Above, the image of Linda Griffith (left) and Liz Stout (right) that appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News on April 16, 1973, announcing the formation of The Wilma Project.
Once again I find myself pressed for time while composing a proper blog post to accompany this podcast episode. But I did at least want to upload some of the photos and images that I refer to during the episode, including the header photo above.
Below is the photo - but as it appeared with the accompanying article in the Daily News by Jonathan Takiff. You can see all the ads for X-rated movies that I referred to in the episode's narrative. (Really, as a frequent forager in the arts sections of newspaper archives from this era, it never stops to amaze me just how much porn was openly advertised in the mainstream dailies.) However, we can see the small ad for the mainstream Hollywood movie Slither was only PG, and that the actress Sally Kellerman had now started on her post-Theatre of the Living Arts career.
Next, in a collage of images that I originally posted on Facebook, some of the photos of the Philadelphia Company from January of 1976, when the four playwrights (John Yinger, David Rabe, Pauline Jones, and Leslie Lee) were all having their works produced in the second season of the young Philadelphia Company, under the direction of Robert Hedley.
(Following that is a newspaper image of the courtyard of City Hall, showing the Philadelphia Company's/Villanova Theater Deparment's production of Twelfth Night. This is the only production mentioned in the podcast that was indisputable ON Broad Street - in fact right in the middle of the city's Center Square that sits at the conjunction of Broad and Market Streets.)
Finally, a photo of Barry Sattles and Daniel Oreskes played the two title roles in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, presented by The Repertory Company in 1977. The small company could only afford to advertise their production with the most basic box ads in the Philadelphia dailies.
Of course, some small ads in the newspapers could result in bigger things! Here is a similar ad for the Wilma Project's Grotowski workshop in October of 1978. The unnamed teacher of the workshop? Blanka Zizka.
In 1980, Blanka had been joined by her husband Jiri, and were creating a movement/theater piece for The Wilma Project called "The Garden of Earthly Delights."
Bicentennial Blues
