| This article is part of aUS Culture series on the |
| Theater of the United States |
|---|
 Scene from original 1957 production ofWest Side Story |
| Lists |
| By State |
.svg) United States portal |
Theater in the United States is part of the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by theBritish theater. The central hub of the American theater scene isManhattan, with its divisions ofBroadway,Off-Broadway, andOff-Off-Broadway. Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York, many cities have professionalregional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons, with some works being produced regionally with hopes of eventually moving to New York. U.S. theater also has an activecommunity theater culture, which relies mainly on local volunteers who may not be actively pursuing a theatrical career.[1]
Before the first English colony was established in 1607, there were Spanish dramas and Native American tribes that performed theatrical events.[2] Representations continued to be held inSpanish-held territories in what later became the United States. For example, at the Presidio ofLos Adaes in theNew Philippines (now inLouisiana), several plays were presented on October 12, 1721.[3]
Although a theater was built inWilliamsburg, Virginia in 1716, and the originalDock Street Theatre opened inCharleston, South Carolina in 1736, the birth of professional theater in the English colonies may have begun whenLewis Hallam arrived with his theatrical company in Williamsburg in 1752.[4] Lewis and his brotherWilliam, who arrived in 1754, were the first to organize a complete company of actors in Europe and bring them to thecolonies. They brought a repertoire of plays popular in London at the time, includingHamlet,Othello,The Recruiting Officer, andRichard III.The Merchant of Venice was their first performance, shown initially on September 15, 1752.[5] Encountering opposition from religious organizations, Hallam and his company left forJamaica in 1754 or 1755.[citation needed] Soon after,Lewis Hallam, Jr., founded the American Company, opened a theater in New York, and presented the first professionally mounted American play—The Prince of Parthia, byThomas Godfrey—in 1767.[6]
In the 18th century, laws forbidding the performance of plays were passed inMassachusetts in 1750, inPennsylvania in 1759, and inRhode Island in 1761, and plays were banned in most states during theAmerican Revolutionary War at the urging of theContinental Congress.[5] In 1794, president ofYale College,Timothy Dwight IV, in his "Essay on the Stage", declared that "to indulge a taste for playgoing means nothing more or less than the loss of that most valuable treasure: the immortal soul."[citation needed]
In spite of such laws, a few writers tried their hand at playwriting. Most likely, the first plays written in America were by European-born authors—we know of original plays being written by Spaniards, Frenchmen and Englishmen dating back as early as 1567—although no plays were printed in America untilRobert Hunter'sAndroboros in 1714. Still, in the early years, most of the plays produced came from Europe; only with Godfrey'sThe Prince of Parthia in 1767 do we get a professionally produced play written by an American, although it was a last-minute substitute for Thomas Forrest's comic operaThe Disappointment; or, The Force of Credulity, and although the first play to treat American themes seriously,Ponteach; or, the Savages of America byRobert Rogers, had been published in London a year earlier.[7] 'Cato', a play about revolution, was performed for George Washington and his troops at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777–1778.
TheRevolutionary period was a boost for dramatists, for whom the political debates were fertile ground for both satire, as seen in the works ofMercy Otis Warren and Colonel Robert Munford, and for plays about heroism, as in the works ofHugh Henry Brackenridge. The postwar period saw the birth of American social comedy inRoyall Tyler'sThe Contrast, which established a much-imitated version of the "Yankee" character, here named "Jonathan". But there were no professional dramatists untilWilliam Dunlap, whose work as playwright, translator, manager and theater historian has earned him the title of "Father of American Drama"; in addition to translating the plays ofAugust von Kotzebue and French melodramas, Dunlap wrote plays in a variety of styles, of whichAndré andThe Father; or, American Shandyism are his best.[7]
At 825 Walnut Street inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, is theWalnut Street Theatre, or, "The Walnut". Founded in 1809 by theCircus of Pepin and Breschard, "The Walnut" is the oldest theater in America. The Walnut's first theatrical production,The Rivals, was staged in 1812. In attendance were PresidentThomas Jefferson and theMarquis de Lafayette.[8]
Provincial theaters frequently lacked heat and minimaltheatrical property ("props") andscenery. Apace with the country'swestward expansion, some entrepreneurs operated floating theaters onbarges orriverboats that would travel from town to town. A large town could afford a long "run"—or period of time during which a touring company would stage consecutive multiple performances—of a production, and in 1841, a single play was shown in New York City for an unprecedented three weeks.[citation needed]
William Shakespeare's works were commonly performed. American plays of the period were mostlymelodramas, a famous example of which wasUncle Tom's Cabin, adapted byGeorge Aiken, from the novel of the same name byHarriet Beecher Stowe.
