[George C. White (1935-2025), who died at 89 on 6 August, was the founder and president of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and vice president of the American Directors Institute. He was co-chairman of the Arts Administration Program at the Yale School of Drama (now the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University), founding chairman of the Sundance Institute and Commissioner of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.
[White was also on the board of the Metropolitan Operdea Guild, the Arts and Business Council, New Dramatists, and the International Theatre Institute. He served as a panelist for the Theater and Opera-Music Theater Program of the National Endowment for the Arts and a member of the Tony Awards Nominating Committee.
[In 1986, White delivered the keynote address at the inaugural event of the American Directors Institute, an organization for stage directors and artistic directors founded in 1985 by Geoffrey C. Shlaes. Below is the text, somewhat edited for length by me as editor of ADI’s newsletter, Directors Notes. My report on the symposium for DN follows the transcription of White’s remarks. See the introduction to that report for more information on ADI. (The New York Times obituary of George C. White concludes this post after the report.)]
“OPENING REMARKS: GEORGE C. WHITE”
[As I noted above, this transcript was published in Directors Notes, the newsletter of the American Directors Institute (1.1 [“Summer Issue”: June 1986]). I edited Directors Notes from 1986 (this was its maiden issue) to 1988 and I covered the symposium, “The Changing of the Guard in the American Theater,” which was ADI’s first event. While reading White’s comments here, keep in mind that the theater to which he’s referring existed 39 years ago.]
The guard is changing and if one looks through the current malaise, there are rough waters ahead. But like any such trip, riding rapids can he exhilarating and exciting. —George C. White
. . . . From Max Reinhardt to today, the director’s task . . . is to take his materials, which are actors, “in place of paint and canvas and shape and form his group using principles of art and with reason . . . coordinate conception and form,” as Alexander Dean [1893-1939; director, professor of theater at Yale School of Drama, director of YSD; author of Fundamentals of Play Directing (1940)] has written.
[The quotation above from
Alexander Dean is a slightly altered passage in Alexander Dean and Lawrence
Carra, Fundamentals of Play Directing, 4th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1980), 22. (The published passage
is: “His materials for staging are actors in place of paint and canvas. He must shape and form his group using
principles of art and coordinate conception and form.”) Whether this was White’s editing for his
address or if the sentences are different in an earlier edition of the book, I
don’t know.]
Since the mid-sixties, however, a new duty has evolved, for if the director so chooses, he or she can become the artistic director of a theater and thus enter the lists with entrepreneurs, PR men, fundraisers, marketing specialists, accountants and management consultants.
It was not enough to have the Babes in Arms approach of putting on a show, so these directors changed from being employees to being employers. With the heady trappings of artistic power came the corresponding responsibilities of fundraising, which meant marketing and PR concerns for budgeting and costs, as well as a board of business, financial, and society figures. None of these things were part of the Yale School of Drama’s MFA in directing.
[Babes in Arms is a 1937 Broadway musical by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart. It was made into a 1939 film starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. It’s the original “Hey, kids, let’s use the barn to put on a show!” show—which I think was the point of White’s reference. (In 1959, playwright George Oppenheimer created a “sanitized” version, revising some political and anti-racism material and changing the motivation for putting on the show to something more innocent.)]
. . . . We have seen the rise of the theater administrator, expertly trained in the requisite techniques which support the art form. This has allowed the artists to abdicate their entrepreneurial responsibilities to their managing directors on the easy excuse that they can thus pay more concerted attention to their art. . . .
Today, major regional theaters, at last firmly entrenched in their communities with multi-million-dollar budgets, languish for want of new blood at the top. Boards of directors, unqualified and uninformed, are left to the task of selecting successors to the old guard. Their quest is made particularly difficult because the well of able candidates is very low indeed. . . . [For a further examination of the issue of replacing a theater’s leader, see Theatrical Continuity (21 August 2009).]
Some younger directors with a sense of adventure and evangelical spirit have founded alternatives theaters where much of the ground-breaking work is being done. These people do not wish to leave the excitement of exploring their own artistic visions for what they perceive to be the inhibiting chains of established institutions. This is also true of the free-lance director who, for all the possible fame and fortune associated with large regional-theater directorships now, would rather have the artistic freedom and geographic flexibility of the employee status.
