by Esther Kim Lee The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 28, Number 1 (Winter 2016) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center When I was writing my dissertation in the late 1990s, I would tell anyone who would ask that my topic was Asian American theatre. […]
by Jordan Schildcrout The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 28, Number 1 (Winter 2016) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center I consider it a sign of the vibrancy of queer theatre scholarship that publications over the past few years contain a greater variety of subjects, […]
by Stacy Wolf The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 28, Number 1 (Winter 2016) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Musical Theatre Studies, whose presence as a viable academic field is not much more than a decade old, is spreading out in all directions of […]
by Maurya Wickstrom The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 28, Number 1 (Winter 2016) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Over the past couple of years, I have been increasingly taken with the question of temporality. Giorgio Agamben writes in Infancy and History that: Every conception […]
Robert E. Sherwood’s biblical source for the title of his play There Shall Be No Night is useful for establishing context for the contemporary controversy the play was part of, as well as the lack of subsequent commentary it has received. Sherwood dearly wanted to create something profoundly relevant. The […]
Susan Kattwinkel, Editor American Tragedian: The Life of Edwin Booth By Daniel J. Watermeier Reviewed by Karl Kippola The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North By Douglas A. Jones, Jr. Reviewed by Beck Holden Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the […]
In JADT’s inaugural issue co-editors Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter J. Meserve declared their intentions for launching the fledgling journal, stating: “our aim is to promote research on American playwrights, American plays, and American theatre, and to encourage the thoughtful contemplation that will lead to a more enlightened understanding of […]
During the spring of 2013, Nora Ephron’s play Lucky Guy played to sold out houses recouping its producers’ initial investment of $3.6 million after a mere eight weeks, a remarkable feat for a Broadway drama. Whereas most successes on the Great White Way are splashy musicals with high production values […]
Starting in Winter 2016, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre will be publishing book reviews of publications relevant to the journal’s mission. If you know of a publication appropriate for review, please send the information to current book review editor Susan Kattwinkel at kattwinkels@cofc.edu. A list of books received […]
Arthur Miller is one of the most influential contemporary American playwrights after Eugene O’Neill. In the 1940s and 1950s, he rose to fame with All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and other social problem plays. Since 1949, Death of a Salesman has been performed continually on Broadway and […]
Given its historic role as one of the leading institutions in American philanthropy, perhaps it is not surprising that the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) was among the first American foundations to experiment with arts funding.[1] Better known are the efforts of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which provided support for […]
When George Washington Dixon took to the stage in 1834 to perform “Zip Coon,” his latest incarnation of a blackface dandy, he most likely bent his knee a little more than in his previous portrayals of the dandy, garbled his speech a little more, and added some garish costume accessories. […]
In its almost 30-year history, the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS) has championed the study of theatre and drama in the United States, in all its wide-ranging traditions, numerous histories, and myriad forms. The organization has, along the way, sought to interrogate the constantly shifting notion of what constitutes […]
William Dunlap’s final play, A Trip to Niagara (1828), might be the most misunderstood play in the history of the American stage. Despite being an unqualified success with its cosmopolitan New York audiences in 1828-9, it has been regularly, and almost always inaccurately, maligned by twentieth and twenty-first century historians […]
From 1892 until 1954, Ellis Island was the gateway for immigrants seeking American citizenship. Over twelve million individuals passed through the federal immigration station, underwent rushed and haphazard examinations, and eventually entered the country. Many had their names changed and ethnicities homogenized. But many thousands more were rejected for various […]
Dead white males. This oft-cited phrase encapsulates the ongoing project of dismantling the privileged monopoly that white men have historically held over the formation of an artistic canon and cultural tradition. In the field of American drama, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller (despite significant differences among their work) […]
Casting — the process whereby actors are assigned to particular roles — has largely eluded historical and theoretical inquiry. Casting’s iterative impact lends it a peculiar ephemerality. Once a role is cast, the complex array of criteria informing that decision — not only the methods and techniques of talent assessment […]
When the frontier melodrama, The Scouts of the Prairie, And, Red Deviltry As It Is!, opened in Chicago in December 1872, it marked the beginning of a performance genre that would have significant impact on the American national imagination. Written by Ned Buntline (E. Z. C. Judson), the dime novel […]
James Purdy (1914-2009)—a prolific American writer of fiction, drama, poetry, and essays—has been known almost exclusively as a novelist, recognized for his early portrayals of gay characters and themes. Accordingly, scholarship has focused almost entirely on his well-respected novels. Purdy’s most notable contribution to the theatre is indirect, by way […]
In Elegies: A Song Cycle, the 2003 William Finn musical first produced at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, five performers sing both in honor of and as the lost.[1] More specifically, they perform losses from the life of the gay Jewish composer-lyricist William Finn, embodying and/or narrating […]
