Oakley Hall III

Who was Oakley Hall III?

Oakley "Tad" Hall III was an American playwright, director, and author. The eldest child of novelist Oakley Hall and photographer Barbara E. Hall, Oakley attended University of California Irvine and Boston University. By age 28, he was a rising star in the New York theatre scene. In the mid-1970s, his play Mike Fink was optioned by Joseph Papp of the Public Theater. Oakley founded and was the artistic director of the Lexington Conservatory Theatre in upstate New York, where his plays Grinder's Stand and Beatrice and the Old Man, and his stage adaptation of Frankenstein, enjoyed their première productions.

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Oakley Hall III in 2010, directing Ubu Rex. Photo by Luanne Ferris, Albany Times Union

In 1978, Hall suffered massive head injuries in a fall from a bridge. He eventually returned to California to live in Nevada City near his family; there his play Grinder's Stand, which he had been writing at the time of his accident, was produced by The Foothill Theatre Company, directed by Philip Sneed. The story of this production, entwined with Oakley's fall and the slow process of creating a new life, are movingly told in Bill Rose's award-winning documentary, The Loss of Nameless Things.