bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Esterified hyaluronic acid improves cartilage viability in experimental tracheal reconstruction with an auricular graft
Authors: Temiz Abdulkerim , Kazikdas K. Cagdas , Ergur Bekir , Tugyan Kazim , Bozok Sahin , Kaya Durdane , Guneli Ensari
Published: October 2010

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of esterified hyaluronic acid (HYAFF) on the vitality of auricular cartilage grafts used for tracheoplasty, with respect to macroscopic and microscopic parameters.

STUDY DESIGN

Prospective, controlled.

SETTING

Academic research laboratory.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS

The study included 14 New Zealand rabbits acquired specifically for the study. The rabbits were divided into two groups: the control group, in which free cartilage grafts were not exposed to any materials or additional procedures (n = 7), and the hyaluronic acid (HA) treatment group, in which auricular grafts and anastomosis lines were covered with HYAFF (n = 7). Free auricular cartilage grafts used for the reconstruction of experimentally created tracheal defects were anastomosed extraluminally. All the rabbits were sacrificed two months post surgery. Samples were collected and examined histopathologically. The sections were stained with hematoxylineosin, Masson's trichrome, and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and examined under a light microscope.

RESULTS

Fibrosis and cartilage mass significantly differed between the control and HYAFF group (P < 0.05). Immunohistochemical examination showed that more chondrocytes stained with iNOS in the control group than in the HYAFF group, according to histologists' observations.

CONCLUSION

HYAFF catalyzed wound healing with less fibrous tissue formation, had chondroprotective and stimulatory effects on chondrocyte metabolism, and decreased nitric oxide production and apoptosis via improving the nourishment of free auricular cartilage grafts, subsequently preventing hypoxia and oxidative stress, particularly in the early postimplantation period.
A Novel Interpretation of Structural Dot Plots of Genomes Derived from the Analysis of Two Strains of Neisseria Meningitidis
Authors: Cuff Wilfred R. , Duvvuri Venkata R.S.K. , Liang Binhua , Duvvuri Bhargavi , Wu Gillian E. , Wu Jianhong , Tsang Raymond S.W.
Published: October 2010

Neisseria meningitidis is the agent of invasive meningococcal disease, including cerebral meningitis and septicemia. Because the diseases caused by different clonal groups (sequence types) have their own epidemiological characteristics, it is important to understand the differences among the genomes of the N. meningitidis clonal groups. To this end, a novel interpretation of a structural dot plot of genomes was devised and applied; exact nucleotide matches between the genomes of N. meningitidis serogroup A strain Z2491 and serogroup B strain MC58 were identified, leading to the specification of various structural regions. Known and putative virulence genes for each N. meningitidis strain were then classified into these regions. We found that virulence genes of MC58 tend more to the translocated regions (chromosomal segments in new sequence contexts) than do those of Z2491, notably tending towards the interface between one of the translocated regions and the collinear region. Within the collinear region, virulence genes tend to occur within 16 kb of gaps in the exact matches. Verification of these tendencies using genes clustered in the cps locus was sufficiently supportive to suggest that these tendencies can be used to focus the search for and understanding of virulence genes and mechanisms of pathogenicity in these two organisms.
Regulation of U6 Promoter Activity by Transcriptional Interference in Viral Vector-Based RNAi
Authors: Nie Linghu , Thakur Meghna Das , Wang Yumei , Su Qin , Zhao Yongliang , Feng Yunfeng
Published: October 2010

The direct negative impact of the transcriptional activity of one component on the second one in cis is referred to as transcriptional interference (TI). U6 is a type III RNA polymerase III promoter commonly used for driving small hairpin RNA (shRNA) expression in vector-based RNAi. In the design and construction of viral vectors, multiple transcription units may be arranged in close proximity in a space-limited vector. Determining if U6 promoter activity can be affected by TI is critical for the expression of target shRNA in gene therapy or loss-of-function studies. In this research, we designed and implemented a modified retroviral system where shRNA and exogenous gene expressions were driven by two independent transcriptional units. We arranged U6 promoter driving shRNA expression and UbiC promoter in two promoter arrangements. In primary macrophages, we found U6 promoter activity was inhibited by UbiC promoter when in the divergent arrangement but not in tandem. In contrast, PKG promoter had no such negative impact. Instead of enhancing U6 promoter activity, CMV enhancer had significant negative impact on U6 promoter activity in the presence of UbiC promoter. Our results indicate that U6 promoter activity can be affected by TI in a proximal promoter-specific and arrangement-dependent manner.
Formation of spinel-cordierite-plagioclase symplectites replacing andalusite in metapelitic migmatites of the Alvand aureole, Iran
Authors: SAKI A.
Published: October 2010

