Caravan Theater

A Personal Reflection on the Founding and History of Caravan Theater by Caravan Co-Founder Bobbi Ausubel

In 1963, a little project called Caravan Theater, led by Stan Edelson and me, Bobbi Ausubel, was born. Then it grew and grew. Caravan ran for sixteen successful years and offered thirty-one different productions — including its critically acclaimed play, How to Make A Woman, which ran on and off for five years. Our plays made an impact on thousands of people’s hearts and minds, including our own.

In the early 1960’s, when the U.S. was engaged in a nuclear arms race, in a Vietnam “conflict,” and in the deadly repression of Jim Crow, Stan and I often contemplated, “How can we help our community to gain awareness of, and act on, the troubling social and political issues of our time? How can we bring about positive change?”

Stan and I had attempted various ways to help create change, yet none felt effective. Then a new woman friend, Josie Simon from South Africa, offered an idea she called “theater of change.” This idea was born out of how theater was being used in South Africa during Apartheid. So, in 1963, we eagerly dove in to try our hand at theater.

We were a young family: Stan was thirty four, and I was twenty eight, and our daughters were one and three years old. We were living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after moving from New York City a few years prior. I was in school at Harvard University training to be a scientist, and Stan was teaching art at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. We lived like church mice, with little money — but also with few needs.

Neither Stan nor I had ever been theater-goers. We were certainly not aware of theater as an art form, nor aware of the skills needed for acting, directing, and playwriting. Likely due to our ignorance, this lack of knowledge did not stop us. We stumbled ahead.

We started two short-lived efforts at theater: Social Action Theater (focusing on racial justice and equality) and Forum Theater (focusing on the dangers of nuclear weapons). Each effort produced only one or two plays. But that was enough: Stan went to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker-sponsored organization with activist political aims focused on world peace. He told them we could, with theater, help people question the danger of nuclear armament, which was rising internationally. And we told them about our theater experience, fleeting as it was. Convinced, AFSC decided to fund us as one of their summer projects.

First, the Quakers sent us to a week-long conference in Pennsylvania, where they taught us meditation and loving-kindness consensus leadership. Given how poor we were as a young couple with two little children, this felt like an exciting vacation, complete with clean towels, bedding and food.

Then AFSC generously sponsored us for two summers, providing us with room and board at Mt. Ida Junior College in Newton, MA, for the first summer, and another venue for the next. They also lent us a big yellow school bus. A bus? That’s how the name “Caravan” popped up. We toured New England in our yellow school bus, stuffed full with me and Stan (the theater directors), our two little children and family dog, sixteen young actors, everyone’s luggage, the play’s props and the piles of disassembled wooden bleachers that, once assembled, could seat about 100 audience members. The bleachers were designed by Stan, then built and painted black by all of us. It took hours to assemble them and then break them down for each new venue we visited. We traveled and performed anywhere that offered us a place to sleep, food to eat and $25, which paid for gas.

With social and political passion driving us, during those two summers, we became a theater company whose purpose was to use drama’s creative path to reach people’s hearts and minds. Would it work, we wondered? Who knew.

That first summer, we performed two plays. The first was The Firebugs by Max Frisch, an ironic modern theater parable about the dangers of storing nuclear weapons. It was directed by me, rather poorly, because I was just learning theater. I had recently begun theater training at Boston University, after abandoning my Harvard University PhD track (it had been a fully paid scholarship to study genetics). By pursuing a master’s degree in theater at BU instead, I was setting out to learn theater in a conventional manner. Meanwhile, Stan, as usual, decided to take an unconventional approach: he set out to self-learn acting and playwriting on his own. And he did.

The second play from that first summer was We Shall Overcome?, an original piece created by Stan and the Caravan company, made up of feisty Black and white inexperienced actors. The play was a series of scenes focusing on communication and miscommunication between Black and white people.

This early pattern of performing one original play and one play by a “known” playwright, both focusing on current social and political themes, continued throughout Caravan Theater’s sixteen- year existence.

Because of all that was happening in the streets during this tumultuous era of the civil rights movement, we sometimes wondered, “Shouldn’t we be activists out on the streets, rather than doing theater?”

To help us think this through, Stan invited our friend Howard Zinn, who later became a renowned historian. Howard talked with our theater troupe about political commitment, and, in the end, we decided theater was indeed a viable mode of activism. So we continued. To paraphrase Stan, the word “act” was in both the words “activism” and “acting.”

The second summer that we had AFSC support, we performed playwright Bertolt Brecht’s anti-war play, Mother Courage, in various venues. Doing that play was our commentary on the dangers of the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

At that same time, Stan and I were learning that theater was not just an educational and political tool; it was also an art form. We had gone into the theater to get audiences to think. Yet, we soon discovered there was beauty in the language, in the costumes, in the lighting, in the acting, in how people moved on the stage, in the structure of the play, and so much more.

