The prostitute, and her sister in sin - the so-called 'fallen' woman - were veritable obsessions of American Progressive Era culture. Their cumulative presence, in scores of controversial theatrical productions, demonstrates the repeated obsession with the prostitute figure in both highbrow and lowbrow entertainments. As the first extended examination of such dramas during the Progressive Era, Sisters in Sin recovers a slice of theatre history in demonstrating that the prostitute was central to American realist theatre. Such plays about prostitutes were so popular that they constituted a...

Congressional Theatre is the first book to identify and examine the significant body of plays, films, and teleplays that responded to the actions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the "show business hearings" it held between 1947 and 1960. Among the writers discussed are Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Lillian Hellman, Maxwell Anderson, Elia Kazan, Barrie Stavis, Herman Wouk, Eric Bentley, Saul Levitt, Budd Schulberg, Carl Foreman, Abraham Polonsky, and Walter Bernstein.

Theater has often served as a touchstone for critical moments of political change or national definition. Steve Wilmer selects key historical moments in American history to examine the theater's response. The selected events range from the Colonial fight for independence through Native American struggles, the Socialist Worker play and the Civil Rights Movement, to those of the last decade. Wilmer also considers audience reception and critical response.

Jeffrey Richards examines a variety of phenomena connected to the stage, including closet Revolutionary political plays, British drama on American boards, American-authored stage plays, and poetry and fiction by early Republican writers. American theatre is viewed by Richards as a transatlantic hybrid in which British theatrical traditions provide material and templates by which Americans express themselves and their relationship to others. Through intensive analysis of plays, this book confronts matters of political, ethnic, and cultural identity by moving from play text to theatrical...

John Frick examines the role of temperance drama in the overall scheme of American nineteenth-century theatre, using examples from mainstream productions and amateur theatricals. Nineteenth-century America witnessed a major movement against alcohol consumption when the temperance cause became one of national concern. As part of the temperance movement, a new genre of theatrical literature and performance developed, professional as well as amateur, to help publicize its beliefs. Frick also compares the American genre to its British counterpart.

Analysis of the prostitute in American realist theatre and the forgotten genre of 'brothel drama'.

Arguing that theatrical censorship coincides with significant challenges to religious, political and cultural traditions, John Houchin explores its impact on twentieth-century American theatre. Along with the well-known example of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, other almost equally influential events affected the course of the American stage during the century. After a summary of censorship in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, Houchin analyzes key political and theatrical events between 1900 and 2000.

The Provincetown Players was a major cultural institution in Greenwich Village from 1916 to 1922, when American Modernism was conceived and developed. This study considers the group's vital role, and its wider significance in twentieth century American culture. Describing the varied and often contentious response to modernity among the Players, Brenda Murphy reveals the central contribution of the group of poets around Alfred Kreymborg's Others magazine, including William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy and Djuna Barnes, and such modernist artists as Marguerite and William Zorach,...

An account of contemporary theater practice in its most collaborative and dynamic form, this 2006 book was the first book-length study of two of the most important American theater artists at the start of the twenty-first century. For twenty-five years, Mee and Bogart have pursued independent but sympathetic visions of theater rooted in the avant-garde of the 1960s, guided by a view of art and culture as a perpetual process of 'remaking'. Since 1992, the SITI Company has pioneered the unique combination of three training practices as the basis for collective creations that layer language,...

In 1965, the first Asian American theatre company, the East West players, was founded by a group of actors who wanted to find better opportunities in the acting industry. Forty years later, Asian American theatre is one of the fastest-growing theatre sectors with over thirty active theatre companies and numerous award-winning artists such as Frank Chin, Jessica Hagedorn, Ping Chong, David Henry Hwang, Philip Kan Gotanda, Velina Hasu, and B. D. Wong. Based on over seventy interviews, this book surveys the history of Asian American theatre from 1965 to 2005 with focus on actors, playwrights,...