Spinel–cordierite–plagioclase symplectites partially replacing andalusite occur in the metapelitic migmatite rocks of the Alvand aureole within the Sanandaj–Sirjan metamorphic belt, Hamadan, Iran. The presence of melt shows that corona development occurred under partial melting conditions. Spinel is predicted to grow with cordierite at around 700°C. Exhaustion of the available SiO2 and/or separation of sillimanite/andalusite from SiO2-rich matrix domains by cordierite resulted in the formation of localized low-silica activity domains and thus triggered the growth of spinel in the rim of andalusite, the reaction Sil/And + Bt = Crd + Spl + Kfs + melt, as the most common reaction for the development of coronas in the metapelitic of Alvand aureole. The breakdown of garnet to plagioclase + sillimanite, dehydration melting and the formation of spinel–plagioclase symplectite could occur during heating or decompression; these textures are limited to the contact aureole in the studied area, so heating is perhaps the more likely explanation for formation of the symplectites in the metapelitic rocks of the Alvand aureole. The P–T diagram, inferred paths and zoning profiles of garnet do not account for the decompression history of the terrane.
Greek Tragedy and Dionysus
Authors: Kitto H. D. F.
Published: October 2010

It has become a firm article of belief that tragic drama, in Greece, grew out of the worship of Dionysus; that is to say, out of ideas and rites connected with the circling year, the mysteries of death and rebirth, alternating joy and sorrow, the sufferings and the triumph of the god, and so on. No doubt this might have happened; it sounds plausible. But did it happen? I think there are good reasons for being very sceptical about the whole theory.
Revolution in the American Theatre: Glimpses of Acting Conditions on the American Stage 1855–1870
Authors: West E. J.
Published: October 2010

If there seem to be a too academically labored if really not truly scholarly pun involved in seeming to equate an American theatrical revolution with a roughly and arbitrarily chosen period of fifteen years including four of civil strife in these United States, I can only offer as defense that when I agreed, against my better critical judgment, to take on this particular assignment, I had no idea exactly what approach I should make to the difficult task of saying briefly something worthwhile and, if possible, not too obviously rehashed and hackneyed about that time when, in so many varied ways, despite the anxiety and distress of most Americans, the theatre was, at least in the North and in the constantly growing West, not existent on the periphery of normal living but rather increasingly centripetal toward the actual core of that living.
Genesis of Vaudeville: Two Letters from B. F. Keith
Authors: McLean Albert F.
Published: October 2010

Fourteen typewritten sheets of paper recently discovered in the effects of Robert G. Larsen, Keith's booking manager for Boston, give us Benjamin Franklin Keith's own account of his life and work. Evidently dictated in the leisure of retirement in 1912, two years before his death, these two letters gather together the facts and legends of a self-made man and the institution, Keith Vaudeville, that he had founded twenty-seven years before. One of these documents reminisces over his early travels, trials, and eventual success. The other papers are presumably answers to a number of inquiries by Larsen about the formative years of vaudeville, 1885 to 1900.
Thomas Sheridan: Gentleman or Actor?
Authors: Sheldon Esther K.
Published: October 2010

By 1747, Thomas Sheridan had been on the stage four years–for the last year he had been actor-manager of the Smock-Alley Theater in Dublin. His decision to “turn player” had been a difficult one. He had been born and bred a gentleman. As the most promising son of the Reverend Dr. Thomas Sheridan, classical scholar and Dublin schoolmaster, he had gone to London to Westminster College, and after his father's death, he had prepared himself to teach–by taking his M.A. at Trinity College Dublin.
The New Playwrights: Theatrical Insurgency in Pre-Depression America
Authors: Goldstein Malcolm
Published: October 2010

The New Playwrights' theatre, a non-commercial company founded by Michael Gold, Em Jo Basshe, John Howard Law-son, John Dos Passos, and Francis Edwards Faragoh, and supported by a series of grants from Otto H. Kahn, produced eight consecutive failures in twenty-four months of feverish activity at the close of the nineteen-twenties. Its works were among the most boisterous and futile ever witnessed in the smaller playhouses of New York, and its record of acid notices and early closings has not been broken in some thirty subsequent seasons of off-Broadway production.
“The Wonders of Derbyshire: A Spectacular Eighteenth-Century Travelogue”
Authors: Allen Ralph G.
Published: October 2010

The career of Philip James de Loutherbourg, the Alsatian scene designer, assumes considerable importance in a history of the English theatre. More than anyone else, De Loutherbourg was responsible for freeing stage spectacle from the rigidities of the conventional wing and border system, thus preparing the way for Capon, Planché, Stanfield and the other great romantic designers of the nineteenth century.
Social Realism and Imaginative Theatre: Avant-Garde Stage Production in the American Social Theatre of the Nineteen-thirties
Authors: Gassner John
Published: October 2010

It has long been customary to deal with the social theatre of the 1930's in terms of explicit content; I shall deal with it in terms of theatrical style.

