| Description |
xv, 293 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Series |
Theater in the Americas series |
|
Theater in the Americas.
|
| Contents |
Little Theatre and audience construction -- Imagining the Little Theatre audience -- Producing the audience -- Fall girls of modernism -- Textbook cases -- Modeling a future |
| Summary |
"When movies replaced theatre as popular entertainment in the years 1910-20, the world of live drama was wide open for reform. American advocates and practitioners founded theatres in a spirit of anticommercialism, seeking to develop an American audience for serious theatre, mounting plays in what would today be called "alternative places," and uniting for the cause an eclectic group of professors, social workers, members of women's clubs, bohemians, artists, students, and immigrants. This rebellion, called the Little Theatre movement, also prompted and promoted the college theatre major, the inclusion of theatre pedagogy in K-12 education, prototypes for the nonprofit model, and the notion that theatre is a valuable form of self-expression." |
|
"Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience argues that the movement was a national phenomenon, not just the result of aspirants copying efforts of the much-storied Provincetown Players, Washington Square Players, Neighborhood Playhouse, and Chicago Little Theatre. Going beyond the familiar histories of the best-known groups, Dorothy Chansky traces the origins of both the ideas and the infrastructures for serious theatre that are ordinary parts of the American cultural landscape today; she also investigates the gender discrimination, racism, and class insensitivity that were embedded in reformers' ideas of the "universal" and that still trouble the rhetoric of regional, educational, and community theatre." |
|
"An important piece of revisionist history, Composing Ourselves shows how theatre reform, in keeping with other Progressive Era activism, took on corporate, conservative society, but did so in ways that were sometimes contradictory. For example, women constituted the majority of ticket buyers and the bulk of unsung labor, yet plays by women were considered inferior. Most reformers were comfortably middle class and sought change that would eliminate the anomie of modernity but not challenge their privileged positions." |
| Notes |
Formerly CIP. Uk |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-278) and index |
| Subject |
Little theater movement -- United States.
|
|
Theater audiences -- United States.
|
| LC no. |
2003020682 |
| ISBN |
0809325748 alkaline paper |
|
