THE JOURNAL OF

AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 22, Number 3
Fall2010
Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve
Co-Editors: David Savran and James F. Wilson
Managing Editor: Naomi Stubbs
Editorial Assistant: Andrew Kircher
Circulation Manager: Barrie Gelles
Circulation Assistant: Ana Martinez
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
Frank Hentschker, Executive Director
Professor Edwin Wilson, Chairman, Advisory Board
Professor Daniel Gerould, Director of Publications
Jan Stenzel, Director of Administration
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CENTER
OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF N Ew YoRK
EDITORIAL BoARD
Philip Auslander
Una Chaudhuri
William Demastes
Harry Elam
Jorge Huerta
Stacy Wolf
Shannon Jackson
Jonathan Kalb
Jill Lane
Thomas Postlewait
Robert Vorlicky
The Journal of American Drama and Theatre welcomes submissions. Our aim is
to promote research on theatre of the Americas and to encourage historical and
theoretical approaches to plays, playwrights, performances, and popular theatre
traditions. Manuscripts should be prepared in conformity with The Chicago
Manual of Style, using footnotes (rather than endnotes). We request that articles
be submitted as e-mail attachments, using Microsoft Word format. Please note
that all correspondence will be conducted by e-mail, and please allow three to
four months for a decision. Our distinguished Editorial Board will constitute the
jury of selection. Our e-mail address is jadt@gc.cuny.edu. You may also address
editorial inquiries to the Editors, JADT /Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY
Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4309. Please
visit our web site at web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc.
The Journal of American Drama and Theatre is supported
by generous grants from the Vera Mowry Roberts Chair
in American Theatre and the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in
Theatre Studies at the City University of New York.
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Copyright 2010
The Journal of American Drama and Theatre (ISSN 1044-937X) is a member
of CELJ and is published three rimes a year, in the Winter, Spring, and Fall.
Subscriptions are $20.00 for each calendar year. Foreign subscriptions require an
additional $10.00 for postage. Inquire of Circulation Manager/Martin E. Segal
Theatre Center, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New
York 10016-4309.
All journals are available from ProQuest Information and
Learning as abstracts online via ProQuest information
service and the International Index to the Performing
Arts. All journals are indexed in the MLA International
Bibliography and are members of the Council of Editors
of Learned Journals.
THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE
Volume 22, Number 3 Fall2010
CONTENTS
JONATHAN SHAND Ell 5
The Inheritors of Inheritors: How Susan Glaspell Inspired the
Hedgerow Theatre
EILEEN CuRLEY
A Shot Over the Bow: William Gillette and Amateur
Play Piracy
SANDY ALEXANDRE
Surfeit of Influence: Listening as Retreat and Antidote in
T opdog/ Underdog
CHERYL BLACK
"Three Variations on a National Theme": George O'Neil's
American Dream, 1933
CONTRIBUTORS
The Journal of American Drama and Theatre is pleased to welcome James F.
Wilson as Co-Editor. Wilson is the Deputy Chair of the English Depart-
ment at LaGuardia Community College, Professor of Theatre at the Grad-
uate Center, CUNY, and his new book, Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate
Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, has just been
published by the University of Michigan Press.
23
43
69
91
JoURNAL Ol' AMRRlCAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 22, NO. 3 (FALL 2010)
THE INHERITORS OF INHERITORS: How SusAN GI..AsPELL INSPIRED
THE HEDGEROW THEATRE
Jonathan Shandell
In April 1923, American theatrical pioneer Jasper Deeter founded the
Hedgerow Theatre-a permanent, non-commercial repertory ensemble
in rural Moylan-Rose Valley, Pennsylvania. Deeter was a former member
of the Provincetown Players, an actor and director with Broadway experi-
ence, who had become a trusted collaborator of Eugene O'Neill, Susan
Glaspell, Paul Green, and others. Despite the promise of this young career,
Deeter (a Pennsylvania native) fled the big city for a distant rural suburb
of Philadelphia. There, in a gristmill-turned-meeting hall, he established
a new theatre company dedicated to goals of artistic excellence, commu-
nal citizenship, and spiritual growth for theatre artists. Over the ensuing
thirty-three years of Deeter's leadership, the Hedgerow became America's
foremost (and, for most of that time, its only) permanent repertory com-
pany. The group achieved a remarkable record as an independent, unsub-
sidized professional ensemble staging: world premieres of new dramas by
American playwrights (including Lynn Riggs, Sherwood Anderson, and
Countee Cullen); the American or world premiers of works by foreign-
born dramatists (Shaw, Andreyev, Piscator, and other playwrights from
Mexico, Italy, Russia, Canada, and elsewhere); and an ambitious assort-
ment of revivals and classics-all presented in rotating repertory, rather
than the conventional "long run" format of most American professional
comparues.
The activities and accomplishments of the Hedgerow remain
relatively obscure within American theatre history, in large part thanks to
its founder's deliberate flight from the New York spotlight. Free from the
pressures of big-city careerism and the scrutiny of critics, Deeter could
pursue those artistic ideals that had originally brought the Provincetown
Players to life--experimentation, dedication to the playwright, collabora-
tive ensemble creation-but had been abandoned in the wake of the run-
away Broadway success of The Emperor Jones in 1920. Deeter sought a per-
manent creative home that was ambitious in its artistry, professional in its
standards, and non-commercial (or even anti-commercial) in its decision-
making. Much remains to be unearthed and written about the Hedgerow
and its decades-long work towards a theatre that was collectively rather
than autocratically governed, collaborative rather than star-driven, and
6 SHAND Ell
nurturing rather than mercenary toward its talent.
