Director Berta Limbaugh
This is Berta's seventh season with MHRTC. She has been involved in the the last four
Summer Festivals and has directed the past staged readings of
Marvin's Room and Crimes of the Heart.
Berta has worked with several theatre companies over the years.
"When I am doing theatre, my heart sings. Each individual production is an
adventure and an opportunity to experience life in a new and unique way. It
is always a thrill."
About The Playwright
Jan deHartog was born the son of a minister in the Haarlem, Noord-Holland
region of the Netherlands. deHartog ran away many times as a boy to live his
life at sea before studying at Netherlands Naval College. In 1943, he worked
with the dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation and
was forced to flee to England. Following World War II, de Hartog began penning
a series of novels which would be successfully translated to film, including
The Spiral
Road with Rock Hudson and Gena Rowlands (1962),
The Little Ark (1972),
Lisa (1962), and
The Key with William Holden
and Sophia Loren(1958).
Though many of these stories struck a chord with audiences, it was The Fourposter,
a novel written while de Hartog was in hiding from the Nazis, that proved to be
one of his greatest successes. It is credited by some as
launching the genre of the "husband-and-wife play". It served as a vehicle for
such famous acting couples as Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronin, and Rex Harrison
and Lilli Palmer, and was later made into the musical I Do!, I Do!
In addition to his life as a writer, deHartog also spent a period of time
volunteering at a Houston hospital. The author would later reveal the
questionable medical conditions at the hospital in the non-fiction exposé
The Hospital. De Hartog died in September 2002. He was 88.
Sources:
Jason Buchanan (All Movie Guide)
Ann Sieber (Houston Press)
Encyclopedia Britanica
Director Berta Limbaugh
