Martin Benson, 87, who co-founded South Coast Repertory and served as artistic director with David Emmes, his colleague and friend for more than 60 years, died the night after the day after Thanksgiving. Leading SCR together for half a century, they won a Tony, lifetime achievement awards, the Margo Jones Medal, and other honors. SCR’s board of trustees established the Emmes/Benson Founders Endowment in their honor, and renamed SCR’s physical plant the David Emmes/Martin Benson Theatre Center.
On his own Benson directed 119 productions at SCR, winning the Los Angeles Drama Critics Best Director Award seven times—a record. He won for his direction of classics—especially works by Shaw—as well as new plays. Never a concept director, his goal of realizing the playwright’s vision was appreciated in world, American and West Coast premieres of works by Romulus Linney, Horton Foote, Ireland’s Tom Murphy, Canada’s David French, and scores of others.
All that and more has been said in his obituaries, published nationwide.
❦
For almost 60 years, Martin was my foil and dear friend. His aim out of college was to begin an acting career in L.A. I told him he was just okay, and he consoled and prided himself—justifiably, having directed me—on being a much better actor than I. He started me on tennis 45 years ago. We were competitive.
David and Martin met at San Francisco State while students of Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, the creators of the Actors Workshop. Blau and Irving urged their students to spurn New York and return to their homes to start new theatres. Then they went to New York City to run Lincoln Center Theater.
After college, Martin came to Long Beach and lived in his car that summer while he and David put together their first production—in a sweltering Quonset hut.
All of us beginners at SCR had day jobs. It was said that theatre people, as empaths, made good social workers. Martin hired on as one and got an apartment his acting colleagues used as a crash pad.
Initially the new company toured shows in Emmes’s station wagon. When SCR got a tiny building, Martin did everything: designed sets, carpentered them, did costumes. He became SCR’s first full-time paid employee, taking a 70 percent pay cut from his day job.
But it was as a director early on that he found his calling.
Benson and Emmes were schoolmates of Seattle Rep artistic director and Tony winner Daniel Sullivan, who—over a 30-year span—occasionally directed at SCR. None of them were concept directors. Instead they staged what their playwrights had written as fully as they could, whether a revival or a new play.
All three were part of the second wave of American nonprofit theatres, following after Zelda’s Arena Stage, Nina’s Alley Theatre, and Tyrone Guthrie’s. Like the Old Globe’s Craig Noel, the Public’s Joe Papp, and Manhattan Theatre Club’s Lynne Meadow, Emmes and Benson were founding artistic directors. They built their institutions up from nothing.
Most of the nonprofit theatres begun in the 1960s and ’70s failed. Leaders and staffs who came after to take positions at surviving institutions have a sense of permanence. Those of us who were around during that time remember those days with wolves at the doors.
❦
When directing, Martin was all theatre all the time. Between shows, he played sports, rooted passionately for his hometown San Francisco Giants and 49ers, and read history—especially WWII and aviation. While he loved the fact of flying, doing it scared him.
His marriage to Pam Krumb, originally a delight, became a shared tragedy when, while being treated for schizophrenia over several years, she lost her life. Martin was full of grief, guilt, and depression.
In one of the most remarkable and brave responses to tragedy I’ve ever seen, and despite his fears, he took up flying. But not just any kind of aircraft: ultralight aircraft. This is flying sitting in a single chair with a wing overhead and a small 15-horse-power engine and propeller behind the chair. You didn’t need a pilot’s license—just guts, supported by an attention to detail he’d always had.
Having mastered ultralights, he calmed down and got a pilot’s license. He owned a standard Cessna for trips, and an open cockpit Stearman stunt plane for joyriding.
After 40 years, Martin and I discovered that our grandmothers came from the same tiny hamlet in Sweden. How could we not have some kind of shared gene pool? That’s when Martin, my senior, became the canary in my existential coal mine.
His last two years were rough, medically and personally. He lost his second wife, Wendy, and the last of his two brothers. He’d gotten past throat cancer a decade earlier, but other body parts—not his mind—began to fail him.
An early bad sign: He gave me most of a case of new tennis balls he’d bought. He went from tennis, to a cane, to a walker.
His many friends were gentle and supportive, especially his stepson, Justin. I was too, but I’d go Dylan Thomas on him, asking him to rage, rage. And he’d respond.
The last time with him, a bit over a week before he left, I saw in him what I’d seen when my father was dying (also at 87). That Martin passed peacefully, probably in his sleep, after a wonderful Thanksgiving with Justin and family, was a gift for me—and I hope for him.
❦
I didn’t want to write this. And SCR continues on, now in its seventh decade. David and Martin, lifetime board members, moved their office from the theatre earlier this year. We three kept doing lunch. David and I still do.
Given how he slipped from us, I choose to see Martin as not gone; he’s just away.
He’ll be here as long as I am.
His name is on our building.
Jerry Patch is South Coast Rep’s resident dramaturg.
