 Additionally, the company toured throughout the mid-west bringing live professional theater to rural areas.Heartland Productions enjoyed two successful seasons until underwriting was withdrawn and the company was forced to disband.In 1970, Partington assumed the artistic leadership of the Cleveland Play House but that was a short-lived, for early in 1971, his friend and colleague Robert Porterfield, founder of the Barter Theatre, asked him to come to Virginia and take over artistic responsibilities for the world-famous Barter.