I met Barbara Beckley 35 years ago when she came to see a workshop production of one of my plays. She came up to me and said, “I love your play. I want it for my next season.”
That play was called Could I Have This Dance, and she got it and it was a wonderful production with rave reviews and many awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association giving the Steinberg New Play Award in 1992. I have since seen that play produced in regional theatres across the country (and Off-Off-Broadway), and Barbara’s production at the Colony was what I call “star-flight”: It just soared every night. All aspects were top-flight: direction, acting, set design, lighting design, sound design. It just seemingly lifted people up and transported them to another place. There was glorious laughter and tears at the end. Diana Bellamy, a wonderful Los Angeles actress, told our stage manager that she once left the theatre, started driving home thinking about the play, and had to pull over and bawl her eyes out.
Barbara produced two other plays of mine, Aftershocks and Inside Out, and each one was superbly mounted. She was the consummate producer; no detail was too small to be overlooked. Aftershocks featured a set that was a cutaway of a mobile home, so the audience could see inside the home and the surrounding environment outdoors. We had just finished our technical rehearsal and notes, and everyone was leaving the theatre. Barbara had been there all day, overseeing marketing and publicity for the next show, and then our tech. She was still there when I was ready to leave and I asked her how long she was going to stay. She told me there was one cricket soundtrack for under the trailer on stage right and a separate cricket soundtrack for under the trailer on stage left—and she wasn’t happy with the balance, so she was going to stay and refine it until it was just right. Crickets. Balanced.
Barbara knew every subscriber at the Colony—not just their faces, she knew their names, stories, and the things that were going on in their lives. A subscriber would turn up at the theatre to see a show and Barbara would say something like, “Evelyn! How are you? How’s the kitchen remodel going?” Or she’d say, “Fred. Good to see you. That hip replacement is working wonders; you’re ready to jump the hurdles.”
I learned so much from Barbara just from watching her. And I owe a great deal to her for many of the successes I’ve had. She did that rare thing: She recommended a play. Can you imagine that? She actually stuck her neck out and said a kind word.
My writing partner, Adryan Russ, and I had a very successful L.A. run of our musical Inside Out. Everyone who saw it said it should be done in New York. So we sent it to New York—we “sprayed and prayed,” shipping it to every theatre we could find that had a New York zip code. Every one one of those parcels came back saying, “No, thank you.”
Now, Barbara Beckley rarely traveled—she was self-sewn to the operation of the Colony—but she happened to be in New York visiting some friends who had an Off-Off-Broadway theatre, called the Village Theatre Company. They had just lost the rights to an all-girl musical and were dismayed. Barbara said, “Oh, we just did one and our audiences loved it.” That was all it took: The Village called us and asked for it, based on Barbara’s recommendation. It opened there. It was a huge success and eventually went Off-Broadway to the Cherry Lane. It’s been published, recorded, and produced around this country and internationally. It opened in Belgrade (translated into Serbian) in October 2018 and ran successfully there until the pandemic shutdown in 2020. Our show’s long theatrical life is all thanks to Barbara.
Somehow, Barbara instilled an atmosphere of collaborative creativity and respectful, disciplined professionalism. The company of actors, writers, directors at the Colony were astounding. There was an integrity level there that was unequaled. And yet it was open, generous, and inviting to all.
My daughter got to do a play at the Colony when she was 8 years old. It was called The World of Ray Bradbury, an evening of one-acts he had created. Ray was intimately involved: He loved the camaraderie of theatre, compared to being cooped up in his study writing novels. My daughter had a wonderful, unforgettable experience with that production; I think it changed her life. Again, thanks to Barbara.
The lights of all our stages are just a tiny bit dimmer today because we no longer have Barbara Beckley in our world, making theatre, making magic, paying attention to every single, minute detail, dedicating her life to this discipline and majesty we call theatre. R.I.P., lovely one.
Doug Haverty is a playwright, librettist, actor and graphic artist.
