appointments
to speak with him on the telephone. His output-36 plays, 21 adaptations,
and 5 novel adaptations-stands at the crossroads of American drama.
Many historians regard Fitch as America's first modern playwright.
Today,
much of Clyde Fitch's life and work is largely forgotten.
Prolific,
purposeful, and deeply passionate about the possibilities of the stage,
Clyde Fitch was a master craftsman whose gifts changed and personified
the American theater at the 20th century's dawn.
