Rachel Crothers: Career

Garrick Theater. 1906. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library.

During her time working at the Stanhope-Wheatcroft acting school in New York City, Crothers began to put some of her one-act plays on the stage. From approximately 1899 to 1903, she was able to slowly move from the theater jobs more traditionally held by women, like actress or instructor, into the jobs she actually wanted: writer and director. Of this transition, she writes that working at the school was “an experience of inestimable value because the doors of the theater are very tightly closed to women in the work of directing and staging plays” (5).  

It was in 1906 that Crothers finally had her first major success. This came after small showings of her one-act works like Criss-Cross (1904) and The Rector (1905). The play was The Three of Us, and it had 227 shows at Madison Square Theater in New York City. In 1907, the play went to London, with Crothers still being able to supervise the production. After The Three of Us, Crothers received more attention. Not every play she wrote and directed after 1906 was a hit, but there was certainly interest in her upcoming works. Although Crothers worked mainly in New York City, her plays were performed elsewhere. Some even made it back to her home state and were performed in theaters like the Garrick.

In an interview in 1931, after the release of Crothers’s twenty-fourth play, As Husbands Go (1931), author Djuna Barnes asked the playwright “how it was that she had succeeded in convincing the men of the theatrical world that she was capable of doing her own plays as she wished them done" (6). Crothers stated that she was able to do what she had because she had “proved herself” to the men; however, she also noted that her first real break was given to her “by a woman none other than Maxine Elliott, who took the leading role in Myself, Bettina” (7). Crothers went on to say that truly, she owes her career to women in theater and that “For a woman it is best to look to women for help; women are more daring, they are glad to take the most extraordinary chances” (8). Rather than trying to become like the men around her, she retained her sense of self and turned to those who were already like her and wanted to see her progress.

(5) Rachel Crothers, quoted in Lois C. Gottlieb, Rachel Crothers (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979), 18, http://archive.org/details/rachelcrothers0332gott.
(6) Djuna Barnes, “The Tireless Rachel Crothers,” Theatre Guild Magazine, May 1931, 18.
(7) Barnes, “Rachel Crothers,” 18.
(8) Barnes, “Rachel Crothers,” 18.