Among the hundreds of plays that rotated through the Hedge-
row repertory, the most popular drama during Jasper Deeter's years of
leadership at Hedgerow was Inheritors by Susan Glaspell. Inheritors followed
George Bernard Shaw's Candida in 1923 as the second play ever staged
by the Hedgerow Theatre, and remained a part of the regular repertory
in Rose Valley for decades, with special performances of the play given
annually on Fourth of July and Memorial Day.
1
The company's interest
in Glaspell's drama was initially a result of Deeter's own personal history
with the play-as original director and creator of the role of Ira Morton
for the Provincetown's 1921 premiere. As the ensemble grew, the Hedge-
row would come to revere Inheritors as "the group's bible .... Without a
doubt ... the company's favorite play, because it expresses so clearly and
beautifully the idealism and purpose of group work in America."
2
In De-
cember 1936, Deeter wrote to Glaspell (who had never visited Rose Valley
for a performance):
I can't tell the story of how Inheritors made possible a new
kind of theatre .... [T)he story of what life might be if
people could bring their caring directly to bear upon their
ways of doing can best be told by you and the fact that
you have never seen your theatre is of no importance;
you know all about it without looking.
3
For Deeter and his collaborators, Inheritors served as an ideological
blueprint: a manifesto, in dramatic form, that captured and passionately
expressed the values that were fundamental to their enterprise. This essay
will explore in detail the relationship between Hedgerow and its "bible,"
tracing the fertile connections between the substance of Inhentors and the
historic "new kind of theatre" it kindled and helped sustain in Rose Valley,
PA for more than three decades.
Inheritors chronicles four decades of history in a .Midwestern town
modeled on Glaspell's childhood home of Davenport, Iowa. The first act
(set in 1879) introduces Grandmother Morton, one of the earliest white
1
This does not include the years 1941-46, during which time Glaspell refused to
allow performances of Inheritors anywhere (as discussed later in this essay).
2
"Story #1," 1936 Press Release, microform, reel #6, Hedgerow Theatre Col-
lection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
3
Jasper Deeter, letter to Susan Glaspell, 9 December 1936, MS, box 16, folder
4, Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Howard Gottleib Archival Research Center, Boston Uni-
versity, Boston, MA.
THE INHERITORS Or INHERITORS
7
settlers of the area, and her son Silas-who altruistically donates valuable
family lands for the establishment of a "college in the cornfields."
4
Its
second and third acts take place in 1920, amid the fortieth anniversary cel-
ebrations for Morton College. A crisis erupts as local police brutalize, ar-
rest, and threaten to deport students from India for speaking out in favor
of Indian independence from British colonial rule. The only individual
willing to speak and act in defense of "the Hindus" is young Madeline
Fejevary Morton, Silas's granddaughter and student at the college. In defi-
ance of the nativism and xenophobia that have overtaken her community,
Madeline confronts the police as they detain the foreigners, and then re-
fuses (on principle) to use her family connections to keep herself out of
prison. Voicing solidarity with the plight of her friend Fred Jordan, who
languishes in jail for his refusal to be conscripted into the United States
Army to fight in World War I, Madeline bravely accepts her new role as a
political prisoner. Her defiant actions elevate her beyond the reactionary
paranoia of her age and link her with the progressive and heroic spirit of
her grandfather Silas.
Inheritors took on a profound resonance when performed in Rose
Valley, for it articulated not only one playwright's vision of American his-
tory, American democracy, and the threats posed to America from within;
it also, in ways the playwright never could have envisioned, captured the
core purpose and identity of the Hedgerow Theatre. Like the chronicle of
the Morton family, the story of the Hedgerow is grounded in a spirit of
rebelliousness, sacrifice, and progressive social change. The roots of the
company stretch back to Deeter's earlier experiences with the Provinc-
etown Players, particularly within the cast of the commercial juggernaut
The Emperor Jones. A long run as Smithers in this Broadway hit soured
Deeter on the prospect of a conventional stage career. He had grown wea-
ry of performing the same role eight times weekly, and returned from his
Broadway stint to the Provincetown hoping the company might reorient
itself toward its original anti-commercial objectives. Remembering, too,
his experiences seeing professional road companies pass through Har-
risburg, his childhood home, Deeter became inspired by a "feeling that it
would be better if [professional actors] had an [opportunity] to do some-
thing else some other night. [M]y one and only purpose for myself in the
theatre ... was that there should be change. Change in the theatre means
repertory." A true repertory format-in which a permanent company
of actors rotate through a slate of plays throughout a season, changing
their offerings several times each week- was in Deeter's vision the only
cure for an industry addicted to the potentially profitable but intellectu-
4
Susan Glaspell, Inheritors (Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1921), 30.
8 SHANDEU.
ally deadening formula of the long run. Not only actors reap the rewards
of a rotating repertory, but also directors, playwrights, and audiences. "I
believe," Deeter once remarked, "that repertory is the most valuable form
of theatrical presentation for the sake of the so-called undiscovered play-
wright, unknown material, for the experimentation of directors and for
the experience and growth of the actor and director . . .. I felt that without
variety there must be staleness."
5
After brief stints in a road company of
The Emperor Jones and as a performer on the Swarthmore Chautauqua cir-
cuit, Deeter launched the pursuit of his dream with a staging of Candida in
the Rose Valley Association Guild Hall in April 1923.
6
Preparing for this
event, he wrote to a local resident of Rose Valley, "The rehearsal the other
night . .. was one of the finest experiences in t he theatre and it makes
me know that if I do not ask too much we can have the finest repertoire
theatre in the country in R[ose] V[alley] next year."
