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Biography:
Robert E. Gard was born at Iola, Kansas on July 3, 1910. He was educated at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He taught playwriting at the University of Kansas and at Cornell, became a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, Humanities Division, and remained a fellow, and held numerous Rockefeller Foundation grants for many years. He later helped to found, with Professor Alexander M. Drummond, the New York State Playwriting Project, and helped to establish a statewide training program for New York State playwrights. In 1942, after teaching playwriting at the Banff School of Fine Arts, he founded and directed the Alberta Folklore and Local History Project, in association with the University of Alberta at Edmonton, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Robert Gard helped to establish the Provincial Archives of Alberta in 1945; and his collections, assembled from firsthand accounts of pioneers still living, constitute today one of the rare collections of the University of Alberta.
In 1945 he received an offer to join the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, and took up residence there in the fall of that year when he established the Wisconsin Idea Theatre. This was a cultural program for the whole state and reflected popular concepts of Wisconsin theatre and literature as brought to the state and as foreseen by the pioneers.
In Wisconsin, his chief areas of activity were in the theatre arts and in creative writing, with a strong side activity in collecting and publishing the folklore of the state. In 1967 he established the functional area of Arts Development under University Extension and remained a specialist in the arts in smaller communities and rural areas.
Gard established the Wisconsin Idea Theatre Conference in 1945. The Conference represented virtually all theatre interests in the state, and in 1948 he established the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association. Both organizations became key institutions, furthering the native literature and lore of Wisconsin. He remained as director of Arts Development until, at age 70, he retired from all administrative duties. He helped to found the first Wisconsin Arts Foundation and Council and was the first president of the Council, which is said to have been the first official state arts council and foundation in America. He founded the National Community Theatre Center in 1958 and conducted a national survey of the American Community Theatre in 1957-1958 for the Rockefeller Foundation. He established the nationally known Rhinelander School of Arts in 1964, the Wisconsin Institute of Nationalities in 1966, and was appointed by Governor Knowles as state chairman of the nationalities committee. During more than ten years he wrote and directed the Holiday Folk Fair in Milwaukee, which drew annual audiences of more than 80,000. Governor Knowles also appointed Gard a member of the Portage Canal Committee, which determined uses for the historic waterway. He worked closely with the community of Portage on matters relating to its significant historical heritage and to the contemplated restoration of old Fort Winnebago.
As well as being founder of the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association, Gard was one of its early presidents. He guided the organization for more than thirty-five years as its chief adviser. When the Council for Wisconsin Writers (the book-award-giving group for professionally published books in Wisconsin) was formed in 1964, Gard was one of the initiators. He became its president and so served for more than five years. He was field editor for Duell, Sloan and Pearce, a New York publishing house, and in 1968 he established with October House, New York, the book-publishing corporation called Wisconsin House. Wisconsin House still exists under the imprint of Stanton and Lee, book publishers.
Gard was elected as a Fulbright Research Scholar to Finland in 1959. There he conducted the first study ever made of the role of the Finnish Playwright in the Finnish Theatre. He was invited to lecture at the University of Helsinki, oldest and largest of the Northern European Universities, he was invited to conduct a seminar in American Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and later was invited several times to return to Finland as guest of the University of Helsinki, as lecturer at the Vaasa Summer University, and at other institutions. He was a United States State Department specialist in theatre arts, attended World Theatre gatherings, and has been an international adviser to different countries on the arts.
In 1953 the Rockefeller Foundation sent him to the British Isles to make a survey of the grassroots arts in Britain. His work had significant value in other, subsequent British-American programs and he was invited to lecture and visit at Oxford and other noted British universities. Gard has been awarded the gold medal of the Finnish National Theatre for his work with Finnish Playwrights, also the Medal of the University of Helsinki and the Jubilee medal of the nation of Finland.
In 1967 Gard led a team, which surveyed the American Theatre for the National Theatre Conference. In 1967 he received the first large grant made by the National Endowment for the Arts for work with smaller communities.
His list of citations is long: Honored Author of Wisconsin by the Wisconsin Library Association; Kansas Theatre Hall of Honor; Pabst award for service to nationality groups; award from University Extension for Distinguished Service; Governor’s citation for creativity; many citations of merit from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Distinguished Citizen Award from the Governor of Wisconsin; major citation from the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters; President of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, 1977; Member of the Finnish national Academy of Sciences and Letters; Honor Award from the University of Kansas; National Chairman of Fulbright Theatre Committee; Distinguished Service Award, Wisconsin Theatre Association; Honorary Member, Wisconsin Regional Writers; Honorary Member, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets; and many other awards and citations.