The first point that needs to be made is that realism was not a discovery of the social theatre of the 1930's. Both as an ideal and as a practice, realism was strongly in evidence in the 1920's, if not indeed in the successful Belascoism of earlier decades. The producer-director Arthur Hopkins, whose Shakespearian productions in association with his distinguished designer Robert Edmond Jones were notably symbolistic, had perhaps his greatest success with his naturalistic production of What Price Glory? in 1924. The nascent Theatre Guild, which was about to collapse after its initial production in 1919 of Benavente's symbolist commedia dell'arte, The Bonds of Interest, was launched upon a successful career with its next, ultra-realistic, production of St. John Ervine's John Ferguson.
Norman Bel Geddes' Notes on Art in the Theatre
Authors: Hunter F. J.
Published: October 2010

Various people, during Bel Geddes' lifetime, wrote about his artistic ability and his achievements in the theatre. He did not often reveal his own ideas or artistic theories in published writings except in regard to theatre architecture. In addition to the chapter on theatres in his book, Horizons, there are several published articles appearing from 1919 to 1950 which describe his hopes for a large flexible, easily accessible, comfortable, and useable theatre structure to be built some day, somewhere in the United States. A more personal and theoretical article appeared in 1919 under the title, “The Theatre of the Future”.
Servandoni's Successors at the French Opera: Boucher, Boquet, Algieri, Girault
Authors: States Bert O.
Published: October 2010

The work of those designers who followed Jean Nicolas Servandoni (1695–1766) at the Royal Academy of Music, at Court, and elsewhere in Paris, is, like his own, preserved only in the pages of Le Mercure de France, L'Avant-Coureur, and other journals and memoirs. While the museums abound in easel canvases and drawings by François Boucher (1703–1770), we are hard-pressed to find one print which has even a remote connection with the stage. On the other hand, we have several volumes of costume sketches and a few scene prints by Louis-René Boquet (1717–1814) which give us a rather good impression of at least one side of his style. Unfortunately, the work of the men who may have been more influenced by Servandoni than any others—Pietro Algieri, Louis-Alexandre Girault, Antoine de Machy, Tremblin, Baudon, Guillet, Moulin, de Leuze, Canot, Lallemand, Spurney, etc.—is probably lost to the eye forever. Their careers, which took place in an extravagant age of theatrical design, must be pieced together from scattered paragraphs in the Paris periodicals. In most cases, we cannot even assign dates to the spans of their activities.
Maurice Browne and the Chicago Little Theatre
Authors: Dukore Bernard F.
Published: October 2010

Maurice Browne died on January 21, 1955, shortly before his seventy-fourth birthday. If his name is known at all to theatre people today, it is known as that of the man who was a prominent West End producer several decades ago, who produced Journey's End, and who, over fifteen years before the destruction of Hiroshima, collaborated with Robert Nichols on a play about the atom bomb, Wings Over Europe. Yet according to Bernard Shaw, “none of these things matter a tuppenny damn. The work this man …did… years ago on a fourth-floor-back in Chicago—this is what matters.”
A Brief History of the Claque
Authors: Saxon A. H.
Published: October 2010

In Pittsburgh a well-known actress makes her entrance on the stage of the Nixon, and, so that there may be no danger of a provincialaudience mistaking the show's principal, her manager leads the applause from the wings. In Paris the renowned author of Ulysses establishes himself as leader of a fan club at the Opéra, and becomes such a nuisance that the director finally replaces the lauded singer.
Duffett's New Poems and Vacation Plays
Authors: Cameron Kenneth M.
Published: October 2010

Although Thomas Duffett is hardly one of the shining lights of the Restoration drama, his prologues and epilogues contain much theatrical information that gives him a continuing, although non-literary, value. His New Poems, Songs, Prologues and Epilogues (London, 1676), besides providing the only known record of the so-called Duchess of Portsmouth's company, gives considerable evidence of private and vacation performances in the early 1670's.
Governmental Support to the Theatre in Great Britain
Authors: Sherriffs Ronald E.
Published: October 2010

General acceptance of the concept of theatre as an institution possessing positive values worthy of public support is a comparatively recent development in the history of the British theatre. The traditional public attitudes which were unfavorable to theatre (focal point of disorder, disease, moral corruption, and sinful activity) were created during the sixteenth-century power struggle between the Crown, London authorities, and the Church. The formulation of public attitudes favorable to theatre (aesthetic, social, moral, and intellectual stimuli) began when theatre became an agent of social change in the nineteenth century.
Bauhaus Influences on an Evolving Theatre Architecture: Some Developmental Stages
Authors: Bowman Ned A.
Published: October 2010

One would today be hard-pressed to recall any other period since the mid-nineteen-twenties when such widespread concern among theatre practitioners has been devoted to planning of buildings primarily intended to house-performed legitimate drama. The government-supported reconstruction boom in German language countries, the conduct of three major international conferences on theatre building in the past three years, tangible progress on New York's Lincoln Center, and the Ford Foundation's widely-publicized support of theoretical planning for an Ideal Theatre-all these events are likely to overshadow for the moment efforts of those planners of the 'twenties who were forced by an economic and political untimeliness to “cast their anchor(s) far into the sea of fantasy and distant possibilities,” sadly realizing that little opportunity for innovation could exist at the time.
Shakespeare and Circuses
Authors: Saxon A. H.
Published: October 2010