7
Jasper Deeter's vision to build a world-class repertory theatre in a
rural gristmill clearly evokes Silas Morton's ambition to "climb a hill and
plant a college" amid the cornfields of the Midwest.
8
Both Deeter and
his dramatic foil Silas faced the strong headwind of a culture that valued
self-advancement and personal financial gain. In act 1 of Inheritors, the
voice for this conventional wisdom is Grandmother Morton-the family
matriarch who turns somewhat stingy in her old age. Grandmother tries to
dissuade her son against donating his valuable lands for the public good:
"Children of other old settlers are getting rich. I should think you want
yours to."
9
She argues to her son, "We got the best land 'cause we was first
here. We got a right to keep it," but Silas cannot be deterred from his vi-
5
Jasper Deeter, interviewed by Richard K. Doud, 1964, TS, microform, reel #1,
Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
6
Founded in 1912 by Paul M. Pearson, the Swarthmore Chautauqua was "a non-
profit enterprise financially backed by private investors, many of whom were Quakers. The
Association at its peak operated about 2,000 Chautauqua in the smaller towns along the
eastern seaboard. The Chautauqua movement was an institution in the late-nineteenth and
early-twentieth centuries which provided popular education along with entertainment in
the form of concerts, lectures, and the like, generally travelling on a circuit to small towns
to provide enrichment." (Abstract to ''An Inventory of the Paul M. Pearson Papers, 1890-
1969," Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. http:/ /www.swarthmore.edu/
Library/friends/ead/5121ppea1.xml (accessed 29 January 2010).
7
Jasper Deeter, quoted in Eleanor Price Mather, "The Early Folk," in The History
of Rose Vaflry, volume 1, edited by Peter Ham and Eleanor Price .Mather (Delaware County,
PA: Borough of Rose Valley, 1973), 40-41.
8
Glaspell, Inheritors, 29.
9
Ibid., 35.
THE INHERITORS OF ]N HERITORS 9
sion of a future defined not by personal wealth and family possession, but
by the pursuit of "the life that grows up from learning."
10
The prairie town
of Glaspell's drama stands on the brink of industrial expansion-a future
for which the Morton family is well-positioned financially. But individual
profit is anathema to Silas, who sees a future defined by different values:
"Why the buffalo here before us was more than we if we do nothin' but
prosper! God damn us if we sit here rich and fat and forget man's in the
makin'."
11
In the search for a future that sets aside profit and status in
favor of spiritual growth, both Silas Morton and Jasper Deeter put their
faith in visions of new, progressively-minded institutions. Like Morton
College, the Hedgerow Theatre sprang directly from the mind of an anti-
commercial dreamer into the American countryside.
Tied in with a faith in the repertory system as a cure-all was the
Hedgerow's ethos of shared living and collective weU-being. Permanent
members resided together in company housing at or near the theatre site
in Rose Valley; they lived communally, sharing not only roles in front of
the footlights, backstage work, and administrative duties connected with
running the theatre, but also all the prosaic chores of daily living: cooking,
cleaning, gardening, property maintenance, and the like. The cooperative
nature of Hedgerovian life was of particular interest to commentators
who discovered and wrote about the company. A 1932 profile in Stage
magazine strikes an amused tone at the spartan conditions among the art-
ists living at Hedgerow:
When we arrived, one of the actors was hanging up the
wash in the sloping thicket behind the playhouse. The
entire community is like that. They all live together in a
house nearby and do all their own work except the cook-
ing. (They are ready to cook in emergencies.) The theatre
foots the bills for rent and food; when business is good
the house may get an extra beefsteak.
12
Hedgerovians willingly agreed not only to mop floors for their art, but
also to forego individual financial gain while residing with the company;
salaries were very modest, with all surplus company funds reinvested in
the theatre's operations. Such conditions of residency speak to the collec-
10
Ibid., 41, 22.
II Ibid., 42.
12
"Going Places," Hedgeroviana 1, no. 2 (September 1936), Clippings file, Billy
Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York.
10 SHAND ELL
tive faith Hedgerow members shared in the theatre's artistic mission.
A willingness to scrimp and sacrifice together was in large part
the engine behind the company's survival during the Depression years.
Through the 1930s, the Hedgerow was the only legitimate theatre in the
Philadelphia area to remain in continuous operation. Thus the Hedgero-
vians lived the example that Glaspell creates through the Morton fam-
ily-perseverance through shared sacrifice. This spirit of frontier com-
munalism lives first in Grandmother Morton, who (in her more altruis-
tic younger days as an early settler) "never went to bed without leaving
something on the stove" for others in need.
13
This outlook passes to Silas,
who founds Morton College in the same spirit of collectivism. "There's
other land for my own children," Silas proclaims. "This [hill] is for all the
children."
14
His granddaughter Madeline later takes up the cause, pledg-
ing to donate her share of the family fortune to help the Morton College
students from India defend themselves against political persecution: "if
it's true that these strangers in our country are going to be abused because
they're poor,-what else could I do with my money and not feel like a
skunk?"
15
she asks her uncle Felix, renewing her grandfather's commit-
ment to the communal welfare of "all the children" of her community.
The demographics of the community surrounding the Morton
family legacy deserves closer examination. One remarkable aspect of In-
heritors is the challenge it offers to what Sara Eddy describes as "the cultural
assumption that a fully unified white race conquered the West." Glaspell's
portrait of frontier America predicts the "[r]ecent recovery work" on race
and settlement life about which Eddy writes. Inhen.tors demonstrates how
"the Great Plains was-and to a large extent still is-a salad bowl of
multiple ethnicities" including both white and non-white groups.
