Presentation of this New Hampshire Crossroads special is made possible by grants from Shaw’s Supermarkets, providing quality and service in all their stores located in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

First NH Banks, serving the financial needs of individuals, corporations, and local governments throughout New Hampshire.

The Union Leader Corporation, publisher of New Hampshire’s statewide newspapers.

Delivering a world of color to you every morning.

And Upton, Sanders and Smith of Concord, New Hampshire, providing a full range of legal services throughout the state of New Hampshire since 1908.

Music What was it that drew some of the most daring performing artists of their day to southwestern New Hampshire in the 1920s and 30s?

Martha Graham, who brought American modern dance to prominence.

Paul Robeson, one of the few young men determined to bring realism to the American theater.

The Denishawn Dancers, who drew their inspiration from dozens of ethnic sources.

And Bette Davis, who came here as a teenager and went on to become one of America's leading actresses.

All of these performers were drawn to one of the most artistic and adventuresome theaters in the country, a place called Mariarden.

Music The Mariarden Theater is a fairy place on a soft summer night, with its backdrop of gently rustling birch and maple.

The perfect blue of heaven above, and every star lending its glory.

Back in 1920, Marie Currier and her husband Guy purchased a small farm on Middle Hancock Road here in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

And just two years later, they opened, right here, what is believed to be the first outdoor theater in America.

And from 1922 until 1934, when the theater closed, some of the most famous people of the time in theater, dance, and opera either appeared or began their careers here at the theater that Marie Currier called Mariarden.

(traffic sounds) Back in the early 1920s, America was booming, and it was here in Peterborough that an artistic colony, school, and theater was about to be born.

Marie Currier was an actress and lover of the theater.

She knew many people in different businesses, and it was at Mariarden where she was allowed to show off her talent.

She had always dreamt of an outdoor theatrical camp to encourage those interested in the creative arts.

Staffed by professional teachers, Lucy Currier Steiner is Marie and Guy's youngest daughter.

She was in her early 20s when her mother decided to create Mariarden.

And she had been an actress herself in her, her youth before she married.

And so theater was her love.

That's why she would get such joy out of this.

Nobody ever questioned her.

In life, I don't think anybody ever questioned Mother.

He was a Boston lawyer, and he was a businessman.

Not an artist at all, but he appreciated everything.

He thought I was a wonderful actress.

I do remember that.

And he was a very unusual man.

Anything Mother wanted to do, she was welcome to do.

Called her every night on the telephone.

And one evening she said, Guy, it was a beautiful auction today that I went to, and a beautiful house was sold.

And he said, well, how very nice.

And who bought it?

And she said, I did.

And he was on telephone balking.

He gulped and said, I'm glad it's a lovely house.

The house that Marie Currier bought that day was known as Four Winds Farm.

All that remains is the barn.

She also had another home built on the Mariarden property, on top of a hill overlooking the surrounding mountains.

The home is affectionately known as the Log Cabin.

The name Mariarden was born from two sources: Mari coming from Marie Courier's name, and Arden coming from Shakespeare's Forest of Arden, the setting for the play As You Like It.

Marie imagined a place, as the play suggests, filled with a band of loyal friends who take refuge in the forest, where they live a carefree, rustic life.

Marie was able to convince her best friend from Boston, May Fiske Hoffman, to come to Mariarden and co-direct with her.

May also had a young daughter, Mary Frances Hoffman Conard.

Everything was shaded rustic to look like the Log Cabin.

Log Cabin, it was just really a theatrical version of the Log Cabin.

It was the theater and it had a rustic fence, which you see in some sort of a slight curve.

And a driveway in front that was circular.

And the little office was a rustic office just at the right.

And then there was a what they call the refectory.

I think you'll find postcards of all those places.

The furniture they had made so that it too was fitting and appropriate, it was all in keeping with being rustic.

It was totally in good taste.

Mr.

Currier had marvelous taste, and so did Mrs.

Currier.

I think that was one of the bonds between them.

You had this Shakespearean theater which had the pylons which were moved in as needed, and they were rustic, but you could, they could be balconies for, for Juliet or they could be a store, you know, or they could be a harbor dock for The Merchant of Venice if you needed (inaudible) or a courtroom and you just painted on these things.

John Lord currently owns the property where Mariarden once stood.

We bought the house that is the Log Cabin many years ago, I guess about 35 years ago, and we bought it quickly when we were looking for a summer house, and there were a few pieces of the Mariarden days left in the cabin.

We bought the cabin, bought it furnished, and it had some of the things in there.

The story has it that anything that she wanted, that she would speak to him about, he'd say, well, go get it.

And she would.

Marie Currier had lots of money and could afford to bring the best people in the country here.

