Nice profile here of Hazel Robinson from the Asheville Citizen-Times’ Tony Kiss:
When Hazel Robinson makes up her mind on something, she’s not easily dissuaded. In 1973, she decided that Asheville needed its own Shakespeare theater company.
Others were not so sure, she said.
“They said it wouldn’t be commercial,” Robinson recalled a few days ago, sitting on the big wraparound porch at her Montford home, built in 1893.
“And they said, ‘What about the accents?’ No one was doing Shakespeare except for a few colleges here and there. They just didn’t want to tackle it.”
But Robinson pushed ahead and her Montford Park Players opened June 29, 1973, with the Bard’s classic “As You Like It,” performed outdoors in Montford Park.
“We had 25 or 30 people,” she said. “They came and they stayed.”
Through the summers that have followed, the Montford Park Players have continued the tradition, staging many of Shakespeare’s grand masterworks.
In 1983, the shows were moved to a new amphitheatre in Montford, now renamed in Robinson’s honor.
Much beloved as the first lady of Asheville theater, most of Robinson’s work has been offstage as a director, stagehand, costume designer and more. But those around her agree that she has touched countless lives.