Mary Attaway Lee

Maryat Lee (born Mary Attaway Lee; May 26, 1923 – September 18, 1989) was an American playwright and theatre director who made important contributions to post-World War II avant-garde theatre, pioneering street theatre in Harlem and later founding the Eco Theater, which developed drama productions out of oral histories in Appalachia.

Life and career Lee was born in Covington, Kentucky; her father, Dewitt Collins Lee, was a lawyer and businessman, and her mother, Grace Dyer, was a musician. After graduating from the National Cathedral School she studied drama at Northwestern University, but found it too "artificial" and "commercial"; At one point she worked for Margaret Mead. It attracted much press attention, and was named one of the best plays of the 1952–53 season; In 1970 two actors who had been in productions of the play died from heroin overdoses. During the 1950s she also worked with Jacob L. Moreno at his Institute of Psychodrama.

In 1965, when the street theatre movement was becoming popular, she founded the Soul and Latin Theater, known as SALT, in East Harlem,

In 1970 she moved to Powley Creek, near Hinton, West Virginia, and in 1975 founded the Eco Theater, for which she developed plays out of oral histories.

Philosophy Lee used local people in her productions in both New York and West Virginia. She believed that by teaching untrained actors for the first time, she could "bring out the hidden person underneath the roles and masks that society imposes." Her brother John described this and the use of oral histories as making her theatre "close to ecology". Lee wanted to have the drama arise from the society and reveal its ideals, as in the medieval English mystery plays. Audience participation was a major factor in both New York and West Virginia,

Personal life Lee married an Australian furniture designer and artist, David Foulkes Taylor, in 1957; he died in 1965. She was however openly lesbian or bisexual. She was a friend of Flannery O'Connor (who sent her drafts of her work for comments and suggestions ), and exchanged many letters with her. Her sexuality has been used to argue that O'Connor was also lesbian, but the idea is generally rejected.

Selected publications

Plays Dope! (1953; rev. ed. 1967) The Classroom (1968, published online 2004) Day to Day (1969) Four Men and a Monster (1969) John Henry (1979, published online 2004)

Essays "Street Theatre in Harlem – Soul and Latin Theatre – SALT", Theatre Quarterly 2.8 (October–December 1972) 35–43 "Legitimate Theatre Is Illegitimate", in Toward the Second Decade: The Impact of the Women's Movement on American Institutions, ed. Betty Justice and Renate Pore, Contributions in women's studies 25, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1981, "To Will One Thing", Drama Review 27.4, Anniversary Issue: Dreams, Proposals, Manifestos (Winter 1983) 47–53

Productions 1950 – Christmas Mystery Play 1951 – Dope! 1955 – Kairos 1960 – Meat Hansom 1963 – The Tightrope Walker 1964 – Fulmania 1967 – Four Men and a Monster 1968 – After the Fashionshow 1968 – The Classroom 1969 – Luba 1970 – Day to Day 1971 – Fuse: A Mystery 1978 – Ole Miz Dacey 1979 – John Henry 1980 – The Day Hinton Died 1982 – The Hinton Play: A Double-Threaded Life