And I, I think that she had the best people in the country come and be in her plays.

Music The theater opened in the summer of 1922.

Not surprisingly, the first production was As You Like It.

For the next 12 years, Mariarden flourished with elaborate sets, extravagant dance productions, and playbills filled with famous names.

As You Like It, given at Camp Mariarden last Saturday evening by artists of repute, was a wonderful production and was given before an audience of some 500 people.

Students were very charming in their rendition and did excellent work.

Mariarden's combination of professional and community actors and technicians also mounted the production of Prunella, with Walter Pidgeon cast as the baritone.

But Marie Currier also wanted to present avant garde work.

She was intent on the most daring work of the day, so she set her sights on America's most famous dance company at the time, the Denishawn Dancers.

Ted Shawn had been a divinity student in California and had taken up dance as therapy when he was recovering from diphtheria.

The serum that saved his life had temporarily paralyzed him.

He met Ruth St.

Denis, who was already well-established in the dance world.

They married, and in 1915 formed the Denishawn Dance Company in California.

Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham were members of the company from its earliest years.

They based their works on eastern dance styles and brought an exotic glamor to their company.

They believed that dance should be spiritual instead of simply entertaining or technically skillful.

In his dancing, Ted Shawn emphasized a new meaning of ideas by using themes previously considered too philosophical for theatrical dance.

At all times, dance should express something.

The movement might be expressive of wind and waves, or dramatic.

Emotional with narrative content.

Kinetic or symbolic values.

But certainly every little movement had to have meaning and not be performed merely as technique, as steps, or as an acrobatic spectacle.

Well, he got, get permission to do.

I think it might have been the Pipes of Pan or something, where he just wore things in his hair and little wreath around his tummy.

A little seatbelt.

Well, the the girls, his students made it for him because they did everything, helped with the costumes.

And it was so pretty.

And they didn't know anything about plants.

And you know what?

They made it out in full blossom.

It was made of poison ivy.

And he was miserable for some days.

He may even have had to go to the hospital.

He certainly had to have the doctor.

It was just awful.

So we learned about poison ivy.

The rest of us got to know about poison ivy.

Ruth St.

Denis kept extensive journals and notebooks throughout her dance career, including her summers at Mariarden.

A more ravishing spot to relate art to nature could hardly be found.

The hills were all around us.

Dancing under the trees with the wonderful cloud-filled sky of New Hampshire above us was like restoring the days of Greek innocence, when everything was done for joy and nature and art.

Miss Ruth St.

Denis was one of the most beautiful people I've ever known.

And Ted Shawn was sort of a bitch, but nevertheless, Ruth was wonderful.

And so everybody that worked for Ruth loved to did what she said.

And she was very helpful to me in acting, too.

I think, one thing I do recall when she was watching me on the stage, she said when I came out, you must be careful of how you use your mouth, which I hadn't thought of until.

This gift of the deep love of dance and all that the dance gives and requires was given to me at my birth.

I cannot remember when I did not keenly feel the joy of expression throughout my body or of the mind.

(no dialogue) The first summer was a success, due largely to the artistic taste of Marie and the financial backing of Guy.

Mariarden attracted hundreds of people throughout the summer, with facilities similar to those of the best indoor theaters at the time.

On its 200 acres, in just a few years, nearly 40 buildings were erected to house actors, use as rehearsal and classroom space, and there was even a swimming pond.

By the next summer, Peterborough and its surrounding towns bustled with excitement as the theater season was about to get underway.

The second season, the Denishawn Dancers returned to Mariarden and with them 30 year old Martha Graham.

At this point in her career, Graham was given leading roles to perform.

Doris Humphrey had since left the company, opening up a spot for Martha.

She was beginning to develop her own ideas and beliefs in dance, and found herself breaking away from the established Denishawn form.

She was what I would have called in those days an esthetic.

She was very interested in, you know, we sat this way, and she would just (inaudible).

And totally relaxed, you know.

And we were very interested in, in poses that, beautiful.

But the first steps, we had all and the gestures and, and the posing we had learned completely from, from, Miss Martha.

Also, Louis Horst, he shouldn't be forgotten.

He was a concert pianist, but I think that he was inspired by Martha Graham, and I think that, I think more as I get older, I didn't think then, but now as I think and I think Martha Graham was inspired by Louis Horst.

He was a terrific concert pianist.

And the Bach Bourrée, which I remember impressed me so much, and also other thing, they would bring out each voice.

Now, Martha Graham would separate us in groups.

You were that voice and you didn't start then.

You were in the first voice.

You started then, and they brought the second voice in, and then you had a whole scheme, and it was really wonderful.

But it was first, I don't think anybody ever analyzed the dance before that.

Probably all the other people did.

