Gerald Freedman, who directed countless plays, operas and musicals, including the original “Hair” in 1967 and more than a dozen Broadway productions, and who influenced generations of actors in 21 years as dean of the drama school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, died on March 17 at his home in Winston-Salem, N.C. He was 92.
Robert Beseda, who was assistant dean under Mr. Freedman and had been his caregiver for the past nine years, said the cause was kidney failure.
Mr. Freedman was a pivotal though somewhat under-the-radar figure in New York theater for decades.
He was a trusted assistant to Jerome Robbins when Mr. Robbins was directing the Broadway hits “Bells Are Ringing,” “West Side Story,” and “Gypsy” in the 1950s.
He worked closely with Joseph Papp for years, serving as artistic director of Mr. Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival and inaugurating the performance space now known as the Public Theater with “Hair.” In the 1970s he directed productions by the Acting Company, the influential troupe founded in 1972 by John Houseman and Margot Harley, and from 1966 to 1989 he directed a number of New York City Opera productions.
He had dozens of regional opera and theater credits as well, including 28 at the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, where he was artistic director from 1985 to 1997.
And as both a director and a teacher, he imparted an abiding appreciation of how to approach a text. Among those on whom he made a lasting impression was Debbie Allen, who played Anita in a critically acclaimed Broadway revival of “West Side Story” in 1980 that was jointly directed by Mr. Robbins and Mr. Freedman.
“His approach was unique, didn’t even think about blocking or staging until we sat at a table for at least two weeks breaking down the dramatic narrative, the character, the need and the action,” Ms. Allen said by email. “He guided us to find multiple points of view. I have worked with those same principles ever since.”
Mr. Freedman brought that approach to the classroom as well. He preached the basics to young students, like be on time for rehearsal, be prepared and take the work seriously. The actor Billy Magnussen was one such student at the School of the Arts, the University of North Carolina system’s arts conservatory in Winston-Salem.
“He taught me to focus my life, my time and the precious moments we share with others; not to waste them,” Mr. Magnussen said by email. “And the fact that he gave up some of his time for a wiseass punk kid and demanded I ask more of myself — I am forever grateful to that gentleman.”
Gerald Alan Freedman was born on June 25, 1927, in Lorain, Ohio. His father, Barnie, was a dentist, and his mother, Fannie (Sepsenwol) Freedman, was a teacher. Both were Jewish immigrants from czarist Russia. They steeped their home in art and music, he said, a foundation for his love of the arts.
After graduating from Lorain High School he attended Northwestern University, earning a bachelor’s degree there in 1949 and a master’s degree the next year. In 1951 he took a train to New York with vague ideas about becoming a painter or singer or actor. An acquaintance told him that, with his high tenor singing voice, he could earn enough money to get by through singing at religious services.
“On Friday nights, I could do two Jewish services at different temples,” he said in an interview for “The School of Doing: Lessons From Theater Master Gerald Freedman,” a 2017 book by Isaac Klein. “On Saturday morning, I could do another Jewish service. On Sunday, I could do usually two churches. An early Mass, Presbyterian or Episcopalian, and in late afternoon there would be another Mass. And with five services, I could live off that for the next week.”
He was hired to design and paint scenery at a summer stock company in Massachusetts and then, in 1952, to direct “As You Like It” at Equity Library Theater in New York. Someone from Columbia Pictures saw it and gave him a contract that took him to Hollywood, where one of his first assignments was as dialogue director on “It Should Happen to You,” a George Cukor movie whose stars included Judy Holliday.
She became a friend. In 1956 when Ms. Holliday was hired for the musical “Bells Are Ringing” on Broadway, Jerome Robbins, the director, who Mr. Freedman said was somewhat intimidated by the star, hired him to assist on the production.
“It was either to placate Judy or as insurance,” Mr. Freedman said. “I never knew which.”
The partnership was Mr. Freedman’s big break. He was Mr. Robbins’s assistant again the next year on “West Side Story,” and in 1959 on “Gypsy.” He not only played a significant role in directing those productions; he also served as a buffer between the actors and Mr. Robbins, who could be abrasive.
“I went around repairing Jerry’s damage with actors,” Mr. Freedman said in an interview quoted in “Dancing With Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins” (2001), by Greg Lawrence. “I don’t mean that in a negative way. It was just because he didn’t know how to talk with them.”
By 1960 Mr. Freedman was also working with Mr. Papp. He directed “The Taming of the Shrew” that year for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park.
“The Festival group,” Arthur Gelb wrote in reviewing that show in The New York Times, “poor in funds but rich in everything that makes for stimulating theater, has, in this production, achieved a vitality, authority, clarity, pace and style that can’t be touched.”
In 1964 Mr. Papp named Mr. Freedman artistic director of the Shakespeare Festival and announced his intention to broaden the group’s offerings to include contemporary fare. One of the results was “Hair,” the rock musical with a book by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot. Mr. Freedman got the assignment of directing the premiere, which was to open inMr. Papp’s new space on Lafayette Street in Manhattan. It was a rocky trip to opening night.
“We recognized its great energy and exuberance of spirit,” Mr. Freedman said in a 2008 talk at the Kennedy Center in Washington. “The challenge was to give it structure without destroying its energy and originality and to give it a semblance of a beginning, middle and end.”
His efforts were at least partly successful.
“The director, Gerald Freedman, has not been able to impose any unity on the show — this hair is strictly untrimmed — but he has helped to bring out the natural vitality of both the piece and the very young performers,” Clive Barnes wrote in his review in The Times. But the birthing process had created rifts with the book writers; when the show went to Broadway the next year, Tom O’Horgan was the director.
Mr. Freedman’s opera work included the world premiere of “Beatrix Cenci” by Alberto Ginastera, with a libretto by William Shand, at the Kennedy Center in 1961, part of the opening festivities for that complex. He directed the same work in 1973 at City Opera.
Mr. Freedman brought a number of stars to the productions he directed for the Great Lakes Theater Festival, including Piper Laurie, Olympia Dukakis and Hal Holbrook. He continued to direct after taking the North Carolina post, staging more than 30 productions there.
He leaves no immediate survivors.
For a 2017 podcast for WFDD, a public radio station in Winston-Salem, Mr. Freedman was asked about his legacy.
“I’m most proud of the way I’ve opened up so many actors to what acting really is,” he said. “They have talent, they have intelligence, they have imagination, but they have to add a reality. That’s the essence of anything they do. And that’s it, really. Reality.
“It sounds very simple, but it’s very difficult.”
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
