Кристин Уэтерилл Стивенсон: Американ драматургі және өнер меценаты

American dramatist

Christine Wetherill Stevenson (April 12, 1878 – November 21, 1922) was an heiress of the Pittsburgh Paint Company and founder of the Philadelphia Art Alliance. In later years, her goal was to build her own open air theatre and hold her own plays, an objective which she achieved shortly before her death in 1922. Establishing the Pilgrimage Theatre (now known as the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre) in a rural section of Los Angeles County, she then played a major role in creating that theater's first production, Life of Christ, which received significant advance newspaper coverage and was described "an American Oberammergau".

Born on April 12, 1878, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as Christine Wetherill, she was a daughter of Samuel Price Wetherill (1846 1926) and Christine (Northrop) Wetherill (1852 1930). Her father was a descendant of Samuel Wetherill, who was a fellow member, with Betsy Ross, of the Free Quaker Meeting House. Christine Wetherill was married twice, first to John V. Rice, Jr., whom she divorced in 1902, and then to William Yorke Stevenson, son of Cornelius and Sara Yorke Stevenson, in 1908. During the late 1910s and early 1920s, Stevenson formed an art alliance with Marie Rankin Clarke, and raised money with her to buy a piece of land on Cahuenga Pass called "Daisy Dell". A second series of plays was planned, The Pilgrimage, when resistance was met from Clarke and others in the group who wanted to expand the venue's themes. Leaving them to form the Hollywood Bowl, she bought of land on the other side of Cahuenga Pass to build a new amphitheater for her plays, naming it The Pilgrimage Theatre, and created the Pilgrimage Play. Today The Pilgrimage Theatre is known as the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. The Hollywood Pilgrimage Memorial Monument (HCM No. 617), a thirty two foot high steel cross, at 2580 Cahuenga Boulevard was erected in 1923 to the memory of Miss Stevenson. Stevenson was also known as the founder of the Philadelphia Art Alliance, which is housed in the former Samuel Price Wetherill Mansion.

She died in Media, Pennsylvania, on November 21, 1922, and was interred at Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery. A memorial service was held in her honor on Sunday, November 26, 1922, at 3:00 p. m. in the Pilgrimage Theater. In pre memorial announcements about the planned event, newspapers reported: "Hollywood is asked to attend the service, and pay tribute in all reverence to the woman who brought the Pilgrimage Play to Hollywood."