16
The
play depicts or references-with a fiercely democratic demand for equal
justice and protection for all-an array of ethnic and racial identities: Na-
tive Americans displaced and brutalized by westward settlement; the early
white settlers who fought them; Central European emigres; and students
from India, whose right to enjoy the protections of American liberty is
worthy of young Madeline's noble sacrifice. Silas's shame at the crimes
perpetrated on the great chief Blackhawk and his tribesmen, his admira-
tion for the courage and refined thinking of his Hungarian neighbor Felix
13
Glaspell, Inherilon, 10.
14
Ibid., 35.
IS Ibid., 109.
16
Sara Eddy, "'Wheat and Potatoes': Reconstructing Whiteness in 0. E. R01-
vaag's Immigrant Trilogy," MELUS 26, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 129-30.
THE INHERITORS OF !NHERJTORS 11
Fejevary, and Madeline's compassion for the plight of the persecuted Hin-
dus all contribute to the play's promotion of American pluralism and its
strident condemnation of racism and jingoistic nationalism. Glaspell asks
her nation to engage, as Silas voices it, in a "seeing how 'tis for the other
person-a bein' that other person," particularly when that "other person"
is other in racial or ethnic termsY
In meticulous fashion, ]. Ellen Gainor suggests links between
"Glaspell's sensitivity to racial discrimination in Inheritor!' and various his-
torical currents feeding the play's composition:
18
the Espionage Act of
1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, the "first Red Scare'' of the late 1910s
(culminating in the Palmer Raids of 1920), and the anti-immigrant shib-
boleth of "one hundred percent Americanism" that became prevalent in
the post-World War I years. The persistence and popularity of the drama
in the Hedgerow repertory over several decades suggests, in part, that
Glaspell's critiques of American social prejudice transcended the imme-
diate history of the 1910s-1920s, and continued to resonate in various
contexts for decades thereafter.
Deeter and the Hedgerow were uniquely positioned for conveying
Glaspell's antiracist message to new audiences. Over its first three decades,
Hedgerovians took extraordinary steps toward building among themselves
the kind of diverse and inclusive community for which Madeline risks
her freedom in Inheritors. Deeter's personal interest in combating prejudice
stretched back to his days in the Provincetown Players, when (according to
some accounts, most notably his own) he played a part in bringing African
American actor Charles S. Gilpin in for the tide role of The Emperor Jones.
In an interview, Deeter claimed:
I fought for the casting of Mr. Gilpin as a member of the
board- they said, "You bring a nigger on this stage and
nobody will come near it." And that kind of thinking is
just nothing. So I fought them, insulted them, and beat
my way to the use of Mr. Gilpin instead of one of the
quite able white actors that they wanted to use.
19
17
Glaspell, Inheritors, 24.
18
J. Ellen Gainor, Susan GlaspeU in Context (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2001), 125. See pages 112-42 for Gainor's full discussion of Inhen.lors and its histori-
cal contexts.
19
Deeter, interviewed by Doud. Linda Ben-Zvi's warning deserves repeating
here: "Who chose the great Charles Gilpin for the part of Jones ... is still debated in Prov-
incetown lore." Linda Ben-Z vi, Susan Glaspe/1. Her Uft and Times (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2005), 230. While many accounts credit Provincetown founder and guiding spirit
12 SHAND ELL
Whether or not this account is true, Deeter did achieve a surprising ca-
maraderie with his African American collaborator in the play. He went to
extraordinary lengths to help Gilpin with his role, and conspired with Gil-
pin's third wife Alma to keep the actor away from alcohol on performance
nights. Deeter was fired from the touring company of The Emperor Jones,
but stayed with Gilpin at his own expense to help the actor cope with the
anxiety of facing tough audiences and critics in Chicago.
Outside of his work with the Provincetown, Deeter continued to
pursue an agenda that Cheryl Black justly celebrates as "a profound, anti-
racist challenge to the status quo" of the American theatre and of Ameri-
can society more broadly.
20
The Hedgerow Theatre became in many ways
the platform from which he issued this challenge. Throughout the first de-
cades of the company's existence, during a time when African American
performers had few options for serious dramatic acting on a professional
stage, Deeter and his collaborators "offered unprecedented opportunities
for black artists at Hedgerow, placing shows with racial themes and black
casts into (the] repertory season."
21
The first of these opportunities came
in 1927, after a forced closure of the company due to financial difficulties.
During the hiatus, Deeter returned to New York to direct Paul Green's In
b r a h a m ~ Bosom for the Provincetown Players at the Experimental The-
atre, in a critically acclaimed and award-winning production that featured
Rose McClendon, Abbie Mitchell, and Frank Wilson. Encouraged by the
success of Green's drama, Deeter brought the New York cast to Rose Val-
ley for a special engagement of In b r a h a m ~ Bosom during the off-nights
of their New York run (Mondays and Tuesdays). According to a report in
the company newsletter, "Philadelphians swarmed here to see the Pulitzer
Prize play at $3.30 per seat, and Hedgerow began to pay its debts.'m
Thus it was African American artists whose work helped save
Hedgerow from financial ruin and possible extinction quite early in its
history. From that first inclusion of black actors, the group fostered--on
its stage, in its rehearsal halls, and within its audiences- integration of
African Americans within its community, in direct defiance of the de facto
George Cram Cook with finding and recruiting Gilpin for the role, Deeter consistently
claimed credit for insisting on a black actor for Brutus Jones. Deeter's claim can never be
verified. Nonetheless, it is worth considering in light of his subsequent work with African
American actors and playwrights at Hedgerow.