In 1821, William Henry Brown established theAfrican Grove Theatre in New York City. It was the third attempt to have an African-American theater, but this was the most successful of them all. The company put on not only Shakespeare, but also staged the first play written by an African-American,The Drama of King Shotaway. The theater was shut down in 1823.[9] African-American theater was relatively dormant, except for the 1858 playThe Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom byWilliam Wells Brown, who was an ex-slave. African-American works would not be regarded again until the 1920sHarlem Renaissance.[9]
A popular form of theater during this time was theminstrel show, which featured white (and sometimes, especially after the Civil War,black) actors dressed in "blackface (painting one's face, etc. with dark makeup to imitate the coloring of anAfrican or African American)." The players entertained the audience using comic skits, parodies of popular plays and musicals, and general buffoonery and slapstick comedy, all with heavy utilization ofracial stereotyping andracist themes.[citation needed]
Throughout the 19th century, theater culture was associated withhedonism and even violence; actors (especially women) were looked upon as little better than prostitutes.Jessie Bond wrote that by the middle of the 19th century, "The stage was at a low ebb, Elizabethan glories and Georgian artificialities had alike faded into the past, stilted tragedy and vulgar farce were all the would-be playgoer had to choose from, and the theater had become a place of evil repute".[10] On April 15, 1865, less than a week after the end of theUnited States Civil War,Abraham Lincoln, while watchinga play atFord's Theater in Washington, D.C.,was assassinated by a nationally popular stage-actor of the period,John Wilkes Booth.
Victorian burlesque, a form of bawdy comic theater mocking high art and culture, was imported from England about 1860 and in America became a form offarce in which females in male roles mocked the politics and culture of the day. Criticized for its sexuality and outspokenness, this form of entertainment was hounded off the "legitimate stage" and found itself relegated to saloons andbarrooms.[citation needed] The female producers, such asLydia Thompson were replaced by their male counterparts, who toned down the politics and played up the sexuality, until theburlesque shows eventually became little more than pretty girls in skimpy clothing singing songs, while male comedians told raunchy jokes.
The drama of the prewar period tended to be a derivative in form, imitating European melodramas and romantic tragedies, but native in content, appealing to popular nationalism by dramatizing current events and portraying American heroism. But playwrights were limited by a set of factors, including the need for plays to be profitable, the middle-brow tastes of American theater-goers, and the lack of copyright protection and compensation for playwrights. During this time, the best strategy for a dramatist was to become an actor and/or a manager, after the model ofJohn Howard Payne,Dion Boucicault andJohn Brougham. This period saw the popularity of certain native character types, especially the "Yankee", the "Negro" and the "Indian", exemplified by the characters ofJonathan,Sambo andMetamora. Meanwhile, increased immigration brought a number of plays about the Irish and Germans, which often dovetailed with concerns over temperance and Roman Catholic. This period also saw plays about American expansion to the West (including plays about Mormonism) and about women's rights. Among the best plays of the period areJames Nelson Barker'sSuperstition; or, the Fanatic Father,Anna Cora Mowatt'sFashion; or, Life in New York,Nathaniel Bannister'sPutnam, the Iron Son of '76,Dion Boucicault'sThe Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana, andCornelius Mathews'sWitchcraft; or, the Martyrs of Salem. At the same time, America had created new dramatic forms in theTom Shows, theshowboat theater and theminstrel show.[7]
Duringpostbellum North, theater flourished as a postwar boom allowed longer and more-frequent productions. The advent of American rail transport allowed production companies, actors, and large, elaborate sets to travel easily between towns, which made permanent theaters in small towns feasible. The invention and practical application ofelectric lighting also led to changes to and improvements of scenery styles as well as changes in the design of theater interiors and seating areas.
