Jeffrey D Mason - Böcker

This book studies how popular theater can act as the vehicle for the construction of American ideology. It looks at five popular nineteenth-century melodramas that took as their subjects important issues in "American life: Metamora and the Indian Question", "The Drunkard and the temperance movement", "Uncle Tom's Cabin and slavery", "My Partner and the American West", and "Shenandoah and the Civil War". By examining the plays and their popular success and by reconstructing the social and political backdrop against which they were viewed, Mason shows how they functioned in the social discourse of the time. They were, he argues, expressions of what Americans wanted other Americans, and the world at large, to believe that they believed about America as such. Although acts of communal belief in, or affirmation of, certain cultural myths, these melodramas were acted out on the contested stage of American ideological debate. They show mainstream America's attempt to grapple with the key social issues of the day and to stage the dramatic emergence of the American myth.

Performing America provides fresh perspectives on the development of visions of both America and "America"--that is, the actual community and the constructed concept--on a variety of theatrical stages. It explores the role of theater in the construction of American identity, highlighting the tension between the desire to categorize American identity and the realization that such categorical uniformity may neither be desirable nor possible. The topics covered include the links between politics and the stage during the Federalist period, the appropriation of "Indian" artifacts, an exploration of early gender roles, and the metaphorical connections between the theater and western expansion. Other essays treat vaudeville's artistically colonized cultures; Chautauqua's attempt to homogenize culture and commercialize American ideals; W. E. B. Du Bois's pageant, The Star of Ethiopia, as a strategy for constructing "African-American" as "Other" in an attempt to promote a vision of black nationalism; and how theater was used to help immigrants form a new sense of community while joining the resident culture.The collection then turns to questions of how various ethnic minorities through their recent theatrical work have struggled to argue their identities, especially in relation to the dominant white culture. Two final essays offer critiques of contrasting aspects of the American male. Throughout, the collection addresses questions of marginality and community, exclusion and inclusion, colonialism and imperialism, heterogeneity and homogeneity, conflict and negotiation, repression and opportunity, failure and success, and, above all, the relationship of American stages at large. It will appeal to readers of a wide range of disciplines including history, American culture, gender studies, and theater studies. Jeffrey D. Mason is Professor of Theatre, California State University, Bakersfield. J. Ellen Gainor is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Women's Studies, Cornell University.