THIS PLACE MATTERS! TEN CHIMNEYS DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE 10/6/2025
- jfoll0
- Sep 25
- 2 min read
Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne are widely regarded as the greatest acting team in the history of the American theater. They had three great loves: each other, the stage, and their estate Ten Chimneys, located in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin. Today, the Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship program carries on their legacy of mentorship for Broadway and regional theater actors from across the country at Ten Chimneys, once dubbed the summer home of the American theater.
A new documentary about this theatrical treasure, This Place Matters! Ten Chimneys features the masters of the American stage and Master Teachers for the Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program. Acclaimed actors appearing in the documentary include Phylicia Rashad, Colman Domingo, Jason Alexander, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Alfred Molina, Alan Alda, David Hyde Pierce, Tyne Daly, Joel Grey, Olympia Dukakis, Carol Channing, Lynn Redgrave and Barry Edelstein. The film is narrated by Lunt-Fontanne Fellow, Sharon Lawrence.
The Lunts, who may not be as well known today as many of their contemporaries having made only one major motion picture, disliked the process of movie making so much that when offered an exorbitant amount of money to make another film, Lynn Fontanne replied, “We can be bought but we cannot be bored.” This Place Matters! Ten Chimneys explores the lives and loves of this fascinating, influential couple that most people may have never heard of.
As king and queen of the Broadway stage for over four decades, the Lunts were instrumental in changing the theater from oratory to naturalism. They revolutionized theater with innovations that we now accept as commonplace: overlapping dialog, turning their backs to the audience, passionate physical contact, and a level of truth and realism in everything they did that simply could not be found on the stage prior to the Lunts. Because the Lunts spent every summer at Ten Chimneys, the estate inevitably became a studio for artistic work and expression. From the mid-1920's through the 1960’s, Ten Chimneys was the spiritual home for many of the country’s leading theater artists. Celebrated actors, writers, and directors journeyed repeatedly to Ten Chimneys to relax, rejuvenate, and collaborate on projects which became milestones of American theater.
To revive that spirit of creative collaboration Ten Chimneys embodied, the Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship was created as an eight-day emergent program where actors with a minimum of 20 years of acting experience come to hone their craft and to re-engage in a weeklong master class and retreat with a world-renowned and respected Master Teacher.
For more information on this world premiere, please contact Randy Bryant at 262-968-4161 or rbryant@tenchimneys.org.
