Patricia McIlrath
| Patricia Anne McIlrath | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
January 25, 1917 Kansas City, Missouri |
| Died | March 4, 1999 (aged 82) Kansas City, Missouri |
Patricia Anne McIlrath (January 25, 1917 – March 4, 1999) was an American educator and theatre director who was pivotal in the founding of the Missouri Repertory Theatre (known today as the Kansas City Repertory Theatre) and in the development of Regional Theatre within the area surrounding Kansas City, Missouri.
McIlrath was born in El Paso, Texas, to George David McIlrath, a lawyer, and his wife Ethel in 1917. She graduated from Paseo High School in 1933, and received a B.A. from Grinnell College and an M.A. from Northwestern University before graduating from Stanford University in 1951 with her Ph.D., which McIlrath earned while on leave from the University of Illinois, where she held a faculty position in the Department of Speech and Theatre between 1946 and 1954.
McIlrath was hired by the University of Kansas City in 1954 as a professor of theatre and director of its University Playhouse. In 1959, while professionally directing Sophocles' Electra at the Rita Allen Theatre in New York City, McIlrath found herself dismayed at the divide that existed between her academic theatre training and the demands of professional theatrical production. As a result, she became unquestionably convinced of the necessity to integrate professional theatre training into the curriculum of academic theatre programs in the United States.
To that end, McIlrath founded the UMKC Summer Repertory Theatre in 1964 (the same year in which the private University of Kansas City was inducted into the public University of Missouri system, becoming the University of Missouri-Kansas City). The company soon changed its name to the Missouri Repertory Theatre, achieved professional status as an Equity organization in 1966, and founded its own touring wing—Missouri Vanguard Theatre—in 1968. McIlrath remained the head of UMKC Theatre until 1984, and retired as Artistic Director of the Missouri Repertory Theatre in 1985.
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