Despite its successful war efforts NTC
endured a growing unhappiness among its membership about its
non-democratic structure in which the president was elected by
the Board of Directors, and it was the Board who decided on new
members. In 1946, the code was revised to require that
the officers and Board members be elected by members attending
the annual meeting. A major post-war project was a grant to
Stanford University to create an attached professional company.
A second project was providing grants to emerging
playwrights such as Barrie Stavis. NTC also provided a
grant to Lee Norvelle at Indiana University to create a touring
company, which had two successful years and was followed by the
creation of the Brown County Summer Stock Theatre, still
successfully producing today. The final Rockefeller project was
the overseeing of six regional theatre conferences throughout
the U.S. When the Rockefeller grant ended, NTC was threatened
both by lack of funds and by the growing competition from AETA,
which had no membership requirements, but President Lee
Norvelle was able to reinvigorate the organization and in the
late 50's NTC had a series of distinguished theatre
professionals such as John Gassner and Harold Clurman as
featured conference speakers. When not listening to
invited speakers, the tradition was for NTC members to meet and
discuss their activities during the past year.
During the 1960's, under the guidance of
Presidents Vieham, Canfield, Gillett, and Houghton, the NTC
published Balch, Gard, and Temkin's influential work, Theatre in America: Appraisal and
Challenge, and made the decision to
limit NTC membership to 100 of the most influential leaders in
commercial, non-commercial and educational theatre. It
was also decided to cease meeting with AETA and to return to
meeting at the end of November in New York at the Barbizon
Plaza. The National Theatre Conference had now taken its
current form. Another significant decision in the 60's
was the creation of the award of Person of the Year. It
was usual for NTC to spend an entire day in which the Person of
the Year gave a talk, lunched with, and had a long discussion
with NTC members.