In 1896,Charles Frohman,Al Hayman,Abe Erlanger,Mark Klaw, Samuel F. Flenderson, andJ. Fred Zimmerman, Sr. formed theTheatrical Syndicate, which established systemizedbooking networks throughout the United States, and created a management monopoly that controlled every aspect of contracts and bookings until the turn of the 20th century, when theShubert brothers founded rival agency,The Shubert Organization.
For playwrights, the period after the War brought more financial reward and aesthetic respect (including professional criticism) than was available earlier. In terms of form, spectacles, melodramas and farces remained popular, but poetic drama and romanticism almost died out completely due to the new emphasis upon realism, which was adopted by serious drama, melodrama and comedy alike. This realism was not quite the European realism ofIbsen'sGhosts, but a combination of scenic realism (e.g., the "Belasco Method") with a less romantic view of life that accompanied the cultural turmoil of the period. The most ambitious effort towards realism during this period came fromJames Herne, who was influenced by the ideas of Ibsen,Hardy andZola regarding realism, truth, and literary quality; his most important achievement,Margaret Fleming, enacts the principles he expounded in his essay "Art for Truth's Sake in the Drama". AlthoughFleming did not appeal to audiences—critics and audiences felt it dwelt too much on unseemly topics and included improper scenes, such as Margaret nursing her husband's bastard child onstage—other forms of dramatic realism were becoming more popular in melodrama (e.g.,Augustin Daly'sUnder the Gaslight) and inlocal color plays (Bronson Howard'sShenandoah). Other key dramatists during this period areDavid Belasco,Steele MacKaye,William Dean Howells,Dion Boucicault, andClyde Fitch.[7]
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved. Find sources: "Theater in the United States" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(October 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Vaudeville was common in the late 19th and early 20th century, and is notable for heavily influencing early film, radio, and television productions in the country. (This was born from an earlier American practice of having singers and novelty acts perform between acts in a standard play.)George Burns was a very long-lived American comedian who started out in the vaudeville community, but went on to enjoy a career running until the 1990s.
Some vaudeville theaters built between about 1900 and1920 managed to survive as well, though many went through periods of alternate use, most often as movie theaters until the second half of the century saw many urban populations decline andmultiplexes built in the suburbs. Since that time, a number have been restored to original or nearly-original condition and attract new audiences nearly one hundred years later.
By the beginning of the 20th century, legitimate 1752 (non-vaudeville) theater had become decidedly more sophisticated in the United States, as it had in Europe. The stars of this era, such asEthel Barrymore andJohn Barrymore, were often seen as even more important than the show itself. The advance of motion pictures also led to many changes in theater. The popularity of musicals may have been due in part to the fact theearly films had no sound, and could thus not compete, untilThe Jazz Singer of 1927, which combined both talking and music in a moving picture. More complex and sophisticated dramas bloomed in this time period, and acting styles became more subdued. Even by 1915, actors were being lured away from theater and to thesilver screen, and vaudeville was beginning to face stiff competition.
Whilerevues consisting of mostly unconnected songs, sketches, comedy routines, and dancing girls (Ziegfeld girls) dominated for the first 20 years of the 20th century, musical theater would eventually develop beyond this. One of the first major steps wasShow Boat, with music byJerome Kern and lyrics byOscar Hammerstein. It featured songs and non-musical scenes which were integrated to develop the show's plot. The next great step forward wasOklahoma!, with lyrics by Hammerstein and music byRichard Rodgers. Its "dream ballets" used dance to carry forward the plot and develop the characters.