But we wondered, could this little theater of ours keep going after AFSC’s two-summer financial support ended? I strongly doubted it. Only Stan pushed us forward — as he did several more times during the theater’s history — even when I was ready to give up. He was persistent and filled with the energy of a phoenix; he lifted us up when Caravan Theater seemed to be only ashes.

After AFSC’s support ended, we dedicated fifty dollars of what little money we had available to see if we could form an on-going theater effort. When we told others our plans, they looked at us like we were nuts: Fifty dollars, they said, would never be enough to build sets, make costumes, advertise, and pay actors.

At first, I stayed home with our little children. So it was Stan who started us out. He put on wild, experimental performances at Club 47 (later called Club Passim), a well-known coffeehouse in our hometown, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since Club 47 was open at night and empty during the day, Stan rehearsed there with our troupe. That’s how Caravan Theater officially began, after our two summers, stumbling forward with a little group of actors and tech folks who were attracted to our creativity and social justice aims. Nobody was paid.

Finally, after about two years of using others’ venues for rehearsals and performances, in 1968, we were generously invited by the visionary minister Ed Mark to establish a permanent home at his church, the Harvard Epworth Methodist Church, located in the heart of Harvard Square on Mass Ave. It was a fabulous location.

A bit about the physical space of our new theater: The theater space at the church was adjacent to the large sanctuary, but separated from the sanctuary by tall sliding doors, which were almost always closed. The room we performed in was big, open and U-shaped. There was no proscenium. Instead, we were more or less “in the round,” which allowed the actors to directly interact with the audience. The stage was only the expansive floor itself. The actors were not up high and distant, but rather close to and intimate with the audience. The bleachers for seating the audience wrapped around the stage area, which was a three-quarters round open space. The second floor balcony (for audience seating) was supported by pillars. At the back of the room were the church’s stained glass windows. Because the church was used for worship and services on Sundays, each week we would have to remove everything related to theater performances — but, as a personal favor to us, Ed Mark allowed us to leave the cumbersome bleachers in place.

Our first show in the church was Jean Genet’s The Maids, directed by me in 1968. This play began the style of work we would use for the entirety of Caravan’s life. It was imaginative and imagistic, rather than realistic, and it subsequently became our signature style. Our plays were decidedly not naturalistic. Instead, we’d introduce the audience to an impression of a new reality. When I had the actors use real props, they used them in unexpected ways, beyond what the objects actually were. More than anything, I had the actors use their bodily movements, vocalizations and spoken word in unrealistic ways. That was a style of performance that came to be known in the 1960’s as “experimental.”

The Boston Globe, the biggest newspaper in New England, reviewed the The Maids with a headline that called the performance “near genius.” That one review sent audiences charging to our theater. Naïve about how to manage a business, we had to quickly figure out how to run a theater: How do we set up seating for a full house, buy real paper tickets (instead of the scraps of colored paper we had been using) and hire a manager to take care of all this? We were off to a rushed start in our new home.

Subsequently, Stan’s 1968 production of The Measures Taken, by Bertolt Brecht, used benches as the set in different and creative ways. For this production, Stan spent time creating a strong ensemble of inexperienced, hippie actors that worked well together. The play further excited Cambridge audiences, and Caravan started getting a good reputation. We did not have trouble filling the theater with eager crowds.

In 1968, the theater performed the famous Greek anti-war play, “Iphegenia in Aulis,” by Euripides. This resulted in a theater critic from the more conservative Boston newspaper, the Boston Herald, harshly red-baiting Caravan. Meanwhile, The Boston Globe’s theater critic called the performance of the play “near brilliant.”

In 1969, we performed “Caucasian Chalk Circle,” by Bertolt Brecht. I think it was the best play Stan directed, and some of the best acting of the theater troupe — an ensemble he had created. The Boston Herald, Boston’s second biggest newspaper, called it an awesome and successful accomplishment.” The Patriot Ledger newspaper called it “innovative and rousing.”

Yearly, we offered new plays (see here for a list of all our productions). We experimented with using physical expression of body movements, filling in Stan’s sparse dialogue, and always involving actors in improvisation and reflection. Actors were full participants in exploring the themes of the plays. We sometimes invited theater teachers to meet with our troupe to offer their specific techniques to our company.

