2023 -- H 5824

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     STATE OF RHODE ISLAND

IN GENERAL ASSEMBLY

JANUARY SESSION, A.D. 2023

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H O U S E   R E S O L U T I O N

EXTENDING DEEPEST CONDOLENCES ON THE PASSING OF ADRIAN HALL

     Introduced By: Representatives Ajello, Shekarchi, Blazejewski, Chippendale, Kennedy,
Shallcross Smith, Tanzi, Fogarty, Casimiro, and Bennett

     Date Introduced: February 28, 2023

     Referred To: House read and passed

     WHEREAS, It is with sadness that this House has learned of the passing of Adrian Hall,

a legend in American theater, and the founding artistic director at Trinity Repertory Company;

and

     WHEREAS, Adrian Hall grew up on a farm in the tiny town of Van, Texas, during the

Depression. In 1957, together with a group of talented and forward-thinking artists, he started the

Phoenicia Playhouse in upstate New York, just outside Woodstock. It was the beginning of what

would become a lifetime of innovation and acclaim; and

     WHEREAS, In the early 1960s, Mr. Hall became the founding artistic director at Trinity

Repertory Company in Providence, which he helped establish, and is the person who was most

responsible for launching the theatre to national fame and helping to make the City a creative

hub. His boundary-breaking vision for the theater as a public square is perhaps his greatest

legacy; and

     WHEREAS, In 1966, the Company received substantial funding from the newly founded

National Endowment for the Arts to fund the landmark Project Discovery program, which

allowed high school students from all over the State to attend professional live theater for free and

brought considerable attention to the Theater; and

     WHEREAS, Mr. Hall successfully led the efforts to purchase and renovate the Emery's

Majestic Theater, providing Trinity with a larger space and in 1973, the company moved to its

present location at the Lederer Theater Center. In the late 1970s, Trinity established an actor and

director training program, the Trinity Rep Conservatory which evolved into the current

Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program; and

     WHEREAS, For thirty years, Mr. Hall shaped the theater’s artistic direction with his

distinctive and epic style. The audience and its experience became central to the "Trinity

aesthetic" and melded with Mr. Hall's creative genius, ultimately earning Trinity a Tony Award in

1981; and

     WHEREAS, From 1983 through 1986, Mr. Hall ran two major theaters simultaneously,

Trinity Repertory and the Dallas Theater Center (DTC), which had been founded only three years

earlier; and

     WHEREAS, In 1986, Mr. Hall left Trinity Rep. and moved full-time to Dallas, Texas,

where he eventually spent another three years establishing the DTC's first professional acting

ensemble and helping to build the Arts District Theater; and

     WHEREAS, After leaving the Dallas Theater Center in 1989, Mr. Hall found himself in

high demand as a freelance director, working in San Diego, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York;

and

     WHEREAS, With a style that was often described as “visceral, exposed and starkly

flamboyant” Adrian Hall collected artists around him, always travelling with a tribe of fellow

theater-makers. He was celebrated for working with new American plays and establishing

resident acting companies, and for being a major influence in the first- and second-generation

regional theater movement of the 1960s through the late 1980s; and

     WHEREAS, Mr. Hall's genius developed in seamless tandem with the peerless designer

Eugene Lee and together their aesthetic focused on what was theatrical, not filmic, and on how

individual, visceral gestures could evoke the range of human experience; and

     WHEREAS, Describing the love of his life, Adrian Hall stated, “The theater is thousands

of years old,” and “it has always been man’s attempt to tell the stories that mean something to the

people there. And most of all, it’s alive! It’s right in front of them”; and

     WHEREAS, Mr. Hall was one of the last, living connections to the off-Broadway

movement of the 1950s and to the history of the American resident theater movement and his

contributions to our State and to the evolution of the Arts and Theater will long be remembered;

now, therefore be it

     RESOLVED, That this House of Representatives of the State of Rhode Island hereby

extends deepest condolences on the passing of Adrian Hall; and be it further

     RESOLVED, That the Secretary of State be and hereby is authorized and directed to

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transmit a duly certified copy of this resolution to Trinity Repertory Company.

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