The road to 100: The Goodman Theatre grows with Chicago theater

Art museums and symphony orchestras mostly arrived in major American cities at the dawn of the 20th century. But regional theaters like the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis or the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta did not arrive until the 1960s, when the mission-based tumult of the era demanded an alternative to Broadway tours, pioneers like director Margo Jones in Dallas had successfully brought classics and new works to the regions, and the Ford Foundation had put hard philanthropic cash behind “strengthening the position of resident theatre in the United States.”

By then, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre was already in middle age.

The founding of Chicago’s leading theater was quixotic. An undistinguished playwright named Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, who had some success in Chicago’s Little Theatre moveme