. . . . Obviously, artistic leadership is in a crisis state in this country and directors must be willing to take more reins to hand. . . .
. . . . One burning question remains: Are there enough qualified directors, not only capable of taking up the torch, but simply of directing a play, let alone lead an institution of any size? Are theatrical directors a vanishing breed? Of late, the cry seems to be, “Where are the new directors?”
Why is it that in a new era when there is more diverse theatrical activity than at any time in our history, there seems to be a dearth of talent and a lack of directing opportunities? Has this been the result of having more productions than is possible for the directing craft to service? Are the producing-directors so jealously guarding their turf that they will not allow new talent to be seen? Or is there some basic flaw in the system that not only does not allow the cream to rise to the top, but doesn’t even provide the possibility for any cream at all?
. . . . The age of specialization has hit the theater and though you still hear jokes about everyone wanting to direct, stage managing, production and administration have become separate disciplines and individuals entering these fields generally wish to concentrate on a specific area, leaving no place for the fledgling director to come up through the traditional ranks.
This then puts the onus on the training institutions and the industry to provide the instruction and developmental opportunities to refill this growing void. At present, we are only at the point of debating how to train directors and ADI [i.e., the American Directors Institute, the organization hosting the symposium] is one the few fundamental programs that actually has begun actively to address the issue.
We must continue to address and redress this situation. But in order to do so effectively, we must stop the endless quibbling about how to do it and begin actively initiating projects that do the job. We must cease the knee-jerk sense of competition, which is endemic to the theater, and work as an industry to change the status quo. . . .
The time has also come to question some “basic truths” that have grown up during the last generation:
Can we afford specialization in the current theater?
Are good directors born or trained?
Can artistic directors afford to give over all administrative reins to their managing directors?
And should we not reexamine the entire concept of the non-profit theater?
This last question has haunted me of late because we have . . . forgotten the economic incentives that help bring artists into the profession. . . . Rather than only breast-beating over the difficulty of raising funds, and the onset of Gramm-Rudman, why not at least consider the centuries-old economic possibilities of the art form? . . . . Is this heresy, or painful truth?
[The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings legislation consisted of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 and the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Reaffirmation Act of 1987. (The legislations were often referred to as “Gramm-Rudman-Hollings I” and “Gramm-Rudman-Hollings II” after U.S. senators Phil Gramm [b. 1942; R-Texas], Warren Rudman [1930-2012; R-New Hampshire], and Fritz Hollings [1922-2019; D-South Carolina], who were credited as their chief authors.) The original 1985 act was the first binding federal law to set automatic deficit reduction targets, while the 1987 act was a revised version that addressed constitutional concerns with the original law’s automatic spending cuts, extending the deficit-reduction timeline.]
. . . . . We are, once again, on the threshold of a revolution. Theater professionals in their thirties will inherit an entirely new world by the time they’re fifty. The guard is changing now, and we have a marvelous opportunity to insure [sic] that theater at the turn of the century will be all it can be and not a dusty museum of theatrical artifacts.
[In addition to the brief bio of White in the introduction to this post above, following my report on the symposium below is the New York Times obituary of Mr. White, which includes a great deal of detail on his life, career, and background.]
* *
* *
“A.D.I. SPONSORS
DIRECTING SYMPOSIUM”
[This report ran in the same début issue of Directors Notes as George C. White’s keynote remarks above. I was present for the symposium, which, as I state below, took place on 21 April 1986 at 2 Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan, the building which then housed the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. (New York City’s DCA is now located in the Civic Center neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.)
[“The Changing of the Guard” was held in the auditorium in the basement of the DCA building, referred to as the Mark Goodman Auditorium. (In 2008, the building became the home of the Museum of Arts and Design and the basement space became the Mark Goodson Theatre.)
[ADI was founded in 1985 by Geoffrey C. Shlaes (1951-2016), a director and theater manager, as an organization intended to inform both theatergoers and members of the theater fraternity who aren’t directors what directors do, and to facilitate networking among directors and artistic directors, and give them a forum for exchanging ideas about and techniques for directing. ADI was dissolved in 1992.]