And, I, I think Martha Graham and Louis Horst were really the first to do that.

All the beholders take his part with weeping.

At Mariarden, artists were allowed to create, collaborate, present, and experiment with new works.

Traditional lines that had separated musicians, actors, and dancers were now opened.

Works that left an impression on their careers.

And it was in this atmosphere that Martha Graham was able to find her identity.

Music Movement in modern dance is the product not of invention, but of discovery.

Discovery of what the body will do and what it can do in the expression of emotion.

Modern dance was developing almost entirely outside the Western ballet tradition.

The basic technique was modified ballet in bare feet.

It is a point of view that encourages the personality of each artist to develop their own choreographic style.

By the end of the 1923 season, Graham had found herself ready to move on.

Ready to leave her mark on the world.

She left the Denishawn Dance Company, but did return in the years that followed to perform at Mariarden and in New England.

She usually cast herself in her works until 1969, when she gave her last performance and retired reluctantly from the stage at the age of 75.

She left an enormous repertoire of her works, almost 180 different compositions, and a technique that has influenced generations.

Music It was the last night of Mariarden performances, and this was the cyclorama or the backdrop.

And so he just flipped this up.

There is my mother in a striped dress.

And with it are four children, they are her sons.

And this creature with the red hair was Mary Frances, and she had to practice her piano.

There it is.

And, down here, on the left is Louise Brooks who was one of the one of the you'd call them colonists now, but she became a very famous actress, as you know.

Oh, you’ve got Guy, if you come down here.

Oh yes.

This lovely woman, here, she is absolutely, that’s Billie, Billie Pomeroy who made the costumes.

You can see her stitching like that.

She had been an actress friend of my mother and Mrs.

Currier.

Mrs.

Currier's picture?

Is that a good - That's a good picture of Mrs.

Currier.

She dominated everything.

She always had beautiful clothes.

And she had a beautiful figure, even, even when she got to be 60 and 70.

She was a majestic.

She was a queen no matter where she was.

In the spring of 1924, Paul Robeson starred in Eugene O'Neill's production of Emperor Jones on Broadway.

Later that summer, Marie Currier brought the same cast and crew to perform at Mariarden.

Robeson was the son of a former slave and preacher, was six foot three inches tall, and weighed more than 200 pounds.

He attended Rutgers and Columbia Universities and received a law degree in 1923.

He decided to become an actor because of the lack of opportunities for blacks in the legal profession.

Emperor Jones was adapted for Paul's particular abilities.

Director James Light added a Negro spiritual to the Brutus Jones role because he had heard Paul sing.

It was said thatm when the show opened, Paul gave Eugene O'Neill the most complete satisfaction an author can get out of seeing his creation born into flesh and blood.

George Nathan, a New York critic with the American Mercury newspaper, added, The Negro is a born actor, where the white man achieves acting.

He gains its effects with means that not only seem natural, but that are natural.

He does things so beautifully with his voice, his features, his hands, his whole, somewhat ungainly body.

Yet, I doubt that he knows how he does them.

Well, I do remember Paul Robeson, when he came with his company from New York, whole company with Emperor Jones.

It was, first time it was done here.

And, I don't know whether I should tell you this but, my mother was from the South and she had never sat at the table with a Black man.

It wasn't done in her age and so, when he came, she approved of the play being brought here.

And it was very interesting, but she didn't know what she, what she was going to do about meeting Mr.

Robeson.

But finally, I guess maybe father talked to her, told her to relax for something.

And so she did receive Paul Robeson.

Paul Robeson’s wife came with him, too.

Many young aspiring actors and dancers came to Mariarden specifically to study with professionals.

Bette Davis was a teenager in the summer of 1925.

Well, I was always being compared to Bette Davis.

I hated that, but Bette Davis was a very sincere, hard working girl with the hardest working mother you could imagine.

Mrs.

Davis set up two things.

She set up her camera with a big green base, and she set up, making cucumber sandwiches and iced tea and serving ice - No, she didn't serve the ice cream, that was Moulton's Drugstore.

Well, maybe she did.

But anyway, it was iced tea and sandwiches for $0.25 or something equally, I mean, very little.

The summer before Bette's senior year at Cushing Academy in Massachusetts, her mother discovered Mariarden and decided that Bette and her younger sister Bobby should attend.

So Mrs.

Davis rented an old house on Vine Street in Peterborough.

The day after their arrival, Ruth took her two daughters to audition at Mariarden.

I auditioned for Roshanara.

That wasn't her real name, she was a Britisher named Jane Craddock.

She accepted me as her student, but the tuition was way over our heads.

Unfortunately, Mrs.

Davis found that she had to enroll her two daughters in a less expensive school nearby.

But Mariarden wasn't out of their sights.