Of all the merits that may be claimed for the plays of Shakespeare, surely one of the greatest, though least extolled, is indestructibility. From drolls and burlettas to ballets and grand opera, from the archaeological extravaganzas of Charles Kean and the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen to Copeau's chaste representations on the tréteau nu, from an unceremonious Hamlet fencing in his undershirt (“rehearsal clothes,” or so we were told) to a Harry the Fifth barely visible through clouds of spent gunpowder—no matter how badly mutilated, “improved,” ludicrously performed, or grotesquely mounted, the plays of Shakespeare persistently demonstrate their ability to survive, despite the best efforts of their legion interpreters. And among these interpreters must be included the riders and actors of the circus, whose productions were perhaps no more bizarre than those of their brethren on the legitimate stage.
Pictorial Material on the Bridges Street and Drury Lane Theatres
Authors: Langhans Edward A.
Published: October 2010

Considering their importance in the history of the English theatre, we know remarkably little about the architectural features of the two Restoration playhouses which Thomas Killigrew and his King's Company built on the plot of ground where the modern Drury Lane now stands. In 1913 Hamilton Bell published reproductions of some designs by Sir Christopher Wren, two of which he felt might have some connection with these buildings, and of these the section view of a “Play House” has been frequently reprinted. The frontispiece to Perrin's Ariane (1674) shows the stage of Drury Lane, and we have two pictures from near the turn of the century depicting Joe Haines (or Haynes) mounted on an ass on the Drury Lane forestage. Other than these five prints, however, pictorial material on these important playhouses has been wanting. Therefore it may be worth considering more carefully what we already have and reporting on several new discoveries.
Agitprop: Production Practice in the Workers' Theatre, 1932–1942
Authors: McDermott Douglas
Published: October 2010

Every theatrical group which nerves itself to the effort of production has some goal which it hopes to achieve, but that of the Workers' Theatre was unique and the attempt to realize it resulted in unique organizations with unusual working methods. This goal was not cultural, but political—not art, but revolution. The production of a play was regarded as a means of organizing the workers of America into an army capable of winning the struggle for a classless society: “A theatrical performance becomes a communal rite, not unlike the primitive dances or religious ceremonies during which solo actors… tried to arouse the spectators… to participate in the rite, to take part in the struggle.” Because of this aim, each Workers' Theatre group in America between 1932 and 1942 attempted to be “an active political organization of… class conscious revolutionary workers” which would provide a model of effective revolutionary organization for its audience.
Minnie Maddern Fiske: The Imperfect Ibsenite
Authors: Ashby Clifford
Published: October 2010

A great legend has evolved about Minnie Maddern Fiske and her relation to Ibsenian drama, a legend which pictures her as a fearless, dedicated proponent of naturalism in the theatre, as an actress cast in an entirely new mould. As early as 1910, Walter Prichard Eaton wrote: “With that new drama and the consequent new methods of acting she at once identified herself, and she has remained their earnest champion and inspiring advocate.”
Some Nineteenth Century Revivals of the Duchess of Malfi
Authors: Wadsworth Frank W.
Published: October 2010

In his introduction to the excellent Revels edition of The Duchess of Malfi John Russell Brown provides a brief, updated stage history of John Webster's best known tragedy. Although Brown does much to correct the impression that Samuel Phelps' nineteenth-century revival was unsuccessful, even he does not fully indicate the Duchess' popularity during the twenty-five years following the Sadler's Wells performance of November 20, 1850. Nor does the statement of Don D. Moore in John Webster and His Critics 1617–1964 that “only in the mid-twentieth century—and then infrequently— has Webster on the stage been acceptable” help to correct the traditional misconception.
Aqueduct and Iron Curtain at the Federal Street Theatre, Boston
Authors: Stoddard Richard
Published: October 2010

The equipping of theaters with fire-prevention devices is generally considered to be a relatively recent concern. For example, Barnard Hewitt writes of the American theater: “No one concerned himself with prevention until Steele MacKaye made a nuisance of himself with buckets, hoses, and fireproofing of scenery.” It is true that the prevention of fires in theaters did not become a significant public issue until the latter half of the nineteenth century. MacKaye was responding to increased public concern for the safety of theatergoers. Fires in theaters were indeed tragically common during that century. Gas lighting created a considerable fire hazard, and after its introduction in the first quarter of the century the incidence of fires in theaters increased alarmingly.
Box office, U.S.A., 1864–1870: Regional Profiles
Authors: Bristow Eugene K. , Reardon William R.
Published: October 2010

Paralleling in time, though not in power, the national expansion and concentration in finance, transportation, and manufacturing, the American theatre entered the 1860's as primarily a stock-company operation, but emerged from the decade as a traveling theatre with a central concentration in New York City. Circuits and booking agencies organized by managers and producers during the seventies and eighties led eventually to the virtual monopoly of the American theatre established by the Theatrical Syndicate in 1896.
King Lear in Germany, France, and Italy
Authors: Rosenberg Marvin
Published: October 2010

A Play-by-Play history of King Lear in Germany, France, and Italy would be a dull thing; but a discussion of the special qualities found in the tragedy at historic theatrical moments can illuminate both the work of art and the cultural and artistic environment in which it was presented.