Amateur performing groups have always had a place alongside professional acting companies. The Amateur Comedy Club, Inc. was founded in New York City on April 18, 1884. It was organized by seven gentlemen who broke away from the Madison Square Dramatic Organization, a socially prominent company presided over by Mrs. James Brown Potter andDavid Belasco. The ACC staged its first performance on February 13, 1885. It has performed continuously ever since, making it the oldest, continuously performing theatrical society in the United States. Prominent New Yorkers who have been members of the ACC include Theodore, Frederick and John Steinway of the piano manufacturing family; Gordon Grant, the marine artist; Christopher La Farge, the architect; Van H. Cartmell, the publisher;Albert Sterner, the painter; and Edward Fales Coward, the theater critic and playwright.Elsie De Wolfe, Lady Mendl, later famous as the world's first professional interior decorator, acted in Club productions in the early years of the 20th Century, as didHope Williams, and Julie Harris in the 1940s.
Early 20th century theater was dominated by the Barrymores—Ethel Barrymore,John Barrymore, andLionel Barrymore. Other greats includedLaurette Taylor,Jeanne Eagels, andEva Le Gallienne.The massive social change that went on during theGreat Depression also had an effect on theater in the United States. Plays took on social roles, identifying with immigrants and the unemployed. TheFederal Theatre Project, aNew Deal program set up byFranklin D. Roosevelt, helped to promote theater and provide jobs for actors. The program staged many elaborate and controversial plays such asIt Can't Happen Here bySinclair Lewis andThe Cradle Will Rock byMarc Blitzstein. By contrast, the legendary producerBrock Pemberton (founder of theTony Awards) was among those who felt that it was more than ever a time for comic entertainment, in order to provide an escape from the prevailing harsh social conditions: typical of his productions wasLawrence Riley's comedyPersonal Appearance (1934), whose success on Broadway (501 performances) vindicated Pemberton.
The years between the World Wars were years of extremes.Eugene O'Neill's plays were the high point for serious dramatic plays leading up to the outbreak of war in Europe.Beyond the Horizon (1920), for which he won his first Pulitzer Prize; he later won Pulitzers forAnna Christie (1922) andStrange Interlude (1928) as well as theNobel Prize in Literature.Alfred Lunt andLynn Fontanne remained a popular acting couple in the 1930s.
1940 proved to be a pivotal year for African-American theater.Frederick O'Neal and Abram Hill founded ANT, or theAmerican Negro Theater, the most renowned African-American theater group of the 1940s. Their stage was small and located in the basement of a library in Harlem, and most of the shows were attended and written by African-Americans. Some shows include Theodore Browne'sNatural Man (1941), Abram Hill'sWalk Hard (1944), andOwen Dodson'sGarden of Time (1945). Many famous actors received their training at ANT, includingHarry Belafonte,Sidney Poitier,Alice andAlvin Childress, Osceola Archer,Ruby Dee,Earle Hyman,Hilda Simms, among many others.[11]
Mid-20th century theater saw a wealth of Great Leading Ladies, includingHelen Hayes,Katherine Cornell,Tallulah Bankhead,Judith Anderson, andRuth Gordon. Musical theater saw stars such asEthel Merman,Beatrice Lillie,Mary Martin, andGertrude Lawrence.
After World War II, American theater came into its own. Several American playwrights, such asArthur Miller andTennessee Williams, became world-renowned.
In the 1950s and 1960s, experimentation in the Arts spread into theater as well, with plays such asHair includingnudity and drug culture references. Musicals remained popular as well, and musicals such asWest Side Story andA Chorus Line broke previous records. At the same time, shows likeStephen Sondheim'sCompany began to deconstruct the musical form as it had been practiced through the mid-century, moving away from traditional plot and realistic external settings to explore the central character's inner state; hisFollies relied on pastiches of theZiegfeld Follies-styled revue; hisPacific Overtures used Japanesekabuki theatrical practices; andMerrily We Roll Along told its story backwards. Similarly,Bob Fosse's production ofChicago returned the musical to its vaudeville origins.