The piece Caravan Theater is most famous for is How to Make A Woman, written in 1967 by Stan Edelson, and later slightly adapted by the play’s director, me, Bobbi Ausubel. The original script Stan wrote was informed by months of improvisations we had done with the actors. The play came into production in the earliest part of the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement and it, along with the conscious-raising discussions we held following each performance, strongly influenced and supported the greater Boston area feminist movement. We were told by many in the audience that the play and discussions were an “a-ha!” moment for them, illuminating the restrictive nature of societally-imposed gender roles. (For more details, see the webpage dedicated to How to Make A Woman)

The post-performance discussions came about early in the play’s production, when Stan and I recommended the company offer these groups. They were led by us and the actors. These became very popular events, leading to us holding separate women’s and men’s consciousness-raising groups after each show. The theater also began offering more extensive “Male/Female workshops” on the weekends. Additionally, we toured the How to Make a Woman play, mostly around New England. And later we brought the play to one of the several European theater festivals to which we were invited.

Caravan became important in the Boston community, both for How to Make a Woman and for the subsequent feminist and gender-influenced productions we held. We tried to use the pivotal role we had become in the community for networking and organizing. For example, we once hosted a large gathering of most of the progressive groups in the Cambridge and Boston area, introducing them to each other. These were anti-war groups, anti-poverty groups and other activist groups.

The success of How to Make a Woman was due to the commitment, creativity, and skill of the actors. They made words come alive. They taught me, as a director, constantly. An added bonus was that the cast enjoyed each other and respected each other. We often met as a group for warm-up rehearsals, preceding the performances. This same commitment, imagination and ingenuity was present in all the Caravan actors who had been in all of our shows over our many years. Even though there was little or no money for the actors, technicians and office staff (as well as the playwrights and directors) we were all rich in dedication and creativity.

Our success was also due to our front office staff, run by our general manager Barbara “Buzz” Bregstein. With heart and commitment, she shepherded us through many years, making it easy for the rest of us to do our work.

Caravan produced several feminist plays following How to Make a Woman. See the list of productions. Additionally, the theater, like an octopus, grew many arms: a political street theater wing, a children’s group, and another experimental group. While there were actors who came and went, there was usually a strong central acting core, a company Stan created, earning Caravan praise in the press as a leading ensemble theater.

Finally, with our success, we were able to pay everyone in the company a modest weekly salary. No matter what job you did at the theater, you got paid the same amount as everyone else. The funds to do this came from grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and from a state arts program, as well as the three or four years of income from attracting big audiences to How to Make a Woman, which had intermittent productions.

During the long run of How to Make a Woman — which ran on and off for years — and after, audiences asked us for a sequel. They wanted a new play that would offer a vision of how to navigate our new gender-changing world. They wanted to hear about next steps. They were saying to us, “Look, you showed us there are traditional (and often hurtful) gender roles. Now give us a vision of how men and women can transition to live together more harmoniously, building a more gender-equal family and society.”

Our company, both the men and women at Caravan, wanted to answer these audiences’ questions, because they were our questions too. We aimed to tackle that with our next productions.

With the help of a significant grant from an arts organization, and the resulting ability to now pay actors just for rehearsals, we finally had the time and flexibility to experiment without financial pressure. For this new grant, Stan was supposed to write a new play, with Bobbi directing it and the company acting in it. All were to partake in the play’s development via a rehearsal process.

The early rehearsals for this project were conducted via our usual form of exploration: improvisations. During rehearsals, we asked the earlier questions we had poised about the next steps men and women must take to build an egalitarian society. And we also asked ourselves: “What is unique and special about our experiences as women, and as men, and how are we different?”

As we attempted to dig deep, our ensemble came up with a new vision of the Greek archetypal male and female characters, Jason and Medea. The company struggled for many months with this project, trying to make it work. In the end, there was only one performance of the play Jason and Medea in 1971, before we closed the show. I partially blame myself for not leading this process as well as I could. This was a significant loss for our group. Plus, we did not get to answer our audiences’ original question about how to transition to a truly gender equal world.

During this era of exciting cultural questioning, hippies, anti-war radical groups, feminist groups, and more, there was also a movement toward exploring how groups could be more democratic. In 1972, Stan and I experimented with giving up leadership of the Caravan group in favor of all participating as equals. This led to some long-time members stretching their skills to become good directors in their own right.

During this time, in late 1971 and 1972, the play The Exception and the Rule by Bertolt Brecht, was directed by Caravan actor David Klein. Then Aili Paal Singer and Joanne Greene directed an evening of three short one-act plays collectively titled Hands Off.

Also during this time, the women’s movement was teaching us that “the personal is political,” and that we must ask lots of questions — questions about the outside pressures we face, and also about what was going on inside ourselves, too. With that, Caravan Theater’s plays became more personal. This was a new direction for us. Stan embraced it, and he led the company in creating new plays that explored intimate relationships, often still focusing on gender differences.