On Monday. April 21, the American Directors Institute had its public debut with a day-long Directing Symposium at the Mark Goodson Auditorium in the New York City Visitors Center, 2 Columbus Circle. The subject of the conference, the premiere in what ADI’s directors hope will be a long run of public events, was “The Changing of the Guard in the American Theater.” Keynoted by George C. White, President of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and divided into three panels, the symposium addressed the question, Where will the new opportunities for directors come from?
From Mr. White’s opening remarks [posted above] through the final panel, the thrust of the discussion was the paucity of opportunity for old and new directors. Participants also agreed that the path of the emerging director is a hard one—more so, perhaps, than in the past.
Mr. White attributed this difficulty to a combination of theater economics and, indeed, general economics. Additional problems arise from the ever-strengthening tend[e]ncy for theater professionals to specialize. The rigid categorization of skills for managing director, artistic director, stage manager and so on, according to Mr. White, has eliminated the old route a young director could use to “come up through the ranks” and gain experience. The fear of taking chances has made it difficult for neophyte directors to try their wings.
Taking Mr. White’s cue, the members of the artistic directors’ panel acknowledges that they had taken over or started their own theaters because of the lack of directing opportunities. Moderated by Jean Passanante of the New York Theatre Workshop, the panel consisted of Margaret Booker of Hartman Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut; Robert Falls of the Goodman Theatre Center, Chicago; Jack Garfein of the Harold Clurman Theatre, New York; Margot Lewitin of the Interart Theatre, New York; and Arthur Storch of Syracuse Stage. Many of the members having begun their careers as actors, all were active stage directors before heading theaters around the country. The frustration of a freelance career drove them to settle down where they could control their own artistic lives. Few declared, however, that they are ready to hire a director whose work they do not already know. Taking such a chance is too risky.
The two freelance directors’ panels echoed this same plaint from the reverse perspective. Not wanting to be tied down to the responsibilities of an artistic directorship, the panelists opted for the peripatetic life of a freelancer. Listening to moderator Roger Hendricks Simon question freelance drama panelists Susan Einhorn, William Partlan, Steven Robman, Amy Salz and Hal Scott, it was clear that the choices open to young directors without a track record are few and hard to come by.
These panelists also found cause for concern for the lack of deep understanding by other theater professionals of what a director really does. All the freelance directors complained that, out of ignorance, producers and playwrights frequently dismiss the contributions of the director of a successful production. There was the sense of a brewing conflict similar to the recent unpleasantness between actors and playwrights in the showcase arena.
[In August 1975, Equity Council released a code for union-sanctioned showcase productions that garnered strong criticism from both the Off-Off-Broadway producers and Actors’ Equity Association actors alike. Code requirements and restrictions were seen as onerous to both the theaters and the actors. On 18 August, Off-Off Broadway producers held a huge rally at the Public Theater, threatening to ban union actors from their productions unless Equity revised the code.
[On 25 August, angry Equity members assembled at the Majestic Theatre for over four hours and the Equity membership voted overwhelmingly to suspend the code “until a new agreement is discussed by authorized representatives of Off-Off Broadway and AEA.” Talks resumed in 1978 and, after four years of debate and disagreement, a new code for New York City showcases was issued in 1979. (The code was eventually replaced in the ’80s by the Funded Non-Profit Theatre Code and the Approved Showcase Code.)]
The freelance musical theater panel, moderated by Maggie Harrer of the National Music Theatre Network, included Martin Charnin, Richard Digby Day, Miriam Fond, Alan Fox, Thomas Gruenewald and Dennis Ross. Though they, too, echoes the sentiments of previous participants, the concern among these directors was for the disparate reins of a musical production, and who should hold them. The consensus was that it should be the director, but often getting the other artists to acquiesce is difficult—especially when stage-directing opera.
The solution, as for all the other problems raised during the symposium, is two-pronged. For the director on the job, the answer is tact, patience and perseverance. In the long run, however, for the craft of directing as a whole, the call was for more open discussion, public forums and networking.
