In the nineteenth century, long before film and television arrived to electrify audiences with explosions, car chases, and narrow escapes, it was America's theaters that offered audiences such thrills, with "sensation scenes" of speeding trains, burning buildings, and endangered bodies, often in melodramas extolling the virtues of temperance, abolition, and women's suffrage. In Spectacles of Reform, Amy E. Hughes scrutinizes these peculiar intersections of spectacle and reform, revealing that spectacle plays a crucial role in American activism. By examining how theater producers and...
In the nineteenth century, long before film and television arrived to electrify audiences with explosions, car chases, and narrow escapes, it was A...
Actor, playwright, and producer Harry Watkins (1825-94) was also a prolific diarist. For 15 years Watkins recorded the plays he saw, the roles he performed, the books he read, and his impressions of current events. Theatre historians Amy E. Hughes and Naomi J. Stubbs have selected, edited, and annotated substantial excerpts from the diary.
Actor, playwright, and producer Harry Watkins (1825-94) was also a prolific diarist. For 15 years Watkins recorded the plays he saw, the roles he perf...