Cheryl Black - Böcker

Black examines the roles a remarkable group of women played in one of the most influential theatre groups in America, demonstrating their influence on 20th-century dramaturgy and culture.Perhaps most notable for its discovery of two significant American playwrights--Eugene O'Neill and Susan Glaspell--and for its role in developing an American tradition of non-commercial theatre, the Provincetown Players collective has long been appreciated for its meaningful contributions to American drama. An outgrowth of the Greenwich Village community of politically minded artists and intellectuals, the group became convinced that theatre was essential to America's spiritual and social regeneration. The company ultimately produced nearly 100 plays by more than 50 American writers. In this thoroughly engaging work, Cheryl Black argues that Provincetown has another, largely unacknowledged claim to fame: it was one of the first theatre companies in America in which women achieved prominence in every area of operation. At a time when women playwrights were rare, women directors rarer, and women scenic designers unheard of, Provincetown's female members excelled in all these functions, making significant contributions to the development of modern American drama and theatre. In addition to playwright Glaspell, the company's female membership included the likes of poets Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mina Loy, and Djuna Barnes; journalists Louise Bryant and Mary Heaton Vorce; novelists Neith Boyce and Evelyn Scott; and painter Marguerite Zorach.A solidly researched and engagingly written piece of social history, this book offers new insight into the relationship between gender and theatre and will attract a broad readership, including students and scholars of theatre, women's studies, feminism, and American Studies, and members of the general public interested in any of these issues.

The official journal of the Mid-America Theatre ConferenceTheatre History Studies (THS) is a peer-reviewed journal of theatre history and scholarship published annually since 1981 by the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), a regional body devoted to theatre scholarship and practice. The conference encompasses the states of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. The purpose of the conference is to unite persons and organizations within the region with an interest in theatre and to promote the growth and development of all forms of theatre. THS is a member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals and is included in the MLA Directory of Periodicals. THS is indexed in Humanities Index, Humanities Abstracts, Book Review Index, MLA International Bibliography, International Bibliography of Theatre, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, IBZ International Bibliography of Periodical Literature, and IBR International Bibliography of Book Reviews. Full texts of essays appear in the databases of both Humanities Abstracts Full Text and SIRS.Along with book reviews on the latest publications from established and emerging voices in the field, this issue of Theatre History Studies contains three sections with fourteen essays total. In the general section, three essays offer an array of insights, methods, and provocations. In the special section on care, contributors capture their experience as scholars, humans, and citizens in 2022. In Part III, the 2022 Robert A. Schanke Research Award-winning paper by Heidi L. Nees asks historians to rethink Western constructions of time. Taken together, volume 42 captures how this journal serves theatre historians as scholars and laborers as they work to attend and tend to their field. CONTRIBUTORSCheryl Black / Shelby Brewster / Matthieu Chapman / Meredith Conti / Zach Dailey / Michael DeWhatley / Whit Emerson / Katherine Gillen / Miles P. Grier / Patricia Herrera / Lisa Jackson-Schebetta / Nancy Jones / Joshua Kelly / Felicia Hardison LondrÉ / Bret McCandless / Marci R. McMahon/ Tom Mitchell / Sherrice Mojgani / John Murillo III / Heidi L. Nees / Jessica N. PabÓn-ColÓn / Kara Raphaeli / Leticia L. Ridley / Cynthia Running-Johnson / Alexandra Swanson / Catherine Peckinpaugh Vrtis / Shane Wood / Christine Woodworth / Robert O. Yates

The Decades of Modern American Playwriting series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material.The major playwrights and their plays to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include:* Tony Kushner: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part One and Part Two (1991), Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness (1995) and A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds (1997);* Paula Vogel: Baltimore Waltz (1992), The Mineola Twins (1996) and How I Learned to Drive (1997); * Suzan-Lori Parks: The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990), The America Play (1994) and Venus (1996);* Terrence McNally: Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997) and Corpus Christi (1998).

This volume assesses the contributions of David Belasco, Arthur Hopkins, and Margaret Webster, whose careers shaped the artistic and specialist identity of the Broadway director. Their work spans almost a century and captures the rapidly changing social and cultural landscape of 20th-century America. While their aesthetic styles differed greatly, they were united in their mastery of theatre craft and their impact on theatrical collaboration. The essays in this volume explore how these directors established and exploited Broadway as the epicentre of theatre in the United States, blended the role of producer and director, and managed the tensions between commercial success and artistic ambition.The Great North American Stage Directors series provides an authoritative account of the art of directing in North America by examining the work of twenty-four major practitioners from the late 19th century to the present. Each of the eight volumes examines three directors and offers an overview of their practices, theoretical ideas, and contributions to modern theatre. The studies chart the life and work of each director, placing his or her achievement in the context of other important theatre practitioners and broader social history. Written by a team of leading experts, the series presents the genealogy of directing in North America while simultaneously chronicling crucial trends and championing contemporary interpretation.