20
Cheryl Black, "After the Emperor: Interracial Collaborations Between Prov-
incetown Alumni and Black Theatre Artists, c. 1924-1946;' Journal of American Drama and
Theatre 20, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 24.
21
Ibid., 20.
22
"Going Places," Hedgeroviana.
THE lNHERJTORS 01' [NHEIUTORS 13
segregation and racial animosity that dominated early- and mid-twentieth-
century American life. The Emperor Jones was a perennial favorite in the
repertory, bringing local and national acclaim for Wayland Rudd and Ar-
thur Rich, two black Hedgerovians who played Brutus in Rose Valley.
23
The company also gave America its first black Othello on a professional
stage, featuring Rudd as Shakespeare's tide character from 1930 (predating
Paul Robeson's New York appearance by thirteen years). In 1929, follow-
ing a revival of In Abraham's Bosom at Hedgerow with most of the original
cast, a "colored division" of Hedgerow was founded. The exact lifespan,
nature, and activities of this "colored division" are unclear in the historical
record; but the years that followed saw the productions of several dramas
with African American casts. These included a world premiere adaptation
of Countee Cullen's novel One ~ To Heaven, several Paul Green one-act
Negro dramas, and Samson Raphaelson's White Man-a play set in Har-
lem that tells "the story of a white man with Negro blood in his veins ..
. driven to frantic action in order that he may escape the thralldom of his
ostracism." One review explains how Raphaelson "made special selection
of the Hedgerow Players for the premiere of 'White Man' because of
the fact that the director Deeter gained repute through staging 'Emperor
Jones' and 'In Abraham's Bosom."'
24
The Hedgerow pursued its antiracist agenda through other means
as well. Deeter pioneered the practice of casting African American ac-
tors non-traditionally, placing black performers in dramas by George Ber-
nard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill. The theatre also integrated its audiences,
in direct defiance of prevailing practice in the American theatre. Actress
Frances Williams, an African American actress who lived and trained at
Hedgerow for several years, tells:
[L]ots of wealthy people lived in that area and, of course,
were all white. They would come to the theater and have
to sit next to a black person and it disturbed them. I mean,
23
Special performances of The Emperor Jones were also mounted by Hedgerow
with Paul Robeson (in 1924) and Gilpin (in 1934) as Brutus Jones. Curiously enough, the
first inclusion of The Emperor Jones in the regular Hedgerow repertory in 1923 featured
19-year-old Sidney Machet, a white actor, in the title role: the very casting practice against
which Deeter claimed to have protested so defiantly to the board of the Provincetown
Players. The first black actor to play Brutus at Hedgerow on a regular basis was Wayland
Rudd, who first took the role in 1929. In all productions of the play at Hedgerow, Deeter
revived the role of Smithers.
24
Herman L. Dieck, "Excellence of Performances Given by Garrick's Company
Sunday," Philadelphia Sundqy Record, 2 July 1929, microform, reel #7, Hedgerow Theatre
Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
14
they were disturbed. And this man, maybe playing in a pro-
duction, would look out and recognize what was happen-
ing. He would stop the play and say, 'We have plenty of
time to wait for that man to get up and go out if he doesn't
like my friends who are here." He did this regularly.
25
SH.ANDEU..
Deeter also brought African American writers to Rose Valley as play-
wrights-in-residence-most notably Langston Hughes, who wrote his
Broadway play Mulatto while residing at Hedgerow in the summer of 1930.
The multifaceted efforts of Deeter and the Hedgerow to create
an inclusive and integrated artistic community are particularly noteworthy,
given the historical and social contexts within which the company was
working. Certain commentators recognized the radical nature of inter-
racial collaboration at Rose Valley. A 1929 review of The Emperor Jones in
the Philadelphia Dai!J News described the Hedgerow's production and (by
implication) all the theatre's efforts as "something that will cause even a
klansman to check his tar and feathers with his hat.,z
6
In 1932, the black
newspaper the Chicago Difender published a full-page feature article on
Hedgerow and its record of inclusion and racial justice:
Hedgerow theater is more than a theater-it is an experi-
ment in democracy ... . Hedgerow theater tells the world
that men and women of all races can live in these United
States in perfect harmony-that the color line can be
forgotten-that men and women, in search of that elu-
sive muse of the drama, can and do forget that there is a
difference in human complexions.
27
This article not only praises Hedgerow's record of opening its doors to
African American artists and developing the talents of actors like Rudd
and McClendon. It also celebrates the very existence of a communal ar-
tistic enterprise in which "whites and blacks ate, slept, played, and act-
ed together without a semblance of racial friction." Such a community
25
Frances Williams, "To Hell With Bandanas," interviewed by Karen Anne
Mason and Richard Candida Smith (Los Angeles: University of California Oral History
Program, 1997), TS, 58.
26
J. H. Keen, "Observations: The Morning After," Philadelphia Dai!J News, 6 July
1929, microform, reel #6, Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Historical Society of Pennsyl-
vania.
27
Dewey R. Jones, "Hedgerow Theater Sets New Standard in Solution of
American Race Problem," Chicago Defender, 17 December 1932, 10.
THE INHERITORS OF INHERITOR.!' 15
foreshadowed nothing less than the future eradication of American racial
animosities: "Whatever prejudices there might have been in the hearts
of young white men and women, Hedgerow automatically took it out of
them, ... The Hedgerow theater, to me, is the one real, living example of
progress in the American social system."