(From the author's website)
Works by Robert Gard:
Robert E. Gard was born at Iola, Kansas on July 3, 1910. He was educated at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He taught playwriting at the University of Kansas and at Cornell, became a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, Humanities Division, and remained a fellow, and held numerous Rockefeller Foundation grants for many years. He later helped to found, with Professor Alexander M. Drummond, the New York State Playwriting Project, and helped to establish a statewide training program for New York State playwrights. In 1942, after teaching playwriting at the Banff School of Fine Arts, he founded and directed the Alberta Folklore and Local History Project, in association with the University of Alberta at Edmonton, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Robert Gard helped to establish the Provincial Archives of Alberta in 1945; and his collections, assembled from firsthand accounts of pioneers still living, constitute today one of the rare collections of the University of Alberta.
In 1945 he received an offer to join the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, and took up residence there in the fall of that year when he established the Wisconsin Idea Theatre. This was a cultural program for the whole state and reflected popular concepts of Wisconsin theatre and literature as brought to the state and as foreseen by the pioneers.
In Wisconsin, his chief areas of activity were in the theatre arts and in creative writing, with a strong side activity in collecting and publishing the folklore of the state. In 1967 he established the functional area of Arts Development under University Extension and remained a specialist in the arts in smaller communities and rural areas.
Gard established the Wisconsin Idea Theatre Conference in 1945. The Conference represented virtually all theatre interests in the state, and in 1948 he established the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association. Both organizations became key institutions, furthering the native literature and lore of Wisconsin. He remained as director of Arts Development until, at age 70, he retired from all administrative duties. He helped to found the first Wisconsin Arts Foundation and Council and was the first president of the Council, which is said to have been the first official state arts council and foundation in America. He founded the National Community Theatre Center in 1958 and conducted a national survey of the American Community Theatre in 1957-1958 for the Rockefeller Foundation. He established the nationally known Rhinelander School of Arts in 1964, the Wisconsin Institute of Nationalities in 1966, and was appointed by Governor Knowles as state chairman of the nationalities committee. During more than ten years he wrote and directed the Holiday Folk Fair in Milwaukee, which drew annual audiences of more than 80,000. Governor Knowles also appointed Gard a member of the Portage Canal Committee, which determined uses for the historic waterway. He worked closely with the community of Portage on matters relating to its significant historical heritage and to the contemplated restoration of old Fort Winnebago.
As well as being founder of the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association, Gard was one of its early presidents. He guided the organization for more than thirty-five years as its chief adviser. When the Council for Wisconsin Writers (the book-award-giving group for professionally published books in Wisconsin) was formed in 1964, Gard was one of the initiators. He became its president and so served for more than five years. He was field editor for Duell, Sloan and Pearce, a New York publishing house, and in 1968 he established with October House, New York, the book-publishing corporation called Wisconsin House. Wisconsin House still exists under the imprint of Stanton and Lee, book publishers.
Gard was elected as a Fulbright Research Scholar to Finland in 1959. There he conducted the first study ever made of the role of the Finnish Playwright in the Finnish Theatre. He was invited to lecture at the University of Helsinki, oldest and largest of the Northern European Universities, he was invited to conduct a seminar in American Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and later was invited several times to return to Finland as guest of the University of Helsinki, as lecturer at the Vaasa Summer University, and at other institutions. He was a United States State Department specialist in theatre arts, attended World Theatre gatherings, and has been an international adviser to different countries on the arts.
In 1953 the Rockefeller Foundation sent him to the British Isles to make a survey of the grassroots arts in Britain. His work had significant value in other, subsequent British-American programs and he was invited to lecture and visit at Oxford and other noted British universities. Gard has been awarded the gold medal of the Finnish National Theatre for his work with Finnish Playwrights, also the Medal of the University of Helsinki and the Jubilee medal of the nation of Finland.
In 1967 Gard led a team, which surveyed the American Theatre for the National Theatre Conference. In 1967 he received the first large grant made by the National Endowment for the Arts for work with smaller communities.
His list of citations is long: Honored Author of Wisconsin by the Wisconsin Library Association; Kansas Theatre Hall of Honor; Pabst award for service to nationality groups; award from University Extension for Distinguished Service; Governor’s citation for creativity; many citations of merit from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Distinguished Citizen Award from the Governor of Wisconsin; major citation from the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters; President of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, 1977; Member of the Finnish national Academy of Sciences and Letters; Honor Award from the University of Kansas; National Chairman of Fulbright Theatre Committee; Distinguished Service Award, Wisconsin Theatre Association; Honorary Member, Wisconsin Regional Writers; Honorary Member, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets; and many other awards and citations.
