George C. White, the founder of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, died August 6, just 10 days shy of his 90th birthday.
Mr. White had an immeasurable impact on the theatre industry through the Center, kickstarting the careers of countless playwrights, performers, directors, composers, and more. Raised down the road from the Hammond Estate, which he would transform into the O'Neill Center in 1964, Mr. White transformed his hometown into a cradle for artistic inspiration, with August Wilson, John Guare, Lanford Wilson, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Meryl Streep, Michael Douglas, Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang, John Patrick Shanley, and more passing through the O'Neill, Mr. White's classroom, or Mr. White's rehearsal room.
A recipient of a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama, Mr. White began his theatrical career abroad at just 19, managing the International Ballet Festival in Nervi, Italy and stage managing the 1955 World Tour of the Imperial Azuma Kabuki Company. By 29, he had returned home with a dream in sight: a safe place for theatre artists to develop work away from the pressures of New York.
As Mr. White later wrote when chronicling the early history of the O'Neill, "it is important to note that Waterford, Connecticut is my home town. It is the place where, as a child and teenager, I fished, lobstered, sailed, played ball, and received my first eight years of formal education. My grandfather and my father were prominent American impressionist painters (as is my middle brother); therefore, growing up with arts and art talk was as natural as breathing. Waterford and its large neighbor, New London, are towns with a rich history and huge inferiority complexes. Due to my family’s love of art and theatre, I was brought up with a pride not shared by my community that one local 'shining light' was Eugene O’Neill. (Our family doctor had cared for the O’Neills, some locals had been his friends, and my mother had even been whistled at by Eugene and his brother Jamie when she was a young Italian dress maker in a New London sweatshop).
"In 1961, the town of Waterford bought the 95-acre Hammond farm with the plan to turn it into a park and town beach. Its situation on Long Island Sound constitutes one of the most ideal waterfronts in Connecticut. In the summer of 1962, I was sailing with my father and my wife, Betsy, off the property on which I had played as a child, and I asked what use was planned for the buildings, e.g. the large, rambling main house, out buildings, and huge old barn. My father said that though there had been some proposals, the general feeling was the best use for the main buildings was to burn them as an exercise for the local fire departments. At the time, I was working in New York in television, and I was also on the alumni board of my alma mater, the Yale School of Drama. The thought occurred to me that a better use of the buildings might be to marry Eugene O’Neill’s name to what might become a summer adjunct to the Drama School, particularly since O’Neill had willed his papers to Yale. Both the University and the town might benefit, academically and economically respectively. Based on this concept, in the spring of 1963, I put Dean Curtis Canfield and Associate Dean Edward C. Cole together with a group of Waterford town officials. Both sides were excited by the property’s possibilities, and I felt I had dispensed my duty. Fate, however, intervened when the Yale Corporation vetoed the idea."
Left without financial support from Yale, but an enthusiastically energized town, Mr. White and his wife, Betsy, lifted the center into existence though their own sheer force of will. Calling upon almost every professional connection he had, Mr. White drew some of the most innovative artists to Connecticut, forging lifelong personal and professional partnerships with Lloyd Richards, who ran the National Playwrights Conference; Paulette Haupt, who ran the National Music Theater Conference; Jim and Jane Henson and Rufus and Margo Rose, who began the tradition of puppetry at the O'Neill; and Robert Redford, who was inspired by the O'Neill as a model for The Sundance Institute.
For 37 years, Mr. White served as the Chairman of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Thanks to his leadership, the O'Neill has become one of the most lauded developmental programs in American theatrical history, receiving two Tony Awards and the National Medal of Arts, which was awarded to the organization in 2014 by President Obama. While Mr. White retired from the O'Neill in 2000, he remained a close touchstone for the leaders that followed.
In addition to his commitment to the O'Neill, Mr. White served as Co-Chairman of the Theater Management Program at the Yale School of Drama from 1978 to 1992. Beginning in 1972, Mr. White spearheaded cultural exchange efforts between the United States and the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Australia, and Brazil, as well as various programs throughout the Caribbean. In Beijing, he directed a production of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie and Meredith Wilson's The Music Man, two of the major theatre exchanges between the United States and communist China under the reign of Hu Yaobang. Mr. White was internationally recognized for his efforts by being awarded the Royal Swedish Order of the Polar Star from King Carl Gustaf and the French Republic's Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres.
Mr. White regularly directed plays at the Actors Theater of St. Paul, the Guthrie Theater, the Hartman Theater, the Annenberg Center, and the Hedgerow Theater. He was the Founding Chairman of the Sundance Institute, and served as a member of the Tony Awards Nominating Committee and a panelist for the Theater and Opera-Music Theater Programs of the National Endowment for the Arts. He served on a number of boards, including the National Arts Council, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the Arts and Business Council, the New Dramatists, the Center for Inter-American Relations, the International Theater Institute, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the American Soviet Theater Initiative, the Camargo Foundation, and Save Venice. Mr. White was the Executive Director of the Johnny Mercer Foundation. In 2011, he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
After 67 years of marriage, Mr. White is survived by his devoted wife, Elizabeth "Betsy" Conant Darling. He is also survived by his brother Nelson H. White; his three children and their spouses, George and Jennifer (Medby) White, Caleb and Elizabeth (Mank) White and Juliette (Darling White) and Jeffrey Hyson; 10 grandchildren: Darby, Eliza, Liam, Faith, Zoe, Sam, Troy, Olivia, Ellie, and Reilly; and his extensive network of nieces and nephews, great-nieces and nephews, and great-great nieces and nephews. He leaves behind an enduring legacy in the hearts of those who knew him, and in the spirits of those around the world touched by his remarkable cultural influence.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, the Lyman Allyn Museum, or the Mystic Seaport.
