Chicago Little Theatre

A theater company formed in 1912, the Chicago Little Theatre spearheaded and lent its name to a historic, popular wave in American Theater, the Little Theatre Movement. Founded in its namesake city by Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne, the company was an art theater formed in opposition to the commercial values which held sway at the time. The company performed work by contemporary writers and Greek classics, as well as pioneering puppetry and puppet plays. Poetic dramas, restrained acting and new concepts in scenography were hallmarks of the Chicago Little Theatre.

Founding

Already well ensconced by 1911 in the literary circles of Chicago, husband-and-wife artistic partners Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenburg socialized with the Irish Players of the Abbey Theatre, led by Lady Gregory, when they toured the Midwest in that year. Inspired, they set out to create a theater company on that model, introducing European writers of the age whose work was not much produced in the United States, such as Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, Synge, Wilde, and Yeats.

After rehearsing extensively, in 1912 Van Volkenburg and Browne rented space for a theater in the Fine Arts Building (Chicago), bypassing the building's large auditorium In favor of a small space on the fourth floor that cost less than a quarter as much per year. The space was built out into a 91-seat house, its diminutive size the key to the company's name. Browne thought that "a small theatre would cost less than a large one; therefore ours was to be a little theatre."

Browne assumed directorship of the company, while Van Volkenburg, who was already an accomplished performer, became its leading actress. They were co-producers, with Van Volkenburg developing and directing the company's puppet productions. To the modern plays they were producing in the style of the Irish Players, the company added Greek classical dramas, which were well known to the Cambridge-educated Browne. Of the theater's repertoire, contemporary critic and founder of Theatre Arts Magazine, Sheldon Cheney, wrote, "The list bespeaks nothing if not breadth of view and courage. And these are qualities which the commercial producer so sadly lacks." Van Volkenburg pioneered "modern" puppetry in America, creating a puppet theater for the company that aspired to high artistic values, using new techniques she developed. Browne summed up the mission of the company in this way:

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