Bill Gibson died this month in Stockbridge

Bill Gibson died this month in Stockbridge; he was 94. When Joan Erikson started the Activities Program at Riggs in 1950, she looked for teachers who could open the world of creativity for our patients and she found Bill Gibson. Later famous for his Tony Ward-winning Broadway plays (The Miracle Worker and Two for the Seesaw), Gibson was initially hired by Riggs to teach literature and music. He had arrived in Stockbridge with his wife, Dr. Margaret Brenman-Gibson, a psychoanalyst from the Menninger Clinic, who had joined the Riggs staff. Bored with the literature class, Bill proposed to the patient group that they perform a play rather than discuss it. “I had the boldness of ignorance,” he said. Medical Director, Robert Knight, was initially skeptical. “You’ll have trouble,” he said. “Patients won’t be able to remember their lines or perform in front of people.”

The first play was performed in a room used for staff meetings. It was Wilder’s Pullman Car Hiawatha. It went well and the staff’s concerns were put to rest. Gibson produced five plays in two years (with a budget of $75 per show), including one of his own, Dinny and the Witches, before the demands of being published and produced in New York drew him away from Riggs.

Almost 60 years and well over 100 productions later, the plays are now full-scale productions at the Lavender Door stage with patients and members of the local community acting, managing, and putting the sets together. Bill Gibson had created a thriving enterprise. Currently, Shakespeare and Company’s Kevin Coleman directs and produces the plays at the Lavender Door.

Bill Gibson’s other contribution to Riggs was his novel, The Cobweb, focusing on patient-staff life at a psychiatric hospital striking similar to the Austen Riggs Center. It was made into a successful Hollywood movie, with Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer and Lillian Gish. Bill Gibson was a brilliant and creative man who holds a valued place in the history of this institution.