The name Vivienne Shub has been synonymous with Baltimore theater for nearly three-quarters of a century. When she passed away at the age of 95 on Sept. 18, Shub left behind her son, Daniel Shub, her daughters, Judith Shub-Condliffe and Amy Shub Rothstein, her younger sister, Naomi Greenberg, as well as grandchildren, cousins, nieces and nephews. But Shub’s passing was also a huge loss to friends, colleagues and audiences in Baltimore and beyond.
Shub was born to Rose Slovin, a seamstress and homemaker, and dentist Samuel Slovin on Oct. 18, 1918 in Baltimore. Both of her parents were Eastern European immigrants. Shub’s sister, a cellist and Everyman Theatre’s dramaturge, was born when Shub was 4 years old. Although Naomi Greenberg lived in Holland for 30 years, Greenberg says she and her sister shared an unbreakable bond that lasted to the very end of Shub’s life.
“Vivienne showed a love for acting very early,” Greenberg recalled. “She loved to imitate our grandmother’s Yiddish accent.”
Greenberg and Shub’s father was also a story teller and poet and encouraged his daughters to pursue their artistic talents.
Shub studied music at the Peabody Conservatory and performed in the plays at Forest Park High School. She also won roles in community theater productions such as those at Baltimore’s Vagabond Theatre. After high school, Shub enrolled in full-time acting classes at the Ramsey Street Theatre Conservatory in Baltimore.
Since there was no professional theater scene in Baltimore in those days, as a young woman, Shub decided to try her luck in New York City. But she soon concluded she was not well suited to New York’s fast-paced and cutthroat theater scene. Shub returned to Baltimore and enrolled in a secretarial school, gaining the skills that enabled her to support herself. She continued acting in her free time.
In 1941, Shub married Louis Shub, a concert pianist, and the couple raised three children together. Daniel, the couple’s second child, said that his parents’ marriage gave him a “distorted view of what marriage was like. They had a great relationship. They were both gentle and encouraging to one another and were very compatible, creatively and politically.”
His parents met at a political meeting, likely a meeting about the need for desegregation in Baltimore, the son said.
Almost immediately following their wedding, Louis was required to leave his new bride and report for military service. He was stationed in North Africa and Italy. While he was gone, said their son, his parents wrote to each other every day.
As parents, he added, Vivienne and Louis were exceedingly approachable and always ready to lend an ear or to provide support.
In 1963, Shub helped to found Center Stage, Baltimore’s first regional professional repertory theater. She acted in Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” the first play produced by the fledgling company, and continued to perform with Center Stage for the next 20 years. In the mid- 1990s, Shub became a company member of Everyman Theatre. She performed with Everyman well into her 80s, said Greenberg, appearing in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “Buried Child,” “Uncle Vanya,” “Hedda Gabler” and “The Trip to Bountiful.”
For her 90th birthday in 2008, Shub performed “Viva la Vivienne,” a one-woman show written by her sister as a tribute to Shub’s life and career. Greenberg also wrote “The Cone Sister,” a one-woman show about the lives of art collector Etta Cone and her sister, Claribel. Shub performed the play at Everyman in 2006.
Shub’s acting was not limited to the stage.
“She also did a lot of commercial work,” said Harriet Lynn, Shub’s cousin and an actress and producer/artistic director at the Heritage Theatre Artists’ Consortium.
Shub appeared in the films “Runaway Bride” and John Water’s “Cry Baby,” television shows “Homicide: Life on the Street,” public television programs and even training films, said Lynn. She also had an illustrious teaching career in the theater department at Towson University, where she was granted an honorary diploma in 2012.
Lynn said that one of Shub’s greatest contributions to Baltimore’s theater community was the leadership she provided to the Baltimore Theatre Alliance, which she founded in 1996.
“What she did with BTA was huge,” said Lynn. “Only Vivienne could have done this. She coalesced over 50 theater companies and this large group of individuals of actors [and] designers.”
Shub spent the last years of her life at Towson’s Edenwald retirement home. In her final days, Greenberg was amazed that her sister could still recite lines of dialogue from plays she had acted in decades earlier. She was amused that her sister enjoyed speaking Yiddish and reminisced about their Yiddish-speaking grandparents.
Shub received a send-off during a memorial program at Everyman Theatre on Oct. 20. On Nov. 13, the Jewish community will celebrate Shub’s life at a special event at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. The event will feature remarks from her family, friends and colleagues, clips of the actress at work and an exhibition paying tribute to Shub’s remarkable life and 72-year career.
For additional information, visit jewishmuseummd.org.