In 1951, white and Black artists from the progressive theaters of downtown and Harlem came together to create the Greenwich Mews Theatre. For over two decades the venue defied Jim Crow casting practices and Red Scare censorship; the theatre provided refuge to blacklisted artists and a stage for dramas of the civil rights movement. In Sanctuary Stage: The Greenwich Mews Theatre, 1951-1974, author Hillary Miller tells the history of this groundbreaking West Village institution through its productions and its network of leftist dramatists. Jointly sponsored and protected by a Presbyterian church and a synagogue, the Mews and its innovative producer Stella Holt earned accolades with staging works by Alice Childress, Langston Hughes, Loften Mitchell, Seán O’Casey, and George Tabori, and in its final chapter, the creation of the bilingual Greenwich Mews Spanish Theatre. Miller traces the rise and demise of this interracial and interfaith hub for cultural expression until its final fracture amid artistic and social turbulence in the 1970s.  

Through its oppositional performance practices, the collective blurred the lines between the mainstream and the underground, bringing together multiethnic theater communities, anti-fascist activists, pro-labor audiences, and circles of interfaith justice movements.

Hillary Miller is Associate Professor at Queens College, City University of New York.