The German productions offer the best example of the range of possibilities found in Lear in Continental theatre because the play has had there its longest history of production, outside of England.
Theat-re or Theat-er: Samuel Johnson or Noah/Merriam Webster?
Authors: Hodge Francis
Published: October 2010

When The New York Times on September 16, 1962 changed its official spelling from theatre to theater, it jumped headlong into a controversy actively alive since Shakespeare's day. On the day before, on Sunday, the Drama section showed a single face to the public as it reported and advertised an institution called theatre, but from the next day forward it looked as if the muse wrote in two languages because both spellings were used. The change was made without editorial comment, without a single letter to the editor, without any indication whatsoever that anyone cared. If a few noticed it, they undoubtedly concluded that The Times had fallen victim to an American spelling rule that must have long plagued its copyreaders and thus forgave the change.
Calypso Drama
Authors: Hill Errol
Published: October 2010

After a lapse of some years calypso drama reappeared in 1964 on the nightly calypso concert programmes tra ditionally offered to the Trinidad public in the weeks preceding the annual carnival celebration. These musical playlets have always enjoyed considerable popular appeal and, in a period of emerging nationalism, it has been argued that they contain the rudiments of a national drama and theatre. In this article I propose to trace the history of calypso drama and analyse the genre as a valid theatrical form.
The First Scottish Masters of Revels: Comptrollers of Popular Entertainment
Authors: Tobin Terence
Published: October 2010

The office of Master of the Revels first appears in late fifteenth-century England. The appointment during the Elizabethan era was one which entailed the supervision of court entertainment of a theatrical nature. By the Jacobean period the Master was a censor of plays who exacted fees for pieces licensed for public performance. During the tenure of the most famous English Master of Revels, Sir Henry Herbert, the office declined in importance with the granting of patents to Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant in 1660. By 1737 with the Licensing Act, the function of the Master of the Revels had become the province of the Lord Chamberlain.
Shaw's Advice to the Players of Major Barbara
Authors: Albert Sidney P.
Published: October 2010

In his informative account of Bernard Shaw as a director, William Armstrong has noted a distinctive practice of the playwright during the rehearsal period:“…Shaw regularly sent private letters or postcards to his actors to supplement the advice he gave them in the theatre. It is to be hoped that one day a more or less complete collection of these documents will be made. They will reveal not only his great mastery of detail but also the remarkable shrewdness with which he adjusted his powers of persuasion to actors with very different temperaments.” Vast indeed is the undertaking Armstrong proposes, but it is possible to proceed towards its realization with respect to particular plays. Such documentation can be supplemented in some cases by the testimony of actors and other theater artists who worked with Shaw, by data from the extant prompt copies of his productions, and by his rehearsal notes. The result would do much not only to illuminate the particulars of his directorial performance, but to clarify many specific problems of dramatic interpretation as well.
Hamlet as Edwin Booth
Authors: Cohen Robert
Published: October 2010

Since Edwin Booth was so generally considered the best American actor of his time (some say of all time), and since Hamlet was his best known and most frequently performed role, our interest in it is more than academic. Booth knew Hamlet as well as any man in his century. His particular illumination of the role—an intellectual, neurotic, romantic Hamlet—has become a part of our own understanding of the character and has been reflected in the recent interpretations of Burton, O'Toole, and Plummer.

Booth first played Hamlet in California, at the suggestion of his father, Junius Brutus Booth, and it quickly became his most celebrated role. When Edwin joined with John (Sleeper) Clarke and William Stuart in the management of the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, Hamlet was his first production. It had a phenomenal run of one-hundred nights, setting a record which was not eclipsed for some time.
The Awnings of Roman Theatres and Amphitheatres
Authors: Montilla Robert B.
Published: October 2010

Unquestionably an awning or system of awnings was used as a protective cover over Roman theatres and amphitheatres during the Empire. Its appearance and operation however, still puzzle theatre historians.

Because only scanty descriptive evidence of it is available, historians mention the awning barely, if at all. What comments they do make are often incorrect. For example, Bieber's statement that the awnings were “to protect the spectators from rain and sunburn” is true only of the sunburn. In the light of this and other misconceptions about the Roman awning, a review of the evidence is now in order.
More Light on the Limelight
Authors: Goodman Lawrence P.
Published: October 2010

The first use of the limelight in the theatre occurred on December 26, 1837, at Covent Garden, then under the management of William Charles Macready. This marked the beginning of modern stage lighting. The limelight was the first practical spotlight used in the theatre, and the use of the spotlight is basic to all modern lighting theory and practice. To make a spotlight two things are necessary, a lens and a point source of light of high intensity. (The light source must be small so that it can be focused by the lens.) A reflector can be added to increase the efficiency of the instrument. Reflectors and lenses had been in use for several centuries, but until this time there was no light source of sufficient brilliance which was at the same time small enough to make the spotlight practical.
More Shaw Advice to the Players of Major Barbara
Authors: Albert Sidney P.
Published: October 2010

No subsequent production of Major Barbara commanded Bernard Shaw's attention as fully as did the original one in 1905 at the Royal Court Theatre, in which he served as director as well as author. Nonetheless, revivals and contemplated revivals elicited from him lively suggestions about how to stage and perform this complex drama; and in a few of these he again became an active participant in rehearsals. The surviving comments, however incomplete, afford a useful supplement to his earlier counsel. They also add valuable details to Shaw's own commentary on the play and to our knowledge of him as peerless director of his own dramas.
On the Authenticity of the “Moral Dialogues” Playbill
Authors: Mays David D.
Published: October 2010

On Monday, June 10, at the Public House of the above Inn, will be Delivered a Series of MORAL DIALOGUES, IN FIVE PARTS, depicting the evil effects of jealousy and other bad passions, and proving that happiness can only spring from the pursuit of virtue.

