Washington Square Players

Washington Square Players (New York). When, in 1914, an intellectual group known as the Liberal Club rejected the idea of a dramatic branch, several disappointed members banded together to organize their own theatrical company. The founders included Edward Goodman, Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, and Helen Westley. They patterned their organization after one founded in Chicago by Maurice Browne and named it for the area in which it originated. In 1915 they began to offer one‐act plays at the tiny Bandbox Theatre, a year later moving to the larger Comedy Theatre, where they eventually presented a number of full‐length plays. Although the Players attempted to emphasize American writing and did produce such short works as Eugene O'Neill's In the Zone and Elmer Rice's Home of the Free, many of their most admired mountings were of such foreign offerings as Maeterlinck's Aglavaine, Chekhov's The Seagull, and Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession. The group was dissolved in 1918 but during its brief history gave important starts to the careers of such later significant figures as Katharine Cornell, Rollo Peters, and Lee Simonson. Many of its prime movers formed the Theatre Guild shortly afterwards.