“She Must Be Fierce”: New chapter from Wendy Vierow considers early 20th century director Margaret Webster
A new anthology on American theatre directors features a chapter from Wendy Vierow, strategic planning & assessment coordinator at SUNY New Paltz.
“The Great North American Stage Directors Volume 1: David Belasco, Arthur Hopkins, Margaret Webster” puts a spotlight on these three acclaimed theater directors.
Vierow contributed the chapter “She Must Be Fierce: Margaret Webster’s Groundbreaking Broadway Career” for the volume on Margaret Webster, focusing on her work as a female director in a male-dominated field in the early- to mid-20th century. The title refers to a comment Webster overheard while dining at Sardi’s restaurant: “One woman and all those men—she must be fierce.”
Vierow describes Webster as an unmarried woman in her 30s who set out for New York at a time when women had increasing access to opportunity in Broadway theatre.
“What was interesting about writing the chapter for this book was researching in depth the factors that enabled Webster to break into a man’s field,” she said. “I was not only examining her work and the theatre critics’ reactions to it, but researching American culture for the years she directed.”
Webster even has a connection to SUNY New Paltz. In 1948, her interracial touring company, Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company, paid a visit to the campus.
Webster’s autobiography, “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage,” includes a note about the College that suggests our theatre program has come a long way in the 70-plus years since she was here: “In New Paltz, New York, the stage was so tiny that the Macbeths’ party had to take place in the wings with one visible guest.”
While she does not currently work in a teaching-first role at New Paltz, this sort of scholarship is nothing new for Vierow, who holds a Ph.D. in performance studies from New York University. She has long published original research as a freelance writer and editor, including a co-author credit on the anthology American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century, where she also wrote about Margaret Webster.
Despite not taking a traditional route through academia, Vierow says her work as a researcher has always been supported by colleagues at New Paltz. She cites her participation in the 2014 Celebration of Faculty Authors at the Sojourner Truth Library as an example of inclusion in our community of scholars.
“My dean at the time, [current Professor at the Department of Teaching & Learning] Michael Rosenberg, congratulated me and put my book alongside other recently published books by his faculty in the School of Education display case,” she said. “That was very nice.”
For more information on Vierow’s work, visit her Amazon page.