MR. DOUGLAS will represent a noble and magnanimous Moor named Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and after he has married her, harbors (as in too many cases) the dreadful passion of jealousy.
Uses of the Term “Manager” in 19th-Century U.S. Theatre
Authors: Phillips Levi Damon
Published: October 2010

In researching my dissertation topic, “Arthur McKee Rankin's Touring Production of The Danites by Joaquin Miller (1877–1881),” I became convinced that the casual use of the term “manager” in nineteenth-century press releases requires some clarification. Indeed, journalists often cited, without distinction, several individuals as “managers” of Rankin's traveling company.
Thomas William Robertson: Actor
Authors: Goldfarb Alvin
Published: October 2010

The continued interest in the theatrical innovations of the Bancrofts and T. W. Robertson has led to numerous recent scholarly reevaluations. William Kleb, in his excellent “Marie Wilton (Lady Bancroft) as an Actress,” notes that “the important dramatic, scenic, and managerial aspects of the Bancrofts' work should not be allowed to obscure the fact that their theatre was also fundamentally an actors' theatre.” T. W. Robertson's dramaturgical innovations, however, have also obscured the fact that he began his theatrical career as an actor. In this note, I would like to trace his acting career as a preliminary step in documenting this pivotal period in Robertson's development.
Firmin Gémier's Théâtre National Ambulant
Authors: Brown Langdon
Published: October 2010

Firmin Gémier rose to the top rank of twentieth century French actors with a versatile talent that led to simultaneous success in the bourgeois commercial theatres of the boulevards, the elite independent theatres of the back streets, and the tawdry working class theatres of the suburbs. His historical reputation rests on his early career with Antoine's Théâtre-libre, and later accomplishments such as founding the Théâtre National Populaire, creating the role of Père Ubu, and tutoring Gaston Baty and Charles Dullin. Still, Gémier's work is seldom discussed and it is too easy to forget the major role he played in advocating the democratization of French theatre, a role he was uniquely suited to play given his eclecticism and willingness to popularize the Théâtre-libre style. He took middle ground between the elitism of Antoine and the commercialism of Sasha Guitry and encouraged later generations of theatre artists to actively seek an ever-widening audience.
New Evidence on the Origins of the Box Set
Authors: Larson Orville K.
Published: October 2010

The young Swedish artist Nicodemus Tessin, traveling through Italy in 1687, records seeing a scene at the Teatro SS. Luca (also known as the Teatro San Salvatore) in Venice in which the spaces between the side wings were filled in to enclose the playing space, to form what has become known as a box setting. He even drew a sketch (fig. 1), explaining how the wings were “turned back” to enclose the space. He describes a book flat attached to a chariot; when the chariot was moved to its onstage position, stagehands swiftly swung the hinged section of the book flat backward until it joined the next chariot to the rear.
The Shape of Eighteenth-Century English Drama
Authors: Hannaford Stephen
Published: October 2010

Several traditional views have dominated the attitude of literary and theatre historians towards eighteenth century English drama. The most influential perspective has been that of Allardyce Nicoll, who lists plays, discovers coherent schools of playwriting, and traces chronology as if it were causality. A second approach looks at the century as a gallery of worthy dramatists, one hanging beside the other: Farquhar, Addison, Steele, Gay, Lillo, Goldsmith, and Sheridan. This approach is exemplified in F.S. Boas's Introduction to Eighteenth Century Drama, an appreciation of the tall peaks which tends to ignore the broad valleys.
Frontier Dramatizations: The James Gang
Authors: Hall Roger Allan
Published: October 2010

Jesse James was shot on April 3, 1882. By the next theatrical season three different companies were presenting the story of the James gang to New York audiences.

Drama about American frontier figures was nothing new; late nineteenth century audiences were enamoured of tales of the frontier. Frank Murdoch's Davy Crockett, in which Frank Mayo starred for over twenty years, and William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody's Wild West show, which played for over thirty years, were but the most famous and successful of the hundreds of plays, lectures, exhibitions, and demonstrations about frontier life that regaled theatre patrons.
Mademoiselle Rhea: An American Bernhardt?
Authors: Woods Alan
Published: October 2010

On 14 March 1892, dedicated theatregoers in Cleveland, Ohio, found themselves facing a difficult decision: the city's two major touring houses were presenting similar star performers in superficially similar plays. One actress was an old acquaintance, having made regular appearances in Cleveland for more than a decade. The other was making her Cleveland debut, although she was a highly publicized, world-famous star. As the debutante was performing in French and the old favorite played in English—even though an English heavily accented by French—not surprisingly, the larger audience opted for their native tongue.
Elizabeth Robins: The Genesis of an Independent Manageress
Authors: Cima Gay Gibson
Published: October 2010