(From the author's website)
Works by Robert Gard:
- Books, Videotapes and Pamphlets
- Fisher, Dorothy Canfield; Robert Gard, editor, Memories of Arlington, Vermont (Editor), Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1957.
- Gard, Robert and Helen O'Brien, Act 9: Plays for Youth, Wisconsin House, 1970.
- Gard, Robert, and David Semmes, America's Players: Highlights of American Theater, Seabury Press, 1965.
- Gard, Robert, Ralph Kohlhoff and Michael Warlum, The Arts in the Small Community, Office of Community Arts Development, University of Wisconsin, 1969. Reprinted by Americans for the Arts 1984.
- Gard, Robert, and David Semmes, America's Players: Highlights of American Theater, Seabury Press, 1965.Gard, Robert, Ralph Kohlhoff and Michael Warlum, The Arts in the Small Community, Office of Community Arts Development, University of Wisconsin, 1969. Reprinted by Americans for the Arts 1984.
- Gard, Robert, Beyond the Thin Line, Prairie Oak Press, 1992
- Gard, Robert, The Big One, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1958.
- Gard, Robert, and A.M. Drummond, The Cardiff Giant, Cornell University Press, 1948.
- Gard, Robert, Coming Home to Wisconsin, Stanton and Lee Publishers, 1982.
- Gard, Robert, and Gertrude Burley, Community Theater: Idea and Achievement, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959.
- Gard, Robert, The Deacon, R. B. Allison, 1979.
- Gard, Robert, Devil Red, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1961.
- Gard, Robert (text) and Dale O'Brien (photographs), Down in the Valleys: Wisconsin Back Country Lore and Humor, Wisconsin House, 1971.
- Gard, Robert, The Error of Sexton Jones, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964.
- Gard, Robert, Finnish Folklore, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965.
- Gard, Robert and Joan Sullivan, Frost Blossoms: Yarns and Impressions of Stoughton and Regional Life and Adventures, University of Wisconsin Extension, 1978.
- Gard, Robert, Grassroots Theater : a search for regional arts in America / Robert Gard ; with a foreword by David H. Stevens ; and with an introduction by Maryo Gard Ewell. University of Wisconsin Press, 1955; reprinted Greenwood Press, 1978; reprinted University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. Reviewed by Philip Zwerling inTheatre Journal (December 2001)
- Gard, Robert, A Horse Named Joe, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1956. Printed in Dutch as Tom Wint de Race , Prisma-Juniores, Antwerp 1959.
- Gard, Robert. How I Met the Stranger: A Tribute to David H. Stevens, Ephraim, Wisconsin, 1980.
- Gard, Robert, Darkes Albright, and A.M. Drummond, How to Choose a Play and How to Write One, Cornell University Extension Bulletin 449, reprint 1949.
- Gard, Robert, An Innocence of Prairie, R. B. Allison, 1977.
- Gard, Robert, Johnny Chinook: Tall Tales and True from the Canadian West, Longmans, Green and Co 1945. Reprinted by Tuttle, 1967.
- Gard, Robert, and A.M. Drummond, The Lake Guns of Seneca and Cayuga, Cornell University Press, 1940.
- Gard, Robert and Maryo K. Gard, My Land, My Home My Wisconsin: The Epic Story of the Wisconsin Farm and Farm Family from Settlement Days to the Present, Milwaukee Journal, 1979.
- Gard, Robert, Midnight: Rodeo Champion, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1952.
- Gard, Robert , August Derleth, Jesse Stuart, Frank Utpatel, and Mark Lefebvre, The Only Place We Live, Wisconsin House 1976.
- Gard, Robert, Prairie Visions: A Personal Search for the Springs of Regional Art and Folklife, Stanton and Lee, 1987.
- Gard, Robert and L. G. Sorden, The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names, assisted by Margaret Kelk, Helen Smith and Maryo Gard. Wisconsin House 1968, revised edition 1980.
- Gard, Robert, Run to Kansas, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1958.
- Gard, Robert, Scotty's Mare, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1957.
- Gard, Robert, and David Stevens, Ten Talents in American Theater, Univ. of Oklahoma 1957.
- Gard, Robert, Theater in Adult Education, National Adult Education Association 1949.
- Gard, Robert, Marston Balch and Pauline Temkin, Theater in America: Appraisal and Challenge for the National Theatre Conference, Dembar Educational Research Services, Inc., 1968.
- Gard, Robert, This is Wisconsin, Wisconsin House, 1969.