28
The connections between the antiracist message of Inheritors and
the antiracist mode of living, playing, and working that defined Hedgerow
are indirect ones, in that Glaspell does not directly dramatize a black/
white American racial binary. Still, Deeter's career-long concern for the
equitable treatment of black actors and audience members evokes Silas
Morton's humanist tendency to "fret more about the Indians than anyone
else," and his righteous impulse to "pay my debts [to] the red boys here
before me"
29
for the crimes perpetrated by white settlers. Despite the ra-
cial essentialism and white chauvinism inherent in Silas's epithet of "red
boys," it is for its time a remarkably progressive sentiment. A spirit kindred
to that behind the "experiment in democracy'' conducted in Rose Valley
also motivates Madeline's impetuous and fiercely principled experiment in
civil disobedience. Glaspell's heroine is described at various points as "pe-
culiar," "moody'' and "high-spirited";
30
nothing in the play suggests that
she has any history of political activism prior to her confrontation with
police on Morton College's fortieth anniversary. She explains to her uncle
Felix her desire to defend the Hindu students against political persecution
by saying: "They're people from the other side of the world who came
here believing in us, drawn from the far side of the world by things we say
about ourselves. Well, I'm going to pretend- just for fun-that the things
we say about ourselves are true."
31
Madeline is being somewhat facetious
here, but is also speaking to the improvisational nature of her actions. Her
decision to make a public stand for justice is, in essence, an experiment in a
new mode of democratic citizenship-an untested tactic for a young in-
genue otherwise more concerned with her tennis game than with fighting
28
Ibid. I am greatly indebted to Cheryl Black's prior work on Jasper Deeter, and
her generous consultation on my scholarship. It was she who drew my attention to this
Chicago Defender article on Deeter and tbe Hedgerow, which she cites in her essay on Deeter.
In November 2009, Black and I were co-conveners of a working session on inter-racial and
multicultural theatre and performance at tbe annual conference of the American Society
of Theatre Research in San Juan, Puerto Rico. At Black's suggestion, we used a potent
turn-of-phrase from this Defender profile of the Hedgerow as tbe title of our session: "'Ex-
periments in Democracy': Performing an Inter-racial and Multi-cultural America."
29
Glaspell, Inheritors, 23, 35-6.
30
Ibid., 54, 70, 77.
31
Ibid., 107.
16 SHAND ELL
with policemen. Glaspell's conclusion to Inheritors is equivocal on whether
her experiment will yield any tangible benefits for American society; it is
also an open question where and how the Hedgerow's experiments with
inter-racial partnership and collaboration might have extended themselves
outside of the controlled and isolated laboratory in Rose Valley.
Yet another parallel between the history of the Hedgerow and
the dramaturgy of Inheritors took shape as the United States mobilized
for entry into World War II. Just as Glaspell's characters Madeline and
Professor Holden alienate themselves from society by supporting Fred
Jordan's right not to fight in World War I, so too did the Hedgerow fi nd
itself marginalized over its own opposition to mandatory military service.
Beginning in 1940, the Hedgerow started preparing for the impact that a
World War II-related "national emergency" might have on its operations.
The prospect of gasoline and tire rationing was of major concern, given
the theatre's rural setting and dependence on automobile travel for audi-
ences and operations. Of far greater worry was the prospect of a draft.
On 29 July 1940-two months before the passage of the Selective Train-
ing and Service Act, and seventeen months before the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor- Deeter wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a
plea "to save the life of our organization" by granting exemption from any
future draft to all of Hedgerow's "members in good standing as of March
1, 1940." Deeter made this plea on practical grounds; the removal of even
three draft-eligible male members, he argued, would leave the organization
"seriously maimed" and assure its "financial failure." The request was also
wrapped in patriotic rhetoric, with Deeter describing his company as one
founded on "a democratically sound principle" and operating in concert
with the highest aspirations of "a nation governed democratically."
32
This appeal to President Roosevelt was rebuffed, and about one
year later, male Hedgerovians started receiving their draft questionnaires and
notices to appear before draft boards. More letters followed from Deeter
and Hedgerow Chairman of the Board of Governors Mahlon Naill to vari-
ous government officials. A letter to General Lewis B. Hershey, Director
of the Selective Service, read: "Here in Rose Valley we feel we have always
been at war, ... with the large system of exploitation of the public taste and
degeneration of the public morale for the sake of private profit which has
been the chief distinguishing feature of the New York commercial theatre
for many years .... [It is a] long, slow, and inglorious war for the good, the
32
Jasper Deeter, letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 29 July 1940, micro-
form, reel # 5, Hedgerow Thearre CoUection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
THE INHERITORS OF [NHERITOR> 17
national good, the international good, the great fight for the freedom of
the mind."
33
The attempt to equate the artistic work of the theatre com-
bating enemies of the mind with the military campaign against enemy na-
tions failed to convince General Hershey. Other missives to Army and draft
board officials and even to Eleanor Roosevelt also met with no success.
With their efforts frustrated, Deeter and his collaborators might
have resigned themselves to scaling back or even suspending their activi-
ties for the war years. In other words: they might have chosen the course
of Glaspell's character Professor Holden-the erstwhile radical who
shares Madeline's concern for Fred Jordan, but comes to warn her of "the
danger [in] becoming alien to society" and to counsel her on the wisdom
of "making compromises to stay within."