Finally, ADI has answered a crying need in the theater and has a real job to do. The number of those both in the audience and on the panels who pleaded for more such meetings was impressive. During every panel and every question-and-answer session, this need was voiced. It was concretely demonstrated by the number of directors who gathered in the Goodson’s small lobby to talk and share ideas between, and sometimes during, the formal discussions.
This is precisely what ADI is for, and what it intends to encourage and sponsor in the future. If “Changing the Guard” is any indication, ADI is a hit. It should run a long, long time.
The art of the director is not sufficiently understood. But we don’t get together and talk about it enough. It’s a very important thing to be talking about. —Susan Einhorn (b. 1948)
[Among its other events in subsequent months, ADI planned a three-day Touchstone Retreat at the O’Neill Center on 10, 11, and 12 September 1987. (As editor of the newsletter, I attended this event, as I did all ADI activities.) Though we were in his backyard, so to speak, George C. White was not a participant of the retreat—though I daresay his spirit was present.
[I bring this event up here because Touchstone was a different kind of encounter—a term I use advisedly—and I found it exhilarating. “The Changing of the Guard in the American Theater” and most other ADI meetings were designed for the directors to confront ideas, issues, or disciplines with which they were familiar, but Touchstone was the opposite. As ADI Artistic Director Geoffrey C. Shlaes put it, this was a chance for directors to “fill our own pitcher.”
[The retreat weekend brought together a group of theater folk—actors, directors, and playwrights—with a select team of experts from diverse, mostly non-theatrical fields. The idea came from Amy Saltz, freelance director, and Mr. White, who proposed that “stage directors need exposure to new developments in fields outside the theater.” ADI’s Touchstone Retreat was conceived to focus not on theater, but on the ideas that feed the theater.]
* *
* *
“GEORGE C. WHITE
IS DEAD AT 89;
by Clay Risen
[George C. White’s obituary appeared in the New York Times on 21 August 2025 (Section B [“Business”/”Sports”]). It was also posted as “George C. White, Founder of Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Dies at 89” on the Times website on 13 August.]
His summer conferences gave budding playwrights a chance to try out new works, many of which went on to success in New York.
George C. White, whose Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, on an idyllic waterfront estate in Connecticut, gave generations of budding playwrights a chance to try out their latest works — many of which went on to success in New York and elsewhere — died at his home in Waterford, Conn., on Aug. 6, 10 days before his 90th birthday.
His children, Caleb White, George White and Juliette White Hyson, said the cause was congestive heart failure.
Since its first summer conference for playwrights was held in 1965, the O’Neill, named in honor of the playwright [1888-1953] who spent much of his life in nearby New London, has helped incubate generations of new talent, including John Guare [b. 1938], August Wilson [1945-2005] and Sam Shepard [1943-2017], all of whom made the trek to eastern Connecticut.
There, on a sprawling property that rolled down to Long Island Sound, they lived, ate and worked together, far from the pressure exerted by producers, critics, actors and everyone else who, for better or worse, shape the public presentation of a play.
Mr. White, the child of an artistic, semi-patrician Connecticut family who founded the center when he was in his 20s, called himself its “innkeeper.” He spent most of the year in New York, raising funds and running the admissions process, and migrated north in the summer to run the O’Neill’s day-to-day operations.
“There have been plays here over the years that I think are pretty awful,” he told The New York Times in 1982. “But I stand behind the selection of the playwright every single time. We really are looking for the playwright who shows promise, more than the play that can be a hit.”
Though Mr. White was an accomplished director in his own right, he relied on Lloyd Richards [1919-2006], the longtime head of the Yale School of Drama [1979-91], to act as the center’s artistic director [1968-99].
Together they developed an unerring eye for new talent. Famously, they accepted an unsolicited script from Mr. Wilson, who was still unknown at the time; the work, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” was nominated for the Tony Award for best play in 1985 and established Mr. Wilson as one of the great American playwrights of the 20th century.
Other noted plays and musicals (which got their own, similar conference in 1978) that originated at the O’Neill included Mr. Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves” (1966), Wendy Wasserstein’s [1950-2006] “Uncommon Women and Others” (1975) and Robert Lopez [b. 1975], Jeff Marx [b. 1970] and Jeff Whitty’s [b. 1971] “Avenue Q” (2003).