- Gard, Robert, A Time of Humanities: An Oral History, Recollections of David H. Stevens as Director in the Division of the Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation, 1930-50, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 1978.
- Gard, Robert and Elaine Reetz, compilers, Trail of the Serpent: Lore and Legend of Fox River Valley, Wisconsin House, 1973.
- Gard, Robert, University, Madison, USA, Wisconsin House, 1970.
- Gard, Robert, editor, We Were Children Then, Wisconsin House, 1976.
- Gard, Robert and Ed Mueller, Wild Goose Country: Horicn Marsh to Horseshoe Island, Wisconsin House, 1975.
- Gard, Robert and Ed Mueller, Wild Goose Marsh: Horicon Stopover, Wisconsin House, 1972.
- Gard, Robert, Wisconsin Is My Doorstep: A Dramatist's Yarn, Book of Wisconsin Lore, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1948.
- Gard, Robert and L. G. Sorden, Wisconsin Lore: Antics and Anecdotes of Wisconsin People and Places, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1962. Wisconsin House, 1971.
- Gard, Robert, Aaron Bohrod and Mark Lefebvre, Wisconsin Sketches, Wisconsin House, 1973.
- Gard, Robert and Allen Crafton, A Woman of No Importance, Wisconsin House, 1974.
- Gard, Robert and Jonathan Curvin, Writing the Wisconsin Play and Catalogue of Unwritten Plays, Department of Debate and Public Discussion, University of Wisconsin, 1946.
- Kimball, Gwen (pen name for Robert Gard, Maryo Gard [Ewell], and Rebecca Herb), The Puzzle of the Lost Dauphin, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964.
- Kimball, Gwen (pen name for Robert Gard, Maryo Gard [Ewell], and Rebecca Herb), The Puzzle of Roanoke, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964.
- Kimball, Gwen (pen name for Robert Gard, Maryo Gard [Ewell], and Rebecca Herb), The Cardiff Giant, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1966.
- Schultz, James Willard, My Life as an Indian, editor, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1956.
- Fisher, Dorothy Canfield; Robert Gard, editor, Memories of Arlington, Vermont (Editor), Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1957.
- Plays:
- Gard, Robert and Helen O'Brien, "Act 9: Plays for Youth", Wisconsin House, 1970.
- Gard, Robert. "Antitetem in the Lower Forties," Wisconsin Idea Theater Archives.
- Gard, Robert. "Calumet Story," Wisconsin Idea Theater Archives.
- Gard, Robert, and A.M. Drummond, "The Cardiff Giant," Cornell University Press, 1948.
- Gard, Robert, and Dore Reich, "The Freedom: A Wisconsin Comedy in Three Acts," Wisconsin Idea Theatre, 1948.
- Gard, Robert, "Furlough" written while Gard was at Cornell.
- Gard, Robert, Dave Peterson, Paul Bueske et al, "Hodag: A New Musical," Wisconsin Idea Theatre, 1964.
- Gard, Robert, "An Image of Anna," Robert Gard Archives, University of Wisconsin.
- Gard, Robert and A.M. Drummond. "The Lake Guns of Seneca and Cayuga," Cornell Univ. Press 1942. Kennikat, 1972.
- Gard, Robert, "Man and His God," pageant in Madison, Wisconsin, 1955, Robert Gard Archives, University of Wisconsin.
- Gard, Robert, "The Place We Live" Wisconsin Idea Theater Archives.
- Gard, Robert, "Raisin' the Devil" Cornell Univ. Press, 1942.
- Gard, Robert, and Maryo Gard, "The Slope of a Hill" written while Gard was at Cornell.
- Gard, Robert, and Dore Reich, "River Boat," Wisconsin Idea Theatre, 1948.
- Gard, Robert, "The Saga of Bob Edwards, " One of a series of six radio plays Gard wrote for the Toronto to Dominion Network, Sept 1949-.Oct 1949.
- Gard, Robert. "Six Alberta Folklore Plays: Twelve-Foot Davis; Hatfield the Rainmaker; Midnight; Ballad of Johnny Dunn; A Church on the River; Ballad of the Frank Slide." Written while Gard was at the University of Alberta.
- Gard, Robert, and Junius Eddy, "The Thirtieth Star: A Dramatic Entertainment for the Stage in Commemoration of Wisconsin's State Centennial, 1948," Wisconsin Idea Theatre, 1948.
- Gard, Robert, "Trudeau," written while Gard was at Cornell.
- Gard, Robert, "Wild Hills" Cornell Univ. Press, 1941.