One day, during a dance class on the lawn of the school where Bette was now enrolled, Roshanara paid a visit.

The next day, Mrs.

Davis received a letter.

My dear Mrs.

Davis, would you bring your daughter to see me at 4:00 today?

Tuesday?

Roshanara.

Well, it turns out that Bette was offered a full scholarship to Mariarden, and her sister.

Bobby helped pay the difference by playing the piano at rehearsals for three hours each day.

That summer, Bette performed in various plays given at Mariarden, including the one act play Waiting for the Bus and the role of the Dancing Fairy in the production of Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Frank Conroy.

After one evening's performance, he spoke to Bette’s mother.

Mrs.

Davis, I seldom tell a mother what I'm going to tell you.

You must see to it that your daughter goes on the stage.

She belongs there.

She has something which comes across the footlights.

And after you kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth.

Wipe my mouth!

But I made up for it.

For every kiss I had a laugh.

We laughed at you.

Miller and me and Griffiths and me.

We laughed at you because you were such a mug, a mug, a mug!

Do you know what you are?

You gimpy-legged monster.

You’re a cripple, a cripple, a cripple.

(no dialogue) In June of 1930, Guy died from a heart attack.

Marie decided to cancel all plans and close Mariarden for the summer.

The Peterborough community was shocked.

But the next season, 1931, Mariarden did reopen.

The summer schedule was filled with productions like The Mikado, performed by the Savoy Light Opera Company of New York, and the promising young Broadway actor Howard Inches arrived.

The Denishawn Company returned to perform what was to be their last summer together.

Ted Shawn and Ruth St.

Dennis performed some of their most famous dances that summer, before deciding to go their separate professional ways.

Ted Shawn went on to establish an all male dance company, which evolved into Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Lee, Massachusetts.

Ruth St.

Dennis went on to specialize in religious dances.

Marie's involvement, though, was not what it had been.

In 1933 and 34, the summer productions were being held at the Townhouse in Peterborough, under the direction of Howard Inches.

Soon after, Marie made a decision.

Mary Currier, as was her custom when she started the theater, presumably Mr.

Currier Currier helped out, I'm sure, and lots of people helped out.

But she built 40 buildings.

40 buildings.

Now, that's a lot of the, on the 193 acres that were in in the, the theater's land.

When she decided that she was, would have no more of the theater, she called in the man who was, I guess you'd call him a head groundsman, groundskeeper, and said, we're closing the theater after such and such a play.

We're closing it for good.

We want you to take down all the houses, take down the theater, and that's all.

And he did.

The move to the Townhouse was a courageous one, but perhaps the times were against it.

On September 1st, 1934, after the final production of The Second Man, Mariarden was forever a memory.

Music I, (inaudible) I don't think it was sad.

I don't, I think, I think mine was a little one of relief.

Well, now my mother will stay home.

I mean, you know, partly that I always said I didn't believe in women working, and I still don't.

And my daughter said, but you worked.

Well, I had to, I mean, you can't support certain things if you don't.

And now I remember resenting the fact that my mother seemed to be so bent on the theater.

Why couldn’t she be happy like all these other people were just raising children?

Well, of course now (inaudible) Mrs.

Currier would have been happy just raising children.

They were women.

They were professional women.

I don't, it affected Peterborough, as did a chain of history.

The citizens of Peterborough had found plays and concerts and readings to be very important.

And this was the, this, the Mariarden Players, was just one other step in the long history of theater in Peterborough and theater has been important here.

But I think that in all of the years that they danced or that they performed in this theater, that they left, the mark of a, a real fine theater.

And I think that it was, for a short time, probably the finest or one of the finest in the country.

It existed right here.

(no dialogue) Up until now, the story we have just told you about Mariarden has, for the most part, been lost.

Oh, there have been occasional references to those 12 summers in biographies.

And there are residents of Peterborough who remember the company.

But for the most part, Mariarden has disappeared.

But the property, happily, is still intact.

And being here, it is possible to imagine when there were 40 odd buildings around here and an amphitheater that held hundreds.

And it's even possible to imagine that time when the moon traveled at a leisurely arc and a light breeze bore the tinkling of a wandering brook.

Music That’s the village.

Music And then, see if you recognize this.

This is the church.

You know, they're mostly Unitarian.

Music Presentation of this New Hampshire Crossroads special is made possible by grants from Shaw’s Supermarkets, providing quality and service in all their stores located in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.

First NH Banks, serving the financial needs of individuals, corporations, and local governments throughout New Hampshire.

The Union Leader Corporation, publisher of New Hampshire’s statewide newspapers, delivering a world of color to you every morning.

And Upton, Sanders providing a full range of legal services throughout the state of New Hampshire since 1908.