Michael Dewell; Theatrical Producer

Michael Dewell, Tony Award-winning theatrical producer who co-founded the National Repertory Theatre and took classical plays such as “The Seagull” and “The Madwoman of Chaillot” from Broadway to stages throughout the United States and Canada, has died. He was 63.

Dewell died Friday at his Los Angeles home of lung cancer, colleagues announced Monday.

In 1973, backed by his National Repertory Theatre, Dewell also founded the short-lived but enthusiastically received Los Angeles Free Shakespeare Festival. He produced “As You Like It” at the Pilgrimage Theater with Joan Van Ark, Roscoe Lee Brown and John Ritter, and the next year staged productions of “Macbeth” and “The Comedy of Errors” in parks across Los Angeles County.

Dewell’s work with the National Repertory Theatre in the 1960s won him the Tony, Broadway’s highest accolade, for distinguished contribution to the American theater.

Five of his repertory productions played on Broadway--”The Crucible,” “The Seagull,” “Tonight at 8:30,” “A Touch of the Poet” and “The Imaginary Invalid.” Others, including “Mary Stuart,” “Elizabeth the Queen” and “Ring Around the Moon,” graced stages in more than 200 cities.

At the request of then Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall in 1968, Dewell revived the historic Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., where President Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot by actor John Wilkes Booth. Dewell produced the all-star CBS special for the reopening and formed a company to perform works by Shakespeare and other classic writers.

Dewell had been based in Los Angeles since that two-year stint in Washington, commenting in 1980: “It’s nice to feel that if you’re going to drop a pebble in a pool, you’re doing it from the middle and the ripples will go further. Los Angeles has the feeling of being a world capital.”

In addition to the Shakespeare Festival, Dewell founded and served as trustee of the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, which performs throughout the Southwest, and established the National Playwrights Award.

The producer had spent the past few years translating with Carmen Zapata the plays of Spanish writer Fredrico Garcia Lorca. Their work on “Yerma” won a Dramalogue award for writing in its 1980 Los Angeles production.

Born in West Haven, Conn., Dewell was educated in literature and fine arts at Yale University and the University of London, and also trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

He began his career as an actor, but soon became a magazine editor. Still interested in theater, he worked nights as a stage manager in Greenwich Village. The dual job routine was interrupted by a stint in the Army, where he was assigned to television.

“Being drafted was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” he told The Times in 1980. “I produced 200 hours of television programming in color, an opportunity I’d never have had at age 26 in civilian life. By the time I got out, I was an experienced producer.”

The year was 1958, and Dewell went to the National Phoenix Theatre in New York where he produced three nationwide touring productions that played 122 cities.

“We broke box office records across the country, and with just one tour changed the thinking of a lot of people about classic theater in America,” he said. “There were no repertory theater movements or regional theaters at that time.”

After a summer as executive producer of Boston’s American Arts Festival, Dewell, with Frances Ann Dougherty, launched the National Repertory Theatre in 1961.

Dewell was married to Nina Foch in 1967. The couple divorced last year after a separation of more than a decade.

He is survived by his sister, Patricia Dewell Wallace of Woodbridge, Conn., and three nieces.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the NRT Foundation, P.O. Box 71011, Los Angeles, Calif. 90071.