Virgil Geddes

Virgil Geddes (1897–1989) was an American playwright.

Geddes grew up in rural Nebraska, the setting for his plays The Earth Between, and Native Ground. He did not go to college. He spent several years in Paris where he met and married writer Minna Besser Geddes (Vassar College), class on 1916. The couple moved to Brookfield, Connecticut in 1929.

Geddes, a member of several Communist organizations including the League of American Writers, Workers Film and Photo League (USA), and the League of Workers Theaters, was listed multiple times by the House Un-American Activities Committee in its 1948 Report.

Geddes established a theater company, The Brookfield Players. The company performed in an erstwhile tobacco barn, called the Brookfield County Playhouse, and both the company and the venue were referred to as the Brookfield Playhouse.

Geddes was the long-serving postmaster in Brookfield, a job he told the Hartford Courant that he took because it offered a steady income.

Plays

• The Provincetown Playhouse produced his drama The Earth Between, produced at Provincetown Playhouse, 1929. Bette Davis was cast in one of her first roles.
• The Earth Between, 1930.
• Native Ground, 1929; produced under the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project, 1937.
• Pocahontas and the elders, a folkpiece in four acts 1933

Books

• Collected poems of Virgil Geddes, National Poetry Foundation, 1977
• Country Postmaster, 1952
• The Melodramadness of Eugene O'Neill, Brookfield Players, 1934