J. T. Grein's Independent Theatre has long been considered the counterpart to Antoine's Théâtre Libre and Brahm's Freie Bühne: a subscription-based theatre introducing experimental drama to a coterie audience in the 1890s. However, just as in Paris there were rival production groups such as Paul Fort's Théâtre d'Art, so in London Grein was not the sole purveyor of the new drama. He had many individual competitors, the most important of whom were women who produced primarily the plays of Henrik Ibsen.
Edwin Booth on Dion Boucicault, Playwriting, and Play Production—a Previously Unpublished Letter
Authors: Lacasse Don
Published: October 2010

While researching my dissertation topic, “Edwin Booth: Theatre Manager,” I happened upon a previously unpublished letter written by Booth to a Jno. M. Leavitt. In this letter, Booth gives a contemporary and perhaps surprising evaluation of Dion Boucicault's playwriting, he articulates a set of guidelines for playwrights, and his comments on playwriting indicate a theory of play production which actually guided Booth's own work as actor-manager of Booth's Theatre from 1869 to 1873.
Cicéri and Daguerre: Set Designers for the Paris Opera, 1820–1822
Authors: Daniels Barry V.
Published: October 2010

In 1820 Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri (1782–1868) and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851) were the two most successful set designers in Paris, and for a two-year period (1820–1822) they shared the most prestigious design position in France: chief designer at the Paris Opera. During the Empire both men had worked at the Opera under the supervision of the designers Degotti and Isabey, Cicéri as a staff painter specializing in paysages and Daguerre as a day laborer specializing in the painting of architectural detail. In 1816, when Cicéri was promoted to the position of chief designer at the Opera, Daguerre worked briefly on his staff.
André Antoine's Initial Classical Experiment: The 1904 King Lear
Authors: Brown Langdon
Published: October 2010

Like other major theatre artists at the turn of the twentieth century, André Antoine sought a new theatrical style to replace the dominant strain of realism. His development of naturalism and his championing of the cause of the school of Becque, Brieux, and Jullien are commonplaces of theatre history, but Antoine's efforts to extend his style, chiefly by applying it to a repertory of classical plays, have not received a great deal of attention. While it is easier to consign Antoine to a naturalistic pigeon hole, a consideration of the innovative course of his later career might help illuminate our similarly eclectic era.
The Achievements of the Douglass Company in North America: 1758–1774
Authors: Mays David D.
Published: October 2010

On Monday, October 16, 1758., Hugh Gaine reported a novelty. “Friday last,” he told his readers in the New-York Mercury, “arrived here from the West Indies, a Company of Comedians; some Part of which were here in the Year 1753.” This brief notice, which went on to assure its readers that the company had “an ample Certificate of their Private as well as publick Qualifications,” marks the beginning of the most significant event in American theatre history: the establishment of the professional theatre on this continent. The achievements of the Company of Comedians during its sixteen-year residence in North America are virtually without parallel in the history of the theatre, and have not received sufficient recognition by historians and scholars.
British Military Theatre in New York in 1780–81
Authors: Brown Jared A.
Published: October 2010

From October 20, 1774, when the Continental Congress passed a resolution outlawing theatrical activities in America, until the formation of the Lindsay-Wall troupe that began performing illegally in Maryland in 1781 and, under the management of Dennis Ryan, shifted its base of operations to New York in 1783, the theatre in America was in a near-dormant state. The only significant exceptions to this condition were the productions of the occupying British military in various American localities, and a few productions by American military officers given in response.
The Publishing History of the New York Dramatic News and Dramatic Times
Authors: Pratt Judith
Published: October 2010

The New York Dramatic News was one of the numerous theatrical papers that sprang up in New York City during the last few decades of the nineteenth century. Although it never attained the status of the New York Clipper, or the Dramatic Mirror, it is useful for research in popular entertainment. My inquiry into the paper began as a search for the 1895 and 1896 volumes of the Dramatic News, New York Dramatic News, or Leander Richardson's Dramatic News, as it was variously referred to by my sources. During this inquiry, I discovered that the bibliographical information on this newspaper is incorrect.
From Baroque to Romantic: Piranesi's Contribution to Stage Design
Authors: Roach Joseph R.
Published: October 2010

“Many years ago, wnen I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome” writes Thomas De Quincey in his essay on the effects of opium-eating, “Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams, and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever.” When De Quincey published his Confessions in 1821, the international reputation of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) was firmly established among men of letters and artists alike. The style and thematic content of Piranesi's remarkable etchings fascinated diverse members of the Romantic movement—from Walpole to Hugo, from Goethe to Gautier, from DeLoutherbourg to Sanquirico.
George Farquhar and ‘the Bus'ness of a Prologue’
Authors: Kenny Shirley Strum
Published: October 2010

If George Farquhar knew, as these lines from his prologue to David Crauford's Courtship A-la-Mode indicate, the futility of trying to bolster the popularity of a bad play by its prologue, his career as a prologist and epilogist must have reinforced his scepticism. Besides the five prologues and four epilogues he wrote for his own plays, Farquhar wrote at least three prologues and two epilogues for other authors' plays, plus two occasional prologues and one occasional epilogue, a total of ten known prologues and seven epilogues.
Scenes and Machines at the Cockpit, Drury Lane
Authors: Orrell John
Published: October 2010

