Oct 01, 2014 - Sale 2358

Sale 2358 - Lot 130

Price Realized: $ 2,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
GOREY, EDWARD. Two posters for The Poets' Theatre. Cambridge. The Poets' Theatre Presents Fire Exit: Vaudeville for Euridice by V. R. Lang at the Brattle Theatre. 13 1/2x9 1/2 inches, printed in red and black * Poets' Theatre: A Wake 1950-1968, A Two-Evening Celebration. Agassiz Theatre, Cambridge. signed by gorey. Cambridge, 1952; 1986

Additional Details

"After graduation in 1950, Gorey stayed in Cambridge and helped to establish the Poets' Theatre. The Poets' Theatre was first established by a group of poets living in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the fall of 1950. Their objective was to revive poetic drama and generate work by poets who "would act, administrate, direct, and sell tickets, while retaining total control of their own writing." Members included Richard Eberhart, John Ciardi, Richard Wilbur, V. R. (Violet Ranney "Bunny") Lang, Hugh Amory, John Ashbery, Edward Gorey, Donald Hall, William Matchett, George Montgomery, Frank O'Hara, Lyon Phelps, and others. Except for V. R. Lang, they were all attending Harvard College, or had recently graduated from it. Other names associated with the theater were: Alison Lurie, Kenneth Koch, Mary Manning Howe, Catharine Huntington, Edward Albert Thommen, and William Morris Hunt. In 1968 the theater building on Palmer Street burned down and the Poets' Theatre ended. In October of 1986, a celebration was held in the Agassiz Theatre in Cambridge to memorialize the Poets' Theatre, called by Edward Gorey a nostalgic "wake"--from the exhibition G is for Gorey--C is for Chicago, The Collection of Thomas Michalak, Loyola University: lib.luc.edu/specialcollections/exhibits/show/gorey/edward-gorey-at-harvard-univer/the-poet---s-theatre.