34
Instead, in the fall of 1942, the
Hedgerow marshaled Madeline's defiance and increased their efforts. The
company took their campaign for survival public with an open letter to
prominent friends and supporters, which argued:
The Selective Service law contains no provision for de-
ferment for cultural pursuits. It does provide for defer-
ment for work which is in the "national interest." The
higher officials have generally interpreted this phrase to
mean essential war production, while local draft boards
have interpreted it in many divergent ways according to
local conditions and requirements. So far, no officer or
branch of the Selective Service System has seen fit to
include the work of the Hedgerow Theatre within the
scope of the "national interest." Therefore, Hedgerow is
asking others ... to find the words which might change
thinking of Selective Service.
Thus, the Hedgerow sought- at a time when the national zeitgeist was al-
most singularly focused on the exigencies of armed conflict- testimonials
that might convince the government and the public at large that the "na-
tional interest" was not and should never be restricted to militarism or geo-
politics. This appeal concluded with a declaration whose naked challenge to
prevailing American sentiment seems to have sprung right out of Glaspell's
dialogue in Inheritors. ''America must," the Hedgerow declared, "preserve
33
Letter to General Lewis B. Hershey, unattributed, March 1942, microform,
reel #5, Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
34
Glaspell, Inheritors, 143-4
18 SHfu"'DELL
the things it is fighting to preserve while it is fighting to preserve them."
35
Responses to this appeal were mixed. In support of the company,
Sean O'Casey wrote stirringly from Dublin: "In a war, life is a thing of
national importance as well as death. If it be that the theatre is of no use,
then why not turn every art gallery into a munitions works? ... If we
did [such] things, we not only do not deserve to win, we do not deserve
to live."
36
Some who wrote to the Hedgerow concurred with such senti-
ments, while others concurred with Paul Green-who expressed sympa-
thy for Hedgerow's predicament but challenged the fundamental premise
of their campaign: "when a nation or group of nations embark seriously
on the business of war, all decorations, beauties, aesthetic cravings, func-
tions and soarings of the creative spirit must immediately stand before the
court of Practical Use and be tried. And without exception they, in times
past as well as now, are found guilty of vagrancy."
37
The decision to expand the campaign for draft exemption beyond
direct appeals to the government was a risky one for the Hedgerow. As
the public learned of the company's hopes for exclusion from the Selec-
tive Service, the backlash was severely negative. Local and national media
reported in detail on the Hedgerow's efforts, fueling public criticism of
Deeter and the company. Newspapers published scathing editorials criti-
cizing the group's efforts. The Philadelphia Dai!J fucord-a publication with
a history of positive coverage and support for Hedgerow, wrote:
Look here, Jasper Deeter, you are making an ass of your-
self. It is high time your best friends told you about it .
. . . Hedgerow is a really fine experimental theater, Mr.
Deeter. It is true that Hedgerow has upheld "the integrity
and democracy of the theater," as you say. Yet Hedgerow
is as one-ten thousandth of a flyspeck compared to this
global war which is being fought for the highest stakes in
history. Some of your friends say your request for blan-
ket exemption for your Hedgerow players stamps you as
the super-egocentric of modern times. We don't think
you're an egotist. ... No, you're not a victim of ego-
35
Letter of Appeal, unattributed, undated, microform, reel #5, Hedgerow The-
atre Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
36
Sean O'Casey, letter to Jasper Deeter and Mahlon Naill, 31 October 1942,
microform, reel #5, Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
37
Paul Green, letter to Jasper Deeter, 22 September 1942, microform, reel #5,
Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
T HE INHERITORS OF I NHERITORS
19
mania, Mr. Deeter. The word is myopia.
38
Local residents and many Hedgerow patrons composed angry Letters to
the Editor. They also wrote missives of disapproval directly to the theatre,
which ranged in tone from formal ("I wish to give no support to a group
whose attitude toward their national duties in war time is a national dis-
grace") to aggressive ("I hope you and the other Scabs will be put on the
firing line post-haste") to sardonic ('"GO TO HELL, DEETER', from
'I.M.N. AMER1CAN').
39
Still, the Hedgerow remained steadfast in its efforts to preserve
their democratic undertaking and to force a public reexamination of the
relationship of cultural institutions like the Hedgerow to the "national
interest" of a country at war. The problems further intensified in Octo-
ber 1942, when an Executive Order signed by General Hershey on be-
half of President Roosevelt reversed decisions made by Hedgerow's local
draft board and granted Conscientious Objector status to three Hedgerow
members: Morgan Smedley, Joseph W Leberman, and George Ebeling.
The reasons behind General Hershey's overruling of the draft board's
decision are unclear. But the decision inspired a new deluge of criticism
for Hedgerow-creating what one newspaper account called "the most
serious draft scandal of the war."
40
The incident made national news, with
Time, the New York Times, and various wire services running stories that
reported on these cases and all of Hedgerow's efforts. Hedgerow became
a national pariah-seen from coast to coast as a group of unpatriotic
misfits seeking any and all available means to avoid wartime sacrifice and
patriotic duty. That nineteen Hedgerow men were serving in the armed
forces at the time went entirely unreported.
The Hedgerow never prevailed on General Hershey or Presi-
dent Roosevelt to enact the change to American draft policy they sought.
Throughout the war years, Hedgerow did struggle to survive; they scaled
back productions and once suspended operations briefly, from Decem-
ber 1942 to March 1943. Throughout the draft controversy and its af-
termath, the Hedgerow's determination (whatever the consequences) to
38
~ d v i c e for Jasper Deeter Of The Hedgerow Theatre," Philadelphia Record, 7
October 1942, microform, reel #5, Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania. Boldface in original.