Colin Visser's recent article, “The Descent of Orpheus at the Cockpit, Drury Lane,” performed a valuable service by calling attention to the presence of technically sophisticated French “Machine” drama in London as early as 1661. Visser bases his argument on a pamphlet in the Malone collection at the Bodleian, “The Description of the Great Machines, of the DESCENT of ORPHEUS Into Hell. Presented by the French Commedians at the Cock-pit in Drury-lane.” This libretto, printed in both English and French, does not identify the French troupe, but Chapoton's Descente d'Orphée was in the repertory of les comédiens de Mademoiselle d'Orléans, a touring company whose name disappears from the Continental records for most of the period of French activity at the Cockpit.
Art, Folly, and the Bright Eyes of Children: The Origins of Regency Toy Theatre Reevaluated
Authors: Armstrong Gordon S.
Published: October 2010

Regency toy Theatre flourished in England in the years between 1811 and 1830. At the height of its popularity thousands of middle and working class youths, together with their upper class “betters,” escaped the grim realities of industrial London for the joys of staging — and playing all the parts of — The Fairy of the Oak, or Harlequin's Regatta (1811), Ferdinand of Spain, or Ancient Chivalry (1813), Bluebeard (1824), or even more exotic pieces such as “The Grand New Spectacle called Korastikan, Prince of Assassins” (1824).
The Identification of “Flip” in Robert Hunter's Androboros
Authors: Davis Peter A.
Published: October 2010

As an adjunct to my note in the May 1984 edition of Theatre Survey on the publishing of Robert Hunter's Androboros, I offer the following information concerning the identification of one of the play's characters, “Flip.” Although an apparently subtle reference, it provides clear justification for the numerous scatological references within the script and clarifies one of the more controversial scenes in the play. Moreover, it may indicate an additional impetus for the play's creation.
The Venetian Commedia: Actors and Masques in the Development of the Commedia dell'Arte
Authors: Royce Anya Peterson
Published: October 2010

The commedia dell'arte, which spanned three centuries from the sixteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth and nationalities as diverse as Italian, French, Austrian, Polish, and English, went through a number of metamorphoses before it attained the form we now associate with it. Very briefly, that form is based on stock characters (Arlecchino, Pantalone, Il Dottore, Pedrolino or Pierrot, etc.), improvisation around standard plots, and the use of masks. In Italy, this kind of commedia was established by the end of the sixteenth century. In this paper, I would like to explore the developments that led to this form, concentrating especially on the convention of maschere (stock characters) as it appeared early in sixteenth century Venice and the Veneto. I concentrate on Venice because it is there that these maschere first developed and were then elaborated into the kind of characterization that becomes the defining feature of the commedia dell'arte.
The Jefferson Company, 1830–1845
Authors: Bloom Arthur W.
Published: October 2010

In a seminal article entitled “The Development of Theatre on the American Frontier, 1750–1890,” published in the May, 1978, issue ofTheatre Survey, Douglas McDermott began synthesizing information about the nineteenth-century American theatre available in books, journals, theses, dissertations, and unpublished primary sources. His thesis of a three-phase development of American frontier theatre—consisting of small and strolling troupes, then standard repertory companies in small towns, and finally resident urban companies—must now be tested and modified by detailed examinations of particular stars, families, and companies touring in provincial America. This study of the Jefferson company corrects, supports, and expands McDermott's theory with evidence about one group of American actors who trouped, in various combinations, through the East, Mid-West, and South from 1830 to 1845.
Stanislavski's Books: an Untold Story
Authors: Hobgood Burnet M.
Published: October 2010

A number of questions about Stanislavski's writings on acting and the theatre still hang in the air nearly fifty years after his death. It seems curious that this should be the case when the ideas and books by the great Russian director-actor-teacher are so well known and have exerted such a profound influence on the modern theatre. The persistence of these questions through the years has even raised doubts concerning the authenticity of the writings attributed to Stanislavski and the accuracy of translations from his original Russian texts. As a result, serious students of Stanislavski's “System” feel unable to discriminate among the current interpreters of the man born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyeff.
The Eighteenth Century Pioneers in French Costume Reform
Authors: Carlson Marvin
Published: October 2010

In the middle years of the eighteenth century a major shift took place in France concerning the idea of appropriate stage costume. The traditional dress of high classicism, with its helmets and high plumes for the men, large hoop skirts for the women, and elegant, symmetrical, and highly artificial dress for both began to be challenged by leading critics and artists, who sought—for greater realism, greater historical accuracy, or greater ease and beauty of movement on stage—a more relaxed and informal approach to stage dress.
Gorostiza's Contigo pan y cebolla: From Romantic Farce to Nostalgic Musical Comedy
Authors: Dowling John
Published: October 2010

Pan y cebolla — bread and onion. In Madrid or Mexico City, you may see construction workers at lunch or at a rest break having a nutritious and economical snack: an onion sandwich, made simply of a barra de pan — a hard roll — and a juicy Spanish onion, washed down perhaps with wine drunk from the bottle. It is an eminently proletarian lunch.