For the 1972 the play Come Closer; You’re Smothering Me, Stan wrote, created, and directed serio-comedic scenes about two heterosexual relationships in crisis. One is a “traditional” older married couple, the other is an unmarried, young, “enlightened” man and woman living together. In the end, both couples split with the hope that finding themselves as individuals might allow them to return whole as a genuine couple.

Next up was Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, also in 1972. The original script focuses on how the two main characters, both men, fill up their meaningless lives. I changed the two main characters to be one man and one woman, and used that dynamic to explore the theme of gender dominance and passivity. I also changed the two secondary characters to be a heterosexual couple.

Unfortunately, this period of time when our group focused on who had the right to direct shows at Caravan brought about a terrible schism in the theater. It was a painful time. In the summer of 1973, some members left to form their own theater. Others stayed. Stan eventually went on to train a new Caravan ensemble and our theater continued.

One of the first productions of the new Caravan ensemble was Suppose I Fall, another serio-comedic play, emerging in 1973 from the previous work, but with more collaborative input — though Stan was still the ultimate playwright and director. In this play, two men and two women crisscross as different characters in multiple “dialogues,” exploring the social and sexual taboos of the era, both heterosexual and homosexual. The men, often struggling with their fear of weakness within relationships; the women, often with power. Since it was still rare at that time to depict gay relationships on stage, with this play Caravan was once again pushing the bounds of cultural norms.

After, in 1974, I wrote and directed the play Focus on Me. It was autobiographical in that it explored the main character’s history with her mother, her child-self, her work-self, and her relationships with women. It was written with a two-year grant from the Radcliffe Institute (which later became part of Harvard University).

In 1975, I wrote and directed The Millie Cartoon alongside Ingrid Furlong. It was a children’s play that told the story of a girl who wanted to grow up to be a firefighter and have other great adventures that girls were not supposed to have in our culture.

Next was the play Family, in 1976, focusing on family dynamics. Stan created several of the play’s scenes, mostly with the men. I created other scenes, mostly with the women, which included shorter adaptive works, including author Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing.”

The next play I directed was Tell me a Riddle, in 1977, which I adapted from author Tillie Olsen’s novella. The play was also about family, focusing on the last years of a woman’s life. For that production, we had live musicians, which added a lot to the show. The play secured a spot in The Boston Globe’s highly regarded list of “Ten Best Plays of the Year.”

In 1978, when Stan and I amicably ended our marriage, I chose to step back from Caravan and pursue other theater projects, as well as teaching. Stan continued Caravan Theater.

After a significant accident, Stan wrote and directed his last play with Caravan in 1978; One Man’s Journey was about his personal life struggles, including the major car accident he endured, his resulting new and life-long disability, as well as the end of his marriage.

A year later, in 1979, the theater closed its doors.

I do have a few regrets from the Caravan era. Without dwelling extensively on them, I’ll share them here.

Top on the list is that Pete Seeger, the famous folk singer and activist, brought to us at Caravan a children’s play he had written. He came to Stan and my home to meet with us in person. Our little children stayed up to greet him at night in their pajamas. They were so excited, since they regularly listened to his albums and sang his songs. Later, when I read his script, I unfortunately didn’t like it. So we said no to producing his play. This was a rookie’s mistake. Instead we should have helped him make his play better, and then produced it, because he was such a wonderful human being.

Next on my list of regrets is that during the run of How to Make a Woman, the son of a major theater critic at a big New York magazine called The Saturday Review approached us. He offered to produce the play in New York City. Our theater troupe met to discuss and vote on it. We decided to stay in Boston. The prospective producer had given us so many possibilities: he said we could choose the actors, we could direct it or have someone else direct it, and more. But we were high on our success in Boston, and we did not see any reason to go to New York. Plus, I had two little kids at home and didn’t know how living in New York would work for us. Only later did we understand how important it would have been to bring the play to New York. A missed opportunity.

My last regret to share is that I took the actors’ skills and Stan’s playwriting for granted. I wish I had appreciated them all more for their work. I didn’t really understand the depth of the skills we all had at that time. Looking back, I wish I had celebrated the actors more and interfered less in Stan’s writing. Now I know how to appreciate peoples’ skills. Luckily, I’ve learned.

In closing, as I wrap up this overview of the history of Caravan and my general reflections, I’d like to share what I think was the big picture of Caravan Theater. When Caravan started, it was one of the few theater groups able to successfully blend social politics with theater. We started this work at a time when this type of integration of politics with the arts was rare. Specifically because Caravan presented socially-provocative plays during its 16 year life, the theater became important to the Boston community, especially for its feminist and gender-influenced productions. In the end, Caravan Theater was a vital force for feminism in the era of the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement in the U.S. So, overall, when I look back now, as an 89 year old woman who continues to write plays and direct theater, I feel proud of what I helped to start at age 28, and I feel proud of what we all did with Caravan.