Facts and figures of the postwar theater
The postwar American theater audiences and box offices diminished, due to the undeclared "offensive" of television and radio upon the classical,legitimate theater. According to James F. Reilly, executive director of theLeague of New York Theatres, between 1930 and 1951 the number of legitimate theaters in New York City dwindled from 68 to 30. Besides that, the admissions tax has been a burden on the theater since 1918. It was never relaxed, and was doubled in 1943.[12] Total seating capacity of the thirty most renowned legitimate theaters amounted to 35,697 seats in 1951. Since 1937 in New York City alone, 14 former legitimate theaters with a normal seating capacity of 16,955, have been taken over for eitherradio broadcasts ortelevision performances.[13]
In the late 1990s and 2000s, American theater began to borrow from cinema and operas. For instance,Julie Taymor, director ofThe Lion King directedDie Zauberflöte at theMetropolitan Opera. Also, Broadway musicals were developed around Disney'sMary Poppins,Tarzan,The Little Mermaid, and the one that started it all,Beauty and the Beast, which may have contributed toTimes Square's revitalization in the 1990s. Also,Mel Brooks'sThe Producers andYoung Frankenstein are based on his hit films.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fwikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion with: coverage of the late 1990s and more information about the mid-century periods. You can help byadding to it.(July 2010) |
The early years of the 20th century, before World War I, continued to see realism as the main development in drama. But starting around 1900, there was a revival of poetic drama in the States, corresponding to a similar revival in Europe (e.g.Yeats,Maeterlinck andHauptmann). The most notable example of this trend was the "Biblical trilogy" ofWilliam Vaughn Moody, which also illustrate the rise of religious-themed drama during the same years, as seen in the 1899 production ofBen-Hur and two 1901 adaptations ofQuo Vadis. Moody, however, is best known for two prose plays,The Great Divide (1906, lateradapted into three film versions) andThe Faith Healer (1909), which together point the way to modern American drama in their emphasis on the emotional conflicts that lie at the heart of contemporary social conflicts. Other key playwrights from this period (in addition to continued work by Howells and Fitch) includeEdward Sheldon,Charles Rann Kennedy and one of the most successful women playwrights in American drama,Rachel Crothers, whose interest in women's issues can be seen in such plays asHe and She (1911).[7]
During the period between the World Wars, American drama came to maturity, thanks in large part to the works ofEugene O'Neill and of theProvincetown Players. O'Neill's experiments with theatrical form and his combination ofNaturalist andExpressionist techniques inspired other playwrights to use greater freedom in their works, whether expanding the techniques ofRealism, as inSusan Glaspell'sTrifles, or borrowing more heavily from German Expressionism (e.g.,Elmer Rice'sThe Adding Machine), Other distinct movements during this period include folk-drama/regionalism (Paul Green's Pulitzer-winningIn Abraham's Bosom), "pageant" drama (Green'sThe Lost Colony, about the mysteriousRoanoke Colony), and even a return to poetic drama (Maxwell Anderson'sWinterset). At the same time, the economic crisis of theGreat Depression led to the growth of protest drama, as seen in theFederal Theater Project'sLiving Newspaper productions and in the works ofClifford Odets (e.g.,Waiting for Lefty), as well as moralist drama, as inLillian Hellman'sThe Little Foxes andThe Children's Hour. Other key figures of this era includeGeorge S. Kaufman,George Kelly,Langston Hughes,S. N. Behrman,Sidney Howard,Robert E. Sherwood, and a set of playwrights who followed O'Neill's path of philosophical searching,Philip Barry,Thornton Wilder (Our Town) andWilliam Saroyan (The Time of Your Life). Theater criticism kept pace with the drama, such as in the work ofGeorge Jean Nathan and in the numerous books and journals on American theater that were published during this time.[7]