39
"World War U Material," microform, reel #5, Hedgerow Theatre Collection,
Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
40
''New Play at Hedgerow: 'Not Caught in the Draft,"' Philadelphia Record, 21
October 1942, microform, reel #5, Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania.
20
SHAND ELL
stake a claim for their own contributions to the "national interest" evoke
Madeline's own statement of purpose in going to prison: "I think I'm
an American. And for that reason I think I have something to say about
America."
41
In both the difficulty of having her say, and in her determina-
tion to endure the consequences, Madeline's struggles suggest a model of
patriotic opposition later followed by the theatre company most directly
inspired by her words.
Thus it becomes all the more striking that-at a time in American
history when Hedgerow members, theatre audiences, and the nation at
large might have been most in need of inspiration from Glaspell's drama-
the playwright decided to cease all public performances of Inheritors for
the duration of World War II. In a letter to Deeter in September 1941
(which I quote at length to demonstrate fully the problems raised by the
playwright's stance), Glaspell wrote:
I have warmly appreciated your keeping [Inheritors] in
production all these years, and the feeling you have about
it. I deeply felt Inheritors when I wrote it, and I believe
there is much in the play that is not confined to a par-
ticular time. But people who do not think carefully- and
there are, unfortunately, a good many of them-could
relate things said of that time to this present day, which
might well make it seem I was not in sympathy with what
my country is now doing. The contrary is true. I believe
we have to fight and win this war. I think our country is
in greater danger than ever before in its history-that all
we hold dear, all worth living for, is threatened. The light
might go out-and for generations to come. I would not
have words of mine-even though unjustly, for those
words were not spoken of this time- give support to
those who may oppose this war which has been forced
upon us. In the course of the struggle, things may be
done which we will greatly deplore, and it might seem
Inheritors would have its word to say about those things-
trying to check them, avoid needless injustices, keep a
balance. But as Inheritors is written, being written for
another time, I think it might now do more harm than
good, and so I am asking you to withdraw it. I say this
sadly, but as I feel, I can do nothing else.
42
41
Glaspell, Inhen'tors, 123.
42
Susan Glaspell, Letter to Jasper Deeter, 12 September 1941, MS, box 16,
THE lNHERlTORS OF INHERITORS 21
The conflict Glaspell expresses here-between her belief in the
core sentiments of own drama, and her investment in the justness of
"this war" (as distinguished from the last war)-is deeply felt. This writer
was not the only left-leaning American of her generation to set aside a
desire for protest that erupted in 1920s and to express somewhat uncriti-
cal support of the campaign that would come to be known as "the good
war." Her skepticism over how audiences might have responded to Inheri-
tors seems well founded, given the American social climate during World
War II; the Hedgerow's own experiences with the public over the draft
illustrate the danger clearly enough. But there is palpable irony in the play-
wright's willingness to shelve Inheritors and to withhold "its word to say''
from a theatre company so uniquely positioned to deliver it, a group that
was at the time fighting a very similar struggle to the one that consumes
and ennobles the heroine of her play.
Glaspell never makes any direct argument in Inhen'tors against
America's involvement in overseas conflict. At one point, Madeline de-
fends and praises the sacrifice of her brother Fred Morton (who, accord-
ing to Glaspell's exposition, died fighting the Great War in France) by
arguing to her father Ira, "It was fine of him to give his life to what he
believed should be."
43
Glaspell's program is not to question the joining
of the battle abroad, but to highlight and protest a calcification of spirit
and a corruption of democracy at home as that battle continued. Her
purpose is to celebrate patriotic resistance against the kind of deplorable
political pressures that waging war can engender, those very same pressures to
which Glaspell herself made preemptive accommodation through volun-
tary self-censorship.
Hedgerow did accede to Glaspell's request and suspended per-
formances of Inheritors for the duration of the conflict. At the same time,
Deeter and company refused to make equivalent concessions in fighting
against the tide of public sentiment for (as they saw it) their own survival
during World War II. Thus, it may be fair to say that the Hedgerow The-
atre proved themselves more worthy than the playwright herself as the
inheritors of the spirit of Inheritors. Today, in the age of a "global war on
terror," as we wrestle anew with thorny questions of threats to security,
erosions of liberty, and the true meaning of patriotism, the legacies of
Inheritors and the Hedgerow Theatre remain as vital and vexing as ever.
folder 4, Hedgerow Theatre Collection, Howard Gottleib Archival Research Center, Bos-
ton University.
43
Glaspell, Inheritors, 150.
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 22, NO.3 (FAll 2010)
A SHOT OVER THE Bow: WILLIAM GILLETTE AND
AMATEUR PLAY PIRACY
Eileen Curley
Many nineteenth-century amateur performers defined and rigorously de-
fended the distinctions between amateur and commercial theatricals.
1
The
ladies and gentlemen of society needed to maintain these boundaries so
that their productions would not be tainted by the dubious morality of
a profession whose conventions and manners they nevertheless clearly
emulated in their private theatricals. Despite published advice in amateur
theatrical guidebooks which often advised simple productions of non-
commercial plays, amateurs regularly chose to stage commercial plays, cre-
ate or rent elaborate costumes and sets, produce programs, advertise their
shows, and perform in public venues. Thus, as amateur performances
moved from parlors to public halls and rented theatres, the delineations
between amateur and commercial theatre, and accordingly between pub-
lic and private performance, became increasingly blurred. The New York
City legal establishment, unconcerned with the propriety of amateurs, dif-
ferentiated theatres and performances based solely upon whether or not
the proper licenses had been purchased and laws had been followed. In
the courtroom, the