Streisand in Summer Stock:
“ Teahouse of the August Moon,”
“Desk Set,” “Picnic” and more ...
Malden Bridge Playhouse
Route 66 between Chatham & Pittsfield-Albany Road (Route 20)
Malden Bridge, New York
1957 Summer Stock season
In 1957, Malden Bridge Playhouse was a 200-seat professional summer stock theatre. Audiences attended the plays there in an old theatre/barn. The actors who performed in the shows occupied a lodge across the street from the theatre.
“By the time I was fourteen, I wanted to get into summer stock. During my school vacation the next year, I went to a playhouse upstate with one hundred and fifty dollars my mother gave me. Later I found it was really money my grandfather had left me,” Streisand recalled.
“I had a wonderful time at the playhouse,” she said. “I played in Picnic and was the sexy girl in The Desk Set.”
Barbra roomed that summer with Ingrid Meighan who remembered Streisand as having “…a wonderful sense of humor and was more of a comic than a serious actor.”
Teahouse of the August Moon
Streisand lore maintains that Barbra played a Japanese child in this play about a Captain sent to Americanise a village in Okinawa. Streisand reportedly led a goat across the stage.
(Above: That's Streisand, on the left, peering over another actor's shoulder).
The Desk Set
Opened July 23, 1957
A comedy by William Marchant
Directed by John Hale
Barbra played Elsa
“Can’t you just see me at fifteen coming on the stage, sitting down on a desk, swinging my leg and playing sexy? I went back the following season too.”
(Below: Streisand's early stage resumé)
(Above: This Aug. 24, 1957 newspaper article says Streisand played one of the school girls in the play “Holiday for Lovers,” by Ronald Alexander, which was presented by the apprentices of Malden Bridge Playhouse August 27—September 1, 1957. Streisand's name appears in the paragraph beneath the photo of John Hale.)
Picnic
Opened August 30, 1957
A drama by William Inge
Directed by Stanley Beck
Barbra played Millie Owens
Knowing some of the themes about beauty that have appeared in several Streisand films, it is fascinating to look at some of Millie's lines in Picnic:
Sources used for this page:
- Seventeen Magazine, October 1963
- Columbia County History & Heritage, “Summer Stock in Malden Bridge,” Spring 2004
- 1957 Berkshire Eagle, Pittsburgh, Massachusetts
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