B. IDEN PAYNE

THE B. IDEN PAYNE AWARDS
The B. Iden Payne Awards — named for the renowned British theater director and teacher who concluded his career at the University of Texas at Austin — are awarded annually to recognize outstanding contributions to the Austin theater community.

Ben Iden Payne wasn’t a native of Austin or Texas or even the United States. But this Englishman made such a deep impression on Austin, and particularly the theatre community of the city, that we continue to honor him more than a quarter of a century after his passing.

Payne, who had worked at Stratford, the Abbey, on Broadway, with such legends as the Barrymores, Helen Hayes, William Gillette, had also helped organize the first drama department at a major university. All this before “settling in a little college town in Texas where the Drama Department wasn’t even 10 years old. That was Austin, and he spent 27 years on the 40 Acres.

It was after his retirement that Linalice Carey, who had started the theater we now know as Hyde Park Theatre, had the idea of starting something called Austin Circle of Theaters and an event to honor outstanding work in our local theaters. And so it was that the first B. Iden Payne Awards event, held at the Driskill Hotel, honored Dr. Payne himself.

That was in the mid 70s. Over the next six years, Austin Circle of Theatres grew, and in that time instituted an annual awards ceremony in which members voted honors to outstanding work presented on local stages. Some of those stages are memories now — Theatre in the Rye, Center Stage, Country Dinner Playhouse, Creek Theatre, Gaslight — but they hosted their share of great theatre.

Let's to carry on the tradition. (From comments made by Robert Faires at the Award Nominations Announcement at BookPeople in 2002.

DR. BEN IDEN PAYNE
Dr. Ben Iden Payne, internationally known Shakespearean actor and director, professor emeritus of drama at the University of Texas at his death, was born September 5, 1881, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. His father, a Unitarian minister, encouraged Sunday school presentations, and both parents regularly went to the theatre. While still a child, he got to go on in a semiprofessional revue when the original actor couldn’t appear, and by the time he was eleven, he knew he wanted to an actor.

He applied to join the “Mr. And Mrs. F.R. Benson’s Shakespeare and Old English Comedy Company” in the fall of 1898. Mr. Benson agreed to an interview, and asked young Payne, now seventeen, to read Hotspur’s lines in The First part of Henry the Fourth. Benson granted him “an assignment” with the company, but strongly recommended that he finish school. But Payne, too anxious to begin his career as an actor, left his last year in school to become a “walker-on” with the company. Thus began a seventy-four year career in theatre.

After a short trial period, Benson recommended that Payne join a smaller company to get more experience under his belt. Disappointed, Payne bought copies of several plays and The Actor’s Handbook and joined the Mlle. Gratienne Repertory Company. His first night, he got a round of applause for his one line. The next night, with one rehearsal, he played Diggory in She Stoops to Conquer. The next season, he returned to the Benson Company as a full-fledged member.
By 1902, he was touring, playing several Shakespearean roles, and sometimes acting as stage manager. He also toured with the Copping Company and the Norman Company. With the latter, he became familiar with the “new drama” of George Bernard Shaw such as Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant. Although acting was his consuming passion, his stage-managing led to directing and the “new theater styes” of Ibsen and Shaw.

As a member of the Cyril Keightly Company, he met W. B. Yeats, J.M Synge and Lady Gregory in Dublin and accepted their offer to direct for the Abbey Theatre. He was unhappy here and eventually resigned. However, the experience led to an association with Miss A.E.F. Honniman in 1907 that became the English Repertory Theatre Movement. Her generous contributions rebuilt the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, and at Payne’s insistence, she invited the founder of the Elizabethan Stage Society, William Poel, to produce Measure for Measure to celebrate its opening. As Payne prepared Much Ado about Nothing for a Christmas play in the second season, he discovered the natural rhythm in the lines made it clear that the play should be performed without the customary scene omissions and transpositions in those days. He devised a plan whereby connecting scenes were played downstage in front of the proscenium arch — a daring innovation at the time. Payne’s experiments resulted in his “Modified Elizabethan Method” of directing Shakespeare, a hallmark of his work from then on.

In 1911, he left the Manchester Repertory Company with over 200 plays under his belt — and a lovely wife. In the two years following, he was picked to form a company to play at the Chicago Fine Arts Theatre. The company was well received, and a year later, the Drama League of America sponsored Payne to produce a series of plays in Indianapolis. In the fall of the same year, he was appointed artistic director of the Philadelphia Little Theater where Lee Shubert spotted him as Puff in The Critic and invited him to produce the play on Broadway. He was subsequently employed by the Shuberts and directed John Barrymore in Justice, the first serious role on Broadway for the popular actor. Payne then directed for the Charles Frohman organization despite his opposition to Frohman’s “star” policy. For the next five often frustrating years, Payne directed such stars as Ethel Barrymore, Otis Skinner, William Gillette, Maude Adams, Elsie Ferguson, Billie Burke, Ruth Chatterton, and Helen Hayes among others. He also acted in several of the productions. In 1922, he became a freelance director.

Thomas Wood Stevens, organizer of Carnegie Institute’s new department of drama sought Payne’s advice concerning the purposes and functions of an effective drama department. He also invited him to direct a play during its first season. In those days, professionals had serious misgivings about the value of educational theater, but Payne soon came to realize the potential of a school theatre program designed specifically to provide the highest quality drama training for those seeking a theatrical profession. And he loved the dedication of his students. It was a life-changing experience. Between 1914 and 1951, Payne directed fifty-eight plays — twenty-six of them by Shakespeare — at Carnegie Institute.

Occasionally he took time out to take on other assignments. He joined the Goodman Repertory Theatre as an actor/director; played a season at the Garden Theatre in St. Louis; worked with the Players Guild in New York; and teamed up with T.W. Stevens to build the Old Globe Theatre at the Chicago Century of Progress World Fair, 1933.
Two year later, he was directing in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and did so for 37 plays. World War II interrupted his work there. In 1942 he returned to the US to lecture for the British Ministry of Information. In 1944 he did several plays for the New York Theatre Guild. In subsequent years, he continued to produce and direct in various playhouses and schools throughout the country including the Cleveland Playhouse, San Diego’s Old Globe, and the Ashland Shakespeare Festival Theatre.
Professor Payne had his longest tenure in educational theatre at UT. Beginning as Guest Professor of Drama, and then chair of the department, he directed 29 plays at UT, 24 of them Shakespeare’s. He retired in 1973 as Professor Emeritus in Drama.
Dr. Payne played active and important roles in the establishment of the repertory theatre in Great Britain and the professional and educational theatre programs of the US. His unique, creative process for staging Shakespeare plays was adopted by directors throughout England, Canada and the United States. B. Iden Payne was dedicated to achieving the highest quality of performance in all aspects of theatre and was revered by a legion of colleagues and friends.

His autobiography, completed shortly before his death, ends with a line from Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest:

“As you from crimes would pardon’d be
Let your indulgence set me free.”

(These biographical notes are taken from a monograph prepared by David Nancarrow, James Moll, and Loren Winship.)


PS. Dr. Payne inspired the character of THE OLD ACTOR in Tom Jones and Havey Schmidt’s musical, The Fantasticks.