Hartford Stage Mourns Passing Of Two ‘Pioneers’: Paul Weidner And Janet Larsen

In recent weeks, Hartford Stage has mourned the deaths of two people who guided the theater through periods of great expansion and artistic growth, and who are considered key figures in the 55-year history of the theater.

Paul Weidner, the artistic director of Hartford Stage from 1968 to 1979, died March 13 in his New York apartment. Many were not aware of his passing until this week, when a Facebook page was launched to announce an informal gathering of his friends scheduled for mid-May. According to longtime friend Timothy Thomas, Weidner was “adamant” that no memorial or tribute be held — “but he did say ‘I will allow you to have drinks and nibbles.'” This edict was respected to the point that news of Weidner’s death was barely made public.

Janet Larsen of Bloomfield, who served on Hartford Stage’s board of directors for nearly 50 years, died on April 15. Larsen was the board’s first female president from 1977 to 1980, was a member of the executive committee from 1969 to 1984 and 1991 to 1994, vice president from 1973 to 1977 and treasurer in 1975 and ’76. She was also given honorary board member and “life member” status.

Weidner was artistic director, and Larsen was board vice president, when Hartford Stage moved from its original location on Kinsley Street to its current home at 50 Church St. in the mid-1970s. The theater had grown too large for its 225-seat converted warehouse space, reportedly having to turn away 10,000 people who wanted to see its sold-out hit “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1971.

Michael Stotts, Hartford Stage’s managing director since 2006, says Weidner, Larsen and Bill Stewart, who was the managing director, were pioneers in building Hartford Stage: “The move was really due to Paul, Bill and Jan. This was during the boom of the regional theater movement. They were building this theater at a time when regional theater was taking off around the country. They were producing the new plays of that time, some of which are classics now.”

In Joseph Wesley Zeigler’s 1973 book “Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage,” Weidner is quoted self-deprecatingly stating that “the fact we have existed for nine years and haven’t gone under has surprised a lot of people in Hartford.” He’s just as understated in a New York Times profile from 1977, which states that “if modesty or just a good sense of community public relations prevents [Weidner] from taking credit for the company’s new $2.5-million home on Church Street, he can certainly take a bow for bringing the Hartford Stage Company to the prominence that both warranted and demanded the permanence of the new theater.”

“He wasn’t a big self-promoter,” says Timothy Thomas, who was a student in the NYU graduate acting program when Weidner was teaching there in the mid-1980s. The two remained friends for decades. “The time when he taught and directed at NYU, those were halcyon days.”

Weidner began his theater career as an actor. He met Hartford Stage founder Jacques Cartier when both men were students at the Yale School of Drama in the early 1960s. Weidner joined Hartford Stage originally as part of its repertory acting company, appearing in “The Imaginary Invalid,” “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “The Balcony” and “The Three Sisters.” By the theater’s third season (1965-66) he was directing productions of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and Moliére’s “Tartuffe.”

For his first season as producing director (a title which was later changed to artistic director), Weidner directed plays by Chekhov and Vladmir Nabokov as well as André Gide’s adaptation of Kafka’s “The Trial.” He went on to direct four plays by Edward Albee and exposed Hartford audiences to the works of Athol Fugard, Christopher Durang, Lanford Wilson and Tom Stoppard. The comedies he directed ran the gamut from “You Can’t Take It With You” and “Room Service” to his own translations of “Ubu Roi” and “Scapin.”

Following his time at Hartford Stage, Weidner served in the Peace Corps in Africa for two years, then taught and directed at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and directed at regional theaters throughout the country. He published a novel, “Memoirs of a Dwarf: At the Sun King’s Court” in 2004. He was a docent at the Brooklyn Museum, leading tours of school groups, and volunteered at other arts institutions as well.

“He had a great passion for the visual arts,” says Thomas.

Weidner had a few Broadway directing credits, including a Roundabout Theatre Company production of “Hamlet” in 1992 starring Stephen Lang and the 1974 Broadway transfer of his Hartford Stage production of Ray Aranha’s “My Sister, My Sister.” It was in 1974 that Weidner won the prestigious Margo Jones award, given to those who have demonstrated “a significant impact, understanding and affirmation of the craft of playwriting, with a lifetime commitment to the encouragement of the living theatre everywhere.”

Mark Lamos, who succeeded Weidner as artistic director of Hartford Stage (serving from 1980 to 1997) and is now the artistic director of Westport Country Playhouse, says “Paul brought great elegance to the work. Almost single-handedly in the American theater of the time, he kept alive the plays of Jean Anouilh and T.S.Eliot, and he championed the plays of Albee during the decades in which Edward’s work was no longer being taken seriously. Paul’s staging and his sense of design were incredibly stylish without being “artsy” or precious. He was witty, acerbic, unapologetically intellectual, and extremely thoughtful. At the height of his career, once he led the campaign to build a handsome new theater, he left the profession to work in the Peace Corps in Africa. He was that unusual! As artistic director he had set the bar extremely high, and it was a tremendous honor to try to follow him.”

Besides being active on the Hartford Stage board when Hartford Stage made its momentous move to Church Street, Janet Larsen was the president of the board when Mark Lamos was hired. Larsen served on numerous other boards during her lifetime of supporting the arts, including as board president of the Edward C. & Ann T. Roberts Foundation and the Hill-Stead Museum.