The Cambridge History of American Theatre
The Cambridge History of American Theatre

Author: Don B. Wilmeth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998-02-28

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 9780521472043

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The Cambridge History of American Theatre is an authoritative and wide-ranging history of American theatre in all its dimensions, from theatre building to play writing, directors, performers, and designers. Engaging the theatre as a performance art, a cultural institution, and a fact of American social and political life, the History recognizes changing styles of presentation and performance and addresses the economic context that conditions the drama presented. The History approaches its subject with a full awareness of relevant developments in literary criticism, cultural analysis, and performance theory. At the same time, it is designed to be an accessible, challenging narrative. Volume One deals with the colonial inceptions of American theatre through the post-Civil War period: the European antecedents, the New World influences of the French and Spanish colonists, and the development of uniquely American traditions in tandem with the emergence of national identity.

Historical Dictionary of American Theater
Historical Dictionary of American Theater

Author: James Fisher

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-11-22

Total Pages: 810

ISBN-13: 1538107864

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This book covers the history of theater as well as the literature of America from 1880-1930. The years covered by this volume features the rise of the popular stage in America from the years following the end of the Civil War to the Golden Age of Broadway, with an emphasis on its practitioners, including such diverse figures as William Gillette, Mrs. Fiske, George M. Cohan, Maude Adams, David Belasco, George Abbott, Clyde Fitch, Eugene O’Neill, Texas Guinan, Robert Edmond Jones, Jeanne Eagels, Susan Glaspell, The Adlers and the Barrymores, Tallulah Bankhead, Philip Barry, Maxwell Anderson, Mae West, Elmer Rice, Laurette Taylor, Eva Le Gallienne, and a score of others. Entries abound on plays of all kinds, from melodrama to the newly-embraced realistic style, ethnic works (Irish, Yiddish, etc.), and such diverse forms as vaudeville, circus, minstrel shows, temperance plays, etc. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism covers the history of modernist American Theatre through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 2,000 cross-referenced entries on actors and actresses, directors, playwrights, producers, genres, notable plays and theatres. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the American Theater in its greatest era.

The A to Z of American Theater
The A to Z of American Theater

Author: James Fisher

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2009-09-02

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 0810870479

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The 50-year period from 1880 to 1929 is the richest era for theater in American history, certainly in the great number of plays produced and artists who contributed significantly, but also in the centrality of theater in the lives of Americans. As the impact of European modernism began to gradually seep into American theater during the 1880s and quite importantly in the 1890s, more traditional forms of theater gave way to futurism, symbolism, surrealism, and expressionism. American playwrights like Eugene O'Neill, George Kelly, Elmer Rice, Philip Barry, and George S. Kaufman ushered in the Golden Age of American drama. The A to Z of American Theater: Modernism focuses on legitimate drama, both as influenced by European modernism and as impacted by the popular entertainment that also enlivened the era. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced entries on plays; music; playwrights; great performers like Maude Adams, Otis Skinner, Julia Marlowe, and E.H. Sothern; producers like David Belasco, Daniel Frohman, and Florenz Ziegfeld; critics; architects; designers; and costumes.

Historical Dictionary of Vaudeville
Historical Dictionary of Vaudeville

Author: James Fisher

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023-06-15

Total Pages: 691

ISBN-13: 153811335X

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Vaudeville, as it is commonly known today, began as a response to scandalous variety performances appealing mostly to adult, male patrons. When former minstrel performer and balladeer Tony Pastor opened the Fourteenth Street Theatre in New York in 1881, he was guided by a mission to provide family-friendly variety shows in hopes of drawing in that portion of the audience – women and children – otherwise inherently excluded from variety bills prior to 1881. There he perfected a framework for family-oriented amusements of the highest obtainable quality and style. Historical Dictionary of Vaudeville contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and the dictionary section has more than 1,000 cross-referenced entries on performing artists, managers and agents, theatre facilities, and the terminology central to the history of vaudeville. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about vaudeville.

The Colonial American Stage, 1665-1774
The Colonial American Stage, 1665-1774

Author: Odai Johnson

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9780838639030

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The geographic range of this study is the British American colonies, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Savannah, in the Georgia colony on the continent, and the British West Indies."--BOOK JACKET.

The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre
The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre

Author: Don B. Wilmeth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-06-13

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 9780521564441

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"This new and updated Guide, with over 2,700 cross-referenced entries, covers all aspects of the American theatre from its earliest history to the present. Entries include people, venues and companies scattered through the U.S., plays and musicals, and theatrical phenomena. Additionally, there are some 100 topical entries covering theatre in major U.S. cities and such disparate subjects as Asian American theatre, Chicano theatre, censorship, Filipino American theatre, one-person performances, performance art, and puppetry. Highly illustrated, the Guide is supplemented with a historical survey as introduction, a bibliography of major sources published since the first edition, and a biographical index covering over 3,200 individuals mentioned in the text."--BOOK JACKET.

John E. Owens
John E. Owens

Author: Thomas A. Bogar

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9780786413607

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"This biography chronicles his childhood and apprenticeship with William Burton, his early lead roles, his first efforts at management, and his marriage to Mary C. Stevens. It then discusses how he developed the roles of Solon Shingle and Caleb Plummer that brought him so much fame, his performances in the West and expansion of his repertoire, and the loss and recovery of his audiences amid the rise of Joseph Jefferson. It ends with a discussion of his theatrical success, financial loss and exhaustion with acting and managing, and his illness and death."--BOOK JACKET.

The American Stage
The American Stage

Author: Ron Engle

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-05-06

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9780521412384

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This book focuses on the economic and social forces which shaped American theatre throughout its history. Alone or as a collection, these essays, written by leading theatre historians and critics of the American theatre, will stimulate discussions concerning the traditionally held views of America's theatrical heritage.

Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Literature of the U.S.A.
Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Literature of the U.S.A.

Author: Clarence Gohdes

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780822305927

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This fifth revised edition features approximately 1,900 items, most of which are annotated. It addresses several interdisciplinary studies that have become prominent in the last decade, especially on popular culture, racial and other minorities, Native Americans and Chicanos, and literary regionalism. It allots more space to computer aids, science fiction, children's literature, literature of the sea, film and literature, and linguistic studies of American English and includes a new section on psychology. The appendix lists the biography of each of 135 deceased American authors. ISBN 0-8223-0592-5 : $22.50 (For use only in the library).

Nineteenth-Century American Women Theatre Managers
Nineteenth-Century American Women Theatre Managers

Author: Jane K. Curry

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1994-07-21

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0313031096

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Many women held positions of great responsibility and power in the United States during the 19th century as theatre managers: managing stock companies, owning or leasing theatres, hiring actors and other personnel, selecting plays for production, directing rehearsals, supervising all production details, and promoting their dramatic offerings. Competing in risky business ventures, these women were remarkable for defying societal norms that restricted career opportunities for women. The activities of more than 50 such women are discussed in Nineteenth-Century American Women Theatre Managers, beginning with an account of 15 pioneering women managers who were all managing theatres before 24 December 1853, when Catherine Sinclair, often incorrectly identified as the first woman theatre manager in the United States, opened her theatre in San Francisco.