Women in the American Theatre

Women in the American Theatre PDF Author: Faye E. Dudden
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300070583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Through a series of biographical sketches of female performers and managers, Dudden provides a discussion of the conflicted messages conveyed by the early theatre about what it meant to be a woman. It both showed women as sex objects and provided opportunities for careers.

Women in the American Theatre

Women in the American Theatre PDF Author: Faye E. Dudden
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300070583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Through a series of biographical sketches of female performers and managers, Dudden provides a discussion of the conflicted messages conveyed by the early theatre about what it meant to be a woman. It both showed women as sex objects and provided opportunities for careers.

The Irish Play on the New York Stage, 1874-1966

The Irish Play on the New York Stage, 1874-1966 PDF Author: John P. Harrington
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813149576
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Over the years American—especially New York—audiences have evolved a consistent set of expectations for the "Irish play." Traditionally the term implied a specific subject matter, invariably rural and Catholic, and embodied a reductive notion of Irish drama and society. This view continues to influence the types of Irish drama produced in the United States today. By examining seven different opening nights in New York theaters over the course of the last century, John Harrington considers the reception of Irish drama on the American stage and explores the complex interplay between drama and audience expectations. All of these productions provoked some form of public disagreement when they were first staged in New York, ranging from the confrontation between Shaw and the Society for the Suppression of Vice to the intellectual outcry provoked by billing Waiting for Godot as "the laugh sensation of two continents." The inaugural volume in the series Irish Literature, History, and Culture, The Irish Play on the New York Stage explores the New York premieres of The Shaughraun (1874), Mrs. Warren's Profession (1905), The Playboy of the Western World (1911), Exiles (1925), Within the Gates (1934), Waiting for Godot (1956), and Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1966).

Buffalo Bill's America

Buffalo Bill's America PDF Author: Louis S. Warren
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030742510X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 674

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Book Description
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the most famous American of his age. He claimed to have worked for the Pony Express when only a boy and to have scouted for General George Custer. But what was his real story? And how did a frontiersman become a worldwide celebrity? In this prize-winning biography, acclaimed author Louis S. Warren explains not only how Cody exaggerated his real experience as an army scout and buffalo hunter, but also how that experience inspired him to create the gigantic, traveling spectacle known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A dazzling mix of Indians, cowboys, and vaqueros, they performed on two continents for three decades, offering a surprisingly modern view of the United States and a remarkably democratic version of its history. This definitive biography reveals the genius of America’s greatest showman, and the startling history of the American West that drove him and his performers to the world stage.

Weird and Wonderful

Weird and Wonderful PDF Author: Andrea Stulman Dennett
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814718868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
A wondrous assortment of curiosities attracted the nineteenth-century spectator at the dime museum.

The Lambs Theatre Club

The Lambs Theatre Club PDF Author: Lewis Hardee
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786423218
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
"From its origins in 1874 as an intimate actors' dining club, The Lambs by 1925 had become the most famous theatrical club in the world-the stuff of fable. Drawn extensively from The Lambs' official archives, this work traces The Lambs' roots in London and its initial development in America, dominated by English and later Irish actors"--Provided by publisher.

After the Revolution

After the Revolution PDF Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393322330
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Each life is fascinating in its own right, and each is used to brightly illuminate the historical context.

Childhood and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre

Childhood and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre PDF Author: Shauna Vey
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809334399
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
From 1855 until 1863, the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Comedians, a professional acting company of approximately thirty children, entertained audiences with their nuanced performances of adult roles on stages around the globe. In Childhood and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre: The Work of the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Actors, author Shauna Vey provides an insightful account not only of this unique antebellum stage troupe but also of contemporary theatre practices and the larger American culture, including shifts in the definition of childhood itself. Looking at the daily work lives of five members of the Marsh Troupe—the father and manager, Robert Marsh, and four child performers, Mary Marsh, Alfred Stewart, Louise Arnot, and Georgie Marsh—Vey reveals the realities of the antebellum theatre and American society: the rise of the nineteenth-century impresario; the emerging societal constructions of girlhood and goodness; the realities of child labor; the decline of the apprenticeship model of actor training; shifts in gender roles and the status of working women; and changes in the economic models of theatre production, including the development of the stock company system. Both a microhistory of a professional theatre company and its juvenile players in the decade before the Civil War and a larger narrative of cultural change in the United States, Childhood and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre sheds light on how childhood was idealized both on and off the stage, how the role of the child in society shifted in the nineteenth century, and the ways economic value and sentiment contributed to how children were viewed.

America's Longest Run

America's Longest Run PDF Author: Andrew Davis
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271030534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
America&’s Longest Run: A History of the Walnut Street Theatre traces the history of America&’s oldest theater. The Philadelphia landmark has been at or near the center of theatrical activity since it opened, as a circus, on February 2, 1809. This book documents the players and productions that appeared at this venerable house and the challenges the Walnut has faced from economic crises, changing tastes, technological advances, and competition from new media. The Walnut&’s history is a classic American success story. Built in the early years of the nineteenth century, the Walnut responded to the ever-changing tastes and desires of the theatergoing public. Originally operated as a stock company, the Walnut has offered up every conceivable form of entertainment&—pageantry and spectacle, opera, melodrama, musical theater, and Shakespeare. It escaped the wrecking ball during the Depression by operating as a burlesque house, a combination film and vaudeville house, and a Yiddish theater, before becoming the Philadelphia headquarters for the Federal Theatre Project. Because Philadelphia is located so close to New York City, the Walnut has served as a tryout house for many Broadway-bound shows, including A Streetcar Named Desire, The Diary of Anne Frank, and A Raisin in the Sun. Today, the Walnut operates as a nonprofit performing arts center. It is one of the most successful producing theaters in the country, with more than 350,000 attending performances each year.

Acting Naturally

Acting Naturally PDF Author: Randall K. Knoper
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520086197
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
"Clarifies why understanding Mark Twain's writing is essential to understanding enduring patterns and problems in American culture. Conversely, it compellingly illustrates why one does not fully understand Mark Twain's work unless one has some understanding of America's preoccupation with performance, conspicuous display, and the mental sciences."--Howard Horwitz, author of "By the Law of Nature: Form and Value in Nineteenth-Century America" "In place of the strictly literary frame of reference that has previously organized the Twain canon, Knoper productively focuses on the spectrum of theatrical attitudes whereby Twain reconfigured his culture's race and gender hierarchies into the power to construct social realities differently. This work is sure to play a significant role in the reinvention of Mark Twain for the New American Studies."--Donald E. Pease, editor of "Revisionary Interventions into the Americanist Canon" "Knoper takes up quintessential aspects of Twain's writings, mind, and career. . . . [He] is brilliant in enunciating clearly and coherently ideas and attitudes that Twain either held confusedly or intimated almost unintentionally."--Louis J. Budd, author of "Our Mark Twain"

The Demographic Imagination and the Nineteenth-Century City

The Demographic Imagination and the Nineteenth-Century City PDF Author: Nicholas Daly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110709559X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Provocative account exploring how a population explosion transformed nineteenth-century European and American culture, creating shared narratives of urban life.