Oakley Hall III

Oakley "Tad" Hall III (May 26, 1950 – February 13, 2011 ) was an American playwright, director, and author.

In 1963 he enrolled at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he first became involved in theatre.

After being expelled, he returned to Los Angeles to live with his father, where he enrolled in the newly formed University of California, Irvine.

At Irvine, Hall met future collaborators Bruce Bouchard and Michael Van Landingham.

He acted in numerous productions as part of the prestigious Irvine Repertory Theater, including a minor role in Clayton Garrison's production of Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss, alongside lead actors Bob Gunton and Robert Cohen as well as Dark of the Moon by Howard Richardson and William Berney.

In fall of 1968, Hall, Bouchard, and Steven Nisbet (another future Lexington collaborator) received scholarships to study at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater.

In 1969, at age 18, Hall made national news in refusing the draft, mailing back his draft card and citing US war crimes in Vietnam for his reason in doing so.

In 1970, he starred in a short film ‘’Dionysus and the Maenads’’, conceived by writer Blair Fuller.

In 1974, he completed an MFA in writing from Boston University, studying under John Cheever.

In 1976, Hall co-founded Lexington Conservatory Theatre, located in the Catskills town of Lexington, NY.

In 1976–1977 Hall translated and adapted Alfred Jarry's bizarrely comic and revolutionary 1896 French play Ubu Roi (called Ubu Rex) and its sequels, and directed them in New York City Off-Off-Broadway and at the Lexington Conservatory Theatre.

The adaptations starred Richard Zobel, who also produced the play and created the masks for it.

In 1977, his play Mike Fink was read at the New York Shakespeare Festival for producer Joseph Papp.

It starred Mandy Patinkin, William Hurt and Glenn Close among others, and was directed by future Capital Repertory Theatre producing artistic director Peter Clough.

That same year, Hall received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The co-founder and first artistic director of Lexington Conservatory Theatre, in 1978 he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a fall from a bridge; he spent decades in recovery and in the process of creating a new life.

Hall was the eldest child of novelist Oakley Hall and photographer Barbara E. Hall, and the brother of Sands Hall.

Hall's 1978 play Beatrice (Cenci) and the Old Man, with its challenging, dark humor and incestual subtext, received mostly positive reviews but has not been produced again.

"...perversely and engagingly humerous," according to critic Dan DiNicola.

"[It] deserves serious and intelligent consideration as a work of both potential and merit."

On July 17, 1978, Hall suffered a traumatic brain injury in a fall from a bridge.

He was rushed to Stamford Hospital and later to Albany Medical Center where he began a difficult recovery.

In 1979, Lexington Conservatory premiered his play Grinder's Stand, a historical drama written in blank verse exploring the mysterious death of Meriwether Lewis.

Directed by Peter Clough, the show starred Court Miller, Michael J. Hume, Richard Zobel, Sofia Landon Geier, Richard E. Council, Red Sutton and Bruce Bouchard.

"If you care, really care, about theater you will get to Lexington to see Grinder's Stand between now and Sunday," said critic Dan DiNicola.

"More than any other new play I have seen, it has the potential to become a richly significant piece of American drama."

The publication of Otis Bigelow's play The Prevalence of Mrs. Seal is dedicated to Hall.

In 1979, he told the Albany Times Union that he had just completed writing the final monologue of his play Grinder's Stand.

He could not remember what happened that night.

"I still don't remember if I jumped or fell," he said, on the eve of the LCT production of Grinder's Stand.

"I also can't remember who at the National Endowment I'm supposed to send a copy of this play as part of the grant requirement...I'm a full time playwright, but it looks like this fall I'll have to find some kind of job. I'm completely out of money. I don't know where I'll go and I don't know what I'll do."

The written version of this monologue was lost, but had been read into an audio tape.

The recording facilitated its recovery, except for one unintelligible line.

He eventually returned to California to live in Nevada City near his family; the story of his fall and recovery are told in Bill Rose's award-winning documentary, The Loss of Nameless Things.

In 1990, Hall submitted his play A Dying Art for consideration at the Reality Theatre Company's new play festival in Columbus, Ohio.

It was selected for a staged reading that year.

After revisions working with producing director Frank A. Barnhart and Artistic Director Dee Shepherd, it received a full production at the theatre in 1991, where it was noted as a highlight of the festival by The Columbus Dispatch.

Richard Ades of The Other Paper described it as "a clever and gleefully perverse black comedy," noting that "it's well-served by Dee Shepherd's intense direction, and set designer Chris Jones's crumbling wall backdrop is more than adequate for a play too self-consciously theatrical to be mistaken for real life."

Hall dated poet Molly Fisk in the 2000s.

In 2002, Foothill Theatre Company in Nevada City, California received a $6,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the development of Hall's 1979 play Grinder's Stand.