As a child, no one would have predicted that Professor of English Robert S. Brustein would become one of the most eminent figures in the theater world.

In elocution classes intended to correct a lisp that caused him to pronounce all Ls and Rs, he fell in love with performing.

"Once bitten by that bug, you're bitten for life," Brustein says.

Anyone who has enjoyed a play at the American Repertory Theatre (ART) has benefited from the efforts of Brustein.

Helen E. Shaw '98, president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, says Brustein has developed the academic side of theater.

"Brustein has created what we know today as theater that is not Broadway," Shaw says. "He is responsible for the acceptance of many of the revolutionary theater groups."

Brustein's development of the repertory theater, his prolific literary criticism and his acting theories have affected the course of theater over the past several decades.

"He has had great influence on theater. He has dragged the theater kicking and screaming into the 21st century," says Jeremy Geidt, a professor and an actor with the ART company who has worked with Brustein since 1966.

Brustein is the founding director of the American Repertory Theater, based on Brattle Street in Cambridge, and the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven.

Currently, he is the artistic director for the ART. He raises money for the company, chooses plays and adapts many of the plays that the ART performs.

"[The repertory theater] came out of my belief that you could not run a theater program properly unless you had a model," Brustein says. "We wanted to embody ideas that we were trying to instill in students in the theater."

Students study at the Institute for Advanced Theater Training, at which he also teaches, while participating in the shows at the ART. After graduation, some join the company.

"When you have a core of actors that work together over a period of time," Brustein says, "they form a unit or an organism that helps to realize a Chekhov or a Shakespeare better than through another approach."

Brustein says he aims to create an environment in which, contrary to some of his own experiences, actors are treated with dignity and respect.

Brustein has published many books on theater and its movements. He has been the theater critic for The New Republic since 1959.