Vokes Players

In 1904, Herford and her friends built a small theater on her husband s property in Wayland, Massachusetts. She named it Beatrice Herford s Vokes Theatre, after English actress Rosina Vokes. For over 30 years, her tiny theatre was open only to her friends, leading lights of the New York and London stages, including Ellen Terry, George Arliss, Florence Arliss, Katharine Cornell; the house archives show that other guests included diva Geraldine Farrar, and actors Ethel Barrymore, John Drew, Norah Bayes, and others, some of whom (as well as others) inscribed their signatures on the inside of the box office door. In 1937, she gave use of the theater to a group of actors organized as the Vokes Players. The group refurbished the theater and continue to perform in it.