The stature that American drama had achieved between the Wars was cemented during the post-World War II generation, with the final works of O'Neill and his generation being joined by such towering figures asTennessee Williams andArthur Miller, as well as by the maturation of the musical theater form. Other key dramatists includeWilliam Inge,Arthur Laurents andPaddy Chayefsky in the 1950s, theavant garde movement of Jack Richardson,Arthur Kopit,Jack Gelber andEdward Albee the 1960s, and the maturation of black drama throughLorraine Hansberry,James Baldwin andAmiri Baraka. In the musical theater, important figures includeRodgers and Hammerstein,Lerner and Loewe,Betty Comden andAdolph Green,Richard Adler andJerry Ross,Frank Loesser,Jule Styne,Jerry Bock,Meredith Willson andStephen Sondheim.[7]
The period beginning in the mid-1960s, with the passing of Civil Rights legislation and its repercussions, came the rise of an "agenda" theater comparable to that of the 1930s. Many of the major midcentury playwrights continued to produce new works, but were joined by names likeSam Shepard,Neil Simon,Romulus Linney,David Rabe,Lanford Wilson,David Mamet, andJohn Guare. Many important dramatists were women, includingBeth Henley,Marsha Norman,Wendy Wasserstein,Megan Terry,Paula Vogel andMaría Irene Fornés. The growth of ethnic pride movements led to more success by dramatists from racial minorities, such as black playwrightsDouglas Turner Ward,Adrienne Kennedy,Ed Bullins,Charles Fuller,Suzan-Lori Parks,Ntozake Shange,George C. Wolfe andAugust Wilson, who created a dramatic history of United States with his cycle of plays,The Pittsburgh Cycle, one for each decade of the 20th century. Asian American theater is represented in the early 1970s byFrank Chin and achieved international success withDavid Henry Hwang'sM. Butterfly. Latino theater grew from the local activist performances ofLuis Valdez's Chicano-focusedTeatro Campesino to his more formal plays, such asZoot Suit, and later to the award-winning work of Cuban Americans Fornés (multiple Obies) and her studentNilo Cruz (Pulitzer), to Puerto Rican playwrightsJosé Rivera andMiguel Piñero, and to the Tony Award-winning musical about Dominicans in New York City,In the Heights. Finally, the rise of the gay rights movement and of the AIDS crisis led to a number of important gay and lesbian plays made by various dramatists, includingChristopher Durang,Holly Hughes,Karen Malpede,Terrence McNally,Larry Kramer,Tony Kushner, whoseAngels in America won the Tony Award two years in a row, and composer-playwrightJonathan Larson, whose musicalRent ran for over twelve years.[7]
Another major piece of American theater includes the activism in it, including works created byLorraine Hansberry, such asA Raisin in the Sun. Her works push for representation for African Americans, as well as equality. Another activist in American theater isWilliam Finn, who created the workA New Brain, about representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in entertainment.
.jpg)
Although earlier styles of theater such asminstrel shows andVaudeville acts have disappeared from the landscape,[14] theater still remains a popular contemporary American art form. Broadway productions still entertain millions of theatergoers even as productions have become more elaborate and expensive.[15] At the same time, theater has also served as a platform for expression,[16] and as a venue for identity exploration for underrepresented, minority communities, who have formed their own companies and created their own genres of works, including those created byAugust Wilson,Tony Kushner,David Henry Hwang,John Guare, andWendy Wasserstein. Smaller urban theaters have stayed a source of innovation, and regional theaters remain an important part of theater life. Drama is also taught in high schools and colleges, which was not done in previous eras, and many become interested in theater through this genre.
October 12 [1721 ...] more strange and significant still was the presentation of several plays. The virgin forest of East Texas became the stage for the first dramatic representation on Texas soil
A History of the Theatre in America, Vol. 1