Some years ago I profiled the poet Helene Johnson for this column. Her remarkable career as a noted Harlem Renaissance writer surfaced again a few days ago with the death of Abigail McGrath, founder of Off Center Theater. In her obituary in the New York Times, this paragraph leapt out to me: “Abigail Calachaly Hubbell was born on Sept. 18, 1940, in Manhattan, the only child of Helen Johnson Hubbell, a Boston-born Harlem Renaissance poet who wrote under the name Helene Johnson, and William Warner Hubbell III, a stevedore who later worked as a subway conductor. Abigail’s unusual middle name was the name of her mother’s imaginary childhood friend.” She was 84 and died of liver cancer.
Any ambiguity about Johnson’s first name was cleared up here with the clarification that Helene was her pen name. Abigail was the couple’s only child and according to one biography, they divorced shortly after Abigail’s birth. It is not clear who raised her but she grew up in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood and attended the Little Red School House in the West Village. After absorbing the progressive curriculum there she enrolled at Washington Irving High School. When she said it was fun “growing up with a poet,” could this have been with Johnson?
Abigail studied theater at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY and while there she met and fell in love with Leonard Rosen, a fellow student. They were married just long enough to have a son before divorcing, all before she graduated. With her son in tow, she departed for Paris where she worked as a mannequin, or as a non-dancing showgirl at the Folies Bergère. Upon her return to New York, she worked at a variety of jobs, most rewardingly as a copywriter with an advertising company, while understudying with an improv group. She modeled, checked coats at the Village Vanguard, and manned the door at Max’s Kansas City.
It was during a phase as part-time actress that her friend Susan Hoffman (Viva), a member of Andy Warhol’s entourage, asked her to find an unusual tub for a film he was working on. After she found a see-through tub, she and Viva were asked to tuck themselves in it. This occasion was part of Viva’s way of entertaining her guests. By agreeing to pose for the stunt, Abigail was not only the sole African American among Warhol’s crew, but she was also one of the few who actually got paid — $100 a week in 1967.
While working with Warhol did not launch her film career, it did put her in contact with Anthony McGrath, later her husband who helped her found the Off Center Theater, then located on W. 66th Street. They produced experimental works, social and political satire, Shakespeare plays, and free theater for children. Utilizing a truck, they presented productions in parks, schools, and on the streets.
In their version of “Cinderella,” F. Murray Abraham portrayed the prince to Abigail’s role as Cinderella, and their interpretation of “Little Red Riding Hood” ended happily with the wolf becoming a vegetarian. Other notables who got their start at the theater are actor-comedian John Leguizamo, who joined the company when was a teenager.Jake Gyllenhaal starred in a production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” and Raul Esparza starred in “The Cradle Will Rock.”
Though the theater was often praised for its hilarious productions and versatile performers, it could barely pay the bills. A union dispute made things even more precarious, so much so that they had to resort to baking and selling bread and other delectables in the theater district. It was not until 2016 that they finally married. In 2001, Abigail opened Renaissance House, an artist residency, in a family home on Martha’s Vineyard. It was named in honor of her mother and her cousin, the author Dorothy West. The couple continued to perform in other venues until her husband’s death in 2018.