Don B. Wilmeth

The Cambridge history of American theatre

Volume 1: Introduction Christopher Bigsby and Don B. Wilmeth Timeline: beginnings to 1870: compiled by Don B. Wilmeth and Jonathan Curley 1. American theatre in context from the beginnings to 1870 Bruce McConachie 2. Structure and management in the American theatre from the beginning to 1870 Douglas McDermott 3. The plays and playwrights: plays and playwrights to 1800 Peter A. Davis Plays and playwrights: 1800-1865 Gary A. Richardson 4. The actors: European actors and the star system in the American theatre 1752-1870 Simon Williams 5. The emergence of the American actor Joseph Roach 6. Scenography, stagecraft and architecture in the American theatre, beginnings to 1870 Mary C. Henderson 7. Paratheatricals and popular stage entertainment Peter G. Buckley. Volume 2: Introduction Christopher Bigsby and Don B. Wilmeth Timeline: 1870-1945: compiled by Don B. Wilmeth and Jonathan Curley 1.The hieroglyphic state: American theatre and society, post Civil War to 1945 Thomas Postlewait 2. A changing theatre: New York and beyond John Frick 3. The plays and playwrights: Civil War to 1896 Tice L. Miller Plays and playwrights: 1896-1915 Ronald Wainscott Plays and playwrights: 1915-1945 Brenda Murphy 4. Theatre groups and their playwrights Mark Fearnow 5. Popular entertainment Brooks McNamara 6. Musical theatre Thomas Riis 7. Actors and acting Daniel J. Watermeier 8. Scenography, stagecraft, and architecture Mary C. Henderson 9. Directors and direction Warren Kliewer. Volume 3: List of illustrations List of contributors Preface Ackowledgements Introduction Christopher Bigsby Timeline: Post-World War II to 1998 compiled by Don B. Wilmeth and Jonathan Curley 1. American theatre in context: 1945-present Arnold Aronson 2. A changing theatre: Broadway to the regions: Broadway Laurence Maslon Off and Off-Off Broadway Mel Gussow Regional/Resident theatre Martha LoMonaco Alternative theatre Marvin Carlson 3. The plays and playwrights: Plays and playwrights: 1945-1970 June Schlueter American drama since 1970 Matthew Roudane 4. Musical theatre since World War II John Degen 5. Directors and directions Samuel L. Leiter 6. Actors and acting Foster Hirsch 7. American theatre design since 1945 Ronn Smith Bibliography Index.

Cambridge guide to American theatre

Preface Acknowledgements List of contributors List of topical entries Note to the reader Introduction Alphabetical entries Bibliography Biographical index.

Actors and Acting

Background In the beginning was the Group Theatre. Co-founded in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford, the Group was a young people’s theatre dedicated to producing new American plays which illuminated the troubled spirit of the times. Defecting from the Theatre Guild, the Group’s leaders designed their new theatre on native grounds. In the twenties the Guild had been America’s leading art theatre, but with the advent of the Depression the Group’s firebrands had begun to regard it as an elitist, out-dated producer of mostly foreign plays. And unlike the Theatre Guild, which claimed the no-stars policy of a repertory company but nonetheless frequently featured the Lunts as headliners, its leaders envisioned the Group as a true company united by political convictions and molded into an ensemble through the common study of a specific acting technique. In its approach to actor training the Group has had a profound and enduring impact on the formation of what has come to be known as the American style. For Clurman and Strasberg the concept of an ensemble tightly bound by its immersion in a particular approach to actor training was sparked by the visit to New York in 1923 of Stanislavsky’s renowned Moscow Art Theatre. Having been instructed in his system by Stanislavsky himself and having worked together over long rehearsal periods on plays, like those by Chekhov, which had been written especially for them, the troupe performed in a radiant style: realism lit by a remarkable depth and unity. When two members of Stanislavsky’s company, Richard Boleslavski and Maria Ouspenskaya, remained behind to teach the principles of Stanislavsky’s system, Strasberg, Clurman, and others who were to join the Group attended their courses at the American Laboratory Theatre.

European actors and the star system in the American theatre, 1752–1870

When trying to account for actors who have had a substantial impact on the history of the theatre, we frequently resort to metaphors of royalty. We refer to the finest performers of past generations as “player kings” or “queens” and allude to the stage and auditoriums over which they preside as personal “realms,” as if such spaces are determined primarily by the powerful allure displayed by the actor. We speak of the leading clans of the theatre world –the Kembles, the Booths, the Sotherns, or the Barrymores – as the “royal families” of the theatre. No doubt we do this in part because we feel the magnetism exercised by the most powerful actors’ calls for an unquestioning acceptance and loyalty, akin to the allegiance expected by monarchical authority, an appeal incidentally that few actors do much to counter. But our desire to make monarchs of stage performers may also have historical roots, in the close identity, especially strong in the eighteenth century, of acting troupes with royal patrons. In Europe, most actors who wished to achieve the social stature and respect that would ensure professional survival could do so only if they received the sanction of royalty. Their appearance on royally patented stages was even seen as a surrogate for the power of the prince himself. In the early years of the American republic, this sense that actorial authority is somehow monarchical in nature casts the theatre into intriguingly anomalous light. As the newly independent nation grew, it emphatically asserted its freedom from royal shackles and assiduously constructed a political system, the principle aim of which was to ensure that relations between ruler and ruled were subject to constitutional limitations that guaranteed the rights of the individual citizen.

Scenography, Stagecraft, and Architecture

Architecture The post-Civil War years ushered in an era of unprecedented and widespread theatre building in the country. By 1880, according to the most often quoted estimate by the critic William Winter, there were approximately five thousand theatres in thirty-five hundred cities and towns across America. Disparate forces – evolutionary and revolutionary, internal and external – abetted the proliferation of theatres and were responsible for an extended period of growth that lasted more than fifty years. In the immediate postwar years, the now united country was on the verge of enormous change. The steady flow of population pushing west predicted the time when the geography of the country would extend from the east to the West Coast. When the Gold Rush of 1849 propelled the sleepy California territory into a state the following year, it was even more imperative that the country be united. Fortunately, the means to accomplish this event were at hand or in the process of being developed. When Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act and the Homestead Act in tandem in 1862, the spectacular growth of the country was assured. Thousands of miles of railroad track were being added each year and would meet in 1869 in a remote area in Utah to unite the country from coast to coast. The population followed the railroad and “cities sprang up where nature once reigned.” History repeated itself again and again in the westward push as settlement became town and town became city along the route of the railroad.

Plays and playwrights: to 1800

Introduction American culture before 1800 is not renowned for its theatre, and American theatre before 1800 is not known for its dramatic literature. The period is often characterized as a relatively barren era in which rare examples of theatrical writing appeared on odd occasions. Theatre historians describe long fallow stretches punctuated by sudden bursts of crude dramatic creativity, with plays remarkable only for their scarcity and inherent inferiority to European models. It is a perception that has influenced the development of American plays and playwrights since the first performances by Europeans more than four hundred years ago, and it still forms the basis of our present understanding of early American theatre. A closer examination, of course, reveals a surprising number and variety of plays, written by an equally surprising assortment of playwrights, from politicians to preachers. Indeed, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced a remarkable collection of scripts, dialogues, dramatic discourses, masques, and other dramatic and paratheatrical endeavors. Far from being a barren and unproductive period, pre-nineteenth-century America saw drama as an integral part of culture and society. Admittedly, the dramatic literature of this early period has received scant attention, its significance overlooked and perhaps deliberately shunned by social critics fearful of idle representations or even aesthetic patriots determined to distill a purified American drama by expunging those works deemed unworthy and inferior.