Mr. White cultivated a reliable network of actors to perform staged readings of each play. They, too, were drawn from the ranks of the young and promising, and many were destined for fame: Michael Douglas [b. 1944], Charles S. Dutton [b. 1951], Meryl Streep [b. 1949] and Al Pacino [b. 1940], among others, did time at the O’Neill early in their careers.
“He took his privilege and used it to share the goodies for a wide community,” Jeffrey Sweet [b. 1950], the author of “The O’Neill: The Transformation of Modern American Theater” (2014), said in an interview. “And he did it with just enormous heart and enthusiasm.”
George Cooke White was born on Aug. 16, 1935, in New London, not far from Waterford, where he grew up. He came from a long line of noted landscape painters, including Henry C. White [1861-1952], his grandfather; Nelson C. White [1900-89], his father; and Nelson H. White [b. 1932], his brother.
His mother, Aida (Rovetti) White [1897-2002], came from a working-class family and was a seamstress before she met his father. She later served on the O’Neill’s board.
George studied drama at Yale. After graduating in 1957, he spent two years in the Army, stationed in Germany, where he met Elvis Presley [1935-77], who was already a singing sensation but wanted to do more acting. He asked Mr. White for advice, and they spent an afternoon running through a monologue.
After his discharge, Mr. White studied at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and then returned to Yale to get an M.F.A. in drama. He graduated in 1961 and moved to New York, where he worked for the television producer and talk-show host David Susskind [1920-87; the talk show was Open End/The David Susskind Show, 1958-86].
Mr. White married Betsy Darling in 1958. Along with their children, she survives him, as do his brother and 10 grandchildren.
One afternoon, Mr. White, an avid sailor, was tacking past the Hammond Mansion, an empty seaside home that was slated to be used for firefighting practice by the town of Waterford.
He was already thinking of starting his own theater in honor of O’Neill, and he asked the town if he could lease the estate. Happy to help a local boy, the town gave it to him for $1 a year. The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center opened there not long after [1964].
Mr. White initially wanted to stage full productions at the site, drawing on the connections he had built under Mr. Susskind’s tutelage. But even with his prodigious people skills, the task proved daunting, and in the interim he held his first summer conference for young playwrights.
The conference was a hit, and he soon abandoned his original plans, focusing instead on cultivating new talent. He also began hosting similar conferences on theater criticism and musicals — Lin-Manuel Miranda [b. 1980] workshopped “In the Heights” at the O’Neill [2005] before taking it to New York [2007 (Off-Broadway); 2008 (Broadway)].
Mr. White retired in 2000 but remained involved with the O’Neill, and with theater generally. He was particularly active with other organizations that took the O’Neill as their model. Robert Redford [b. 1936], for instance, used it as a template for his Sundance Institute [formed in 1981], focused on young filmmakers, and Mr. White agreed to serve on the Sundance board.
He also served in the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary as a flotilla commander; in 2014, the Coast Guard gave him its distinguished public service award.
Like many theater programs around the country, the O’Neill has struggled in recent years. This year, the federal government clawed back some of its funding, and the O’Neill has had to slash its budget and employment rolls in response.
But Mr. Sweet, the author of “The O’Neill,” said that Mr. White’s legacy had put the O’Neill in a better place than other endangered programs.
“It’s going to be belt-tightening for a while,” he said. “But I think there’s such a huge community of people who view the O’Neill as one of their homes, and a lot of them are famous and rich. A lot of them owe a lot to it.”
[Clay Risen is a New York Times reporter on the Obituaries desk. He also writes about spirits—whiskey in particular—for the Food section and was a senior editor on the 2020 politics team, and before that an editor on the Opinion desk, most recently as the deputy Op-ed editor. He’s been at the Times since 2010 and previously worked at the New Republic and Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.
[Risen’s written eight
books, some about U.S. history, some about whiskey. They include American Rye (Scott & Nix, 2022) and The
Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the
American Century (Scribner, 2019).
His most recent is Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making
of Modern America (Scribner, 2025).]
