Vokes Players

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article lacks information on the notability of the subject matter.
Please help improve this article by providing context for a general audience, especially in the lead section. (August 2007)

Vokes Players are an acting company based at Beatrice Herford's Vokes Theater, Wayland, Massachusetts and Greater Boston. The theatre is a 1904 miniature of a London theatre and was built by actress/monologist Beatrice Herford and her husband, Sidney Hayward, on the grounds of their estate in Wayland, MA (about 15 miles west of Boston, along Route 20). The building is now a Massachusetts Historical Site.

The designation as "Vokes Players" came about because Beatrice Herford and her husband wanted to honor their friend Rosina Vokes, a British actress who performed as part of the traveling Vokes Family. For the first 30 years or so of the theatre's life, it was not open to the public. Rather, Herford would invite her friends, who included leading actors on the English-speaking stage, singers, New England artists, and others (it was an eclectic mix) to be her guests at her estate in Wayland. In the theatre, performing only for their own amusement, leading lights of the New York and London stages would perform plays as an ensemble. A wall exists showing the signatures of some of those who came to Wayland including Ellen Terry, George Arliss, Florence Arliss, Katharine Cornell; the house archives show that other guests included diva Geraldine Farrar, and actors Ethel Barrymore, John Drew, Norah Bayes, and others.

At the height of the Great Depression, Beatrice Herford opened her private theater to the public for a benefit performance, and she was so moved by the response that she granted the rights to continue to perform there to a group to be drawn from the artistic community of Wayland, Massachusetts and Greater Boston. From 1937, the Vokes Players have evolved into one of the premier community theater companies in New England, drawing many artists who work professionally in theater elsewhere.