The American stage
Subtitle: writing on theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner
By: Laurence Senelick, editor
Series: The Library of America series -- 203; Library of America -- 203.
Publisher: Library of America; Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Group
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 867
ISBN-13: 9781598530698
Subjects: History and criticism; Theater; American drama; History
Description: Here is the story, told firsthand through electric, deeply engaged writing, of America's living theater, high and low, mainstream and experimental. Drawing on history, criticism, memoir, fiction, poetry, and parody, editor Laurence Senelick presents writers with the special knack "to distill both the immediate experience and the recollected impression, to draw the reader into the charmed circle and conjure up what has already vanished." Through the words of playwrights and critics, actors and directors, and others behind the footlights, the entertainments and high artistic strivings of successive eras come vividly, sometimes tumultuously, to life. Observers from Washington Irving and Fanny Trollope to Walt Whitman and Mark Twain evoke the world of the 19th-century playhouse in all its raucous vitality. Henry James confesses his early enthusiasm for playgoing; Willa Cather reviews provincial productions of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Antony and Cleopatra.^

The increasing diversity and ambition of the American theater is reflected in Hutchins Hapgood's account of New York's Yiddish theaters at the turn of the century, Carl Van Vechten's review of the Sicilian actress Mimi Aguglia, Alain Locke's comments on the emerging African-American theater in the 1920s, and Ezra Pound's response to James Joyce's play Exiles and theatrical modernism. Enthusiasts for the New Stagecraft, such as Lee Simonson and Djuna Barnes, are matched by champions of pop culture such as Gilbert Seldes and Fred Allen. S. J. Perelman lampoons Clifford Odets; Edmund Wilson acclaims Minsky's Burlesque; Harold Clurman explains Stanislavski's Method; Gore Vidal dissects the compromises of commercial playwriting.^

A host of playwrights-among them Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet, and Tony Kushner-are joined by such renowned critics as Stark Young, George Jean Nathan, Brooks Atkinson, and Eric Bentley. -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 831-838) and index.
Table of contents: title: From Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent.  -- Washington Irving; title: Prologue for the opening of the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia  -- Charles Sprague; title: From History of the American theatre  -- William Dunlap; title: From Domestic manners of the Americans  -- Frances Trollope; title: Some observations on the theater of democratic peoples  -- Alexis de Tocqueville; title: On Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion  -- Edgar Allan Poe; title: The gladiator--Mr. Forrest--Acting ;; title: Miserable state of the stage ;; title: The old bowery  -- Walt Whitman; title: The Astor Place riot  -- Philip Hone; title: From Mimic life ; or, before and behind the curtain  -- Anna Cora Mowatt; title: The menken ;; title: The model artists ;; title: The minstrel show  -- Mark Twain; title: From The journals  -- Charles King Newcomb; title: About nudity in theatres  -- Olive Logan; title: From The genial showman : the church in the theatre and the theatre in the church  -- Edward P. Hingston; title: Notes on the theatres ;; title: From A small boy and others  -- Henry James; title: Clara Morris  -- Alan Dale; title: The art of Edwin Booth : Hamlet  -- William Winter; title: Uncle Tom's cabin ;; title: Antony and Cleopatra (1) ;; title: Antony and Cleopatra (2)  -- Willa Cather; title: From The spirit of the ghetto : theatres, actors and audience  -- Hutchins Hapgood; title: Melodrama  -- Rollin Lynde Hartt; title: My most successful play  -- Lottie Blair Parker; title: Stage struck  -- Channing Pollock; title: Some American dramatic material ;; title: Hamlet  -- Stark Young; title: "The illusion of the first time" in drama  -- William Gillette; title: Mr. James Joyce and the modern stage  -- Ezra Pound; title: Mrs. Fiske on Ibsen the popular  -- Alexander Woollcott; title: Frank Wedekind  -- James G. Huneker; title: The painter and the stage  -- Lee Simonson; title: Mimi Aguglia as Salome  -- Carl Van Vechten; title: The jest -- Dorothy Parker; title: Mr. Belasco explains ;; title: Susan Glaspell  -- Ludwig Lewisohn; title: Abie's Irish rose review and bulletins  -- Robert Benchley; title: I Gaspiri--"The upholsterers" : a drama in three acts  -- Ring Lardner; title: The dæmonic in the American theatre  -- Gilbert Seldes; title: Burlesque shows  -- Edmund Wilson; title: The Negro and the American stage  -- Alain Locke; title: The old trouper  -- Don Marquis; title: The audience emotion ;; title: On Vaudeville ;; title: Eugene O'Neill  -- George Jean Nathan; title: The days of Jig Cook ;; title: Alla Nazimova  -- Djuna Barnes; title: James A. and Katharine Herne  -- Hamlin Garland; title: Cain's warehouse  -- Sidney Skolsky; title: Trouble with the angels  -- Langston Hughes; title: From Of time and the river  -- Thomas Wolfe; title: Waiting for Santy  -- S.J. Perelman; title: Our town ;; title: Standards in drama criticism  -- Brooks Atkinson; title: The man who came to dinner with George Kaufman directing  -- Morton Eustis; title: From Arena  -- Hallie Flanagan; title: Some thoughts on playwriting  -- Thornton Wilder; title: Audience tomorrow : preview in New Guinea  -- Elia Kazan; title: A streetcar called success  -- Mary McCarthy; title: Tennessee Williams ;; title: The famous "method" ;; title: From The theatre of the thirties  -- Harold Clurman; title: Even as you and I  -- John Mason Brown; title: Terry Helburn  -- Frances Parkinson Keyes; title: Folklore on Forty-Seventh Street ;; title: From Bentley on Brecht  -- Eric Bentley; title: The American theater  -- Arthur Miller; title: The life and death of Vaudeville  -- Fred Allen; title: Barns  -- Walter Kerr; title: Author and director : a delicate situation  -- Tennessee Williams; title: Eugene O'Neill's A touch of the poet ;; title: The commercialites ;; title: Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak house  -- Gore Vidal; title: "Me tink me hear sounds in de night"  -- Lorraine Hansberry; title: Which theater is the absurd one?  -- Edward Albee; title: The Becks' living theatre  -- Charles L. Mee, Jr.; title: Boredom in the theatre  -- John Simon; title: El Teatro Campesino  -- Luis Valdéz; title: Marat/Sade/Artaud  -- Susan Sontag; title: A short statement on street theatre  -- Ed Bullins; title: Notes on the new theater  -- Elizabeth Hardwick; title: From The season  -- William Goldman; title: From Notes on a cowardly lion  -- John Lahr; title: From Run-through : a memoir  -- John Houseman; title: From A personal history of the American theatre  -- Spalding Gray; title: The death of Broadway  -- Thomas M. Disch; title: Gay theatre  -- Charles Ludlam; title: "Dolly" goes away  -- Frank Rich; title: Heidi chronicled  -- Wendy Wasserstein; title: The chitlin circuit  -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; title: The problem play  -- David Mamet; title: From A director prepares : terror  -- Anne Bogart; title: Kushner on Miller -- Tony Kushner.