Playwright Barbara Field's stage adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" was seen by millions during its 35-year run at the Guthrie Theater, introducing many to the power of theater with a transformative ghost story.
But her most enduring legacy might be less dramatic. While she was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota in 1971, Field and a clutch of other students acted on the advice of theater professor Charles Nolte and created the Playwrights' Center, which has helped generations of writers from August Wilson and Lee Blessing to Melanie Marnich and Christina Ham find their voice.
Field died from complications of a stroke Sunday at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, according to friends and family. She was six days shy of her 88th birthday.
"Barbara was a brilliant writer, mentor and advocate for playwrights," said Jeremy Cohen, producing artistic director of the Playwrights' Center. "She was committed to the art of storytelling but also to this community."
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., the second of two children of clothing salesman Harry Field and onetime actor Esther Field, she studied English at the University of Pennsylvania. She moved to the Twin Cities in 1963, the same year the Guthrie opened, with husband Lewis Nosanow, a physicist who had taken a faculty job at the University of Minnesota.
"It was fortuitous and exciting for her to be here at the start of the Guthrie because it inspired her," daughter Mia Nosanow said.
Her parents divorced and "my mom basically raised my brother and I as a single mom."
Field first worked at the Children's Theatre, where she adapted the fairy tale "The Little Match Girl" and wrote the libretto and the book for a musical version of "Johnny Tremain." She continued writing in graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and subsequently fell in with a group of collaborators that included director Stephen Kanee, scenic designer Jack Barkla, lighting designer Duane Schuler, costume designer Jack Edwards and composer Hiram Titus.
