Creative Company

The sad news of Robert Brustein's death, at age ninety-six, came in October 2023 as we prepared this issue on ensemble-led theater.It would be hard to overstate Brustein's importance in the American theater, to the profession of dramaturgy and criticism in the United States, and, indeed, to this journal.He served several terms as dean of the Yale School of Drama, founding Yale Repertory Theatre (a copublisher of Theater) and creating the academic program in which we work daily, and was instrumental in the 1968 founding of Theater, in keeping with his vision of an American theater that might draw from the unseen wealth of dramatic literature in step with its study and criticism.Obituaries have emphasized Brustein's passionate advocacy for a nonprofit theater resisting the commercial values and middlebrow tastes of Broadway -then a new idea, now a diminished hope.Less frequently observed, but of equal significance, Brustein advocated with fervor for resident ensembles, calling for companies who would live and work in the regional cities where a new generation of theaters were springing up.Theater-makers would create and evolve together while putting down civic roots -an alternative to jobbed-in visiting performers and designers (generally based in New York) making guest appearances.This dream of community -affirming the centrality of ensemble by employing them as staff -would nourish and advance the American theater through sustained, ever-deepening artistry.Brustein's own resident ensemble model, which took root first at Yale Rep in the 1960s and later at the American Repertory Theatre, following his 1979 departure for Harvard, spawned many important productions, lasted until the late 2000s, and is now largely extinct.This issue of Theater honors his legacy by asking what's needed to preserve and expand ensemble-created theater in the United States.Today, as the American theater confronts a crisis of relevance, sustainability, and identity, much anguished conversation has focused on the fate of regional producing houses focusing on new plays, which is what many institutional nonprofit theaters have become over the past two decades.But enormous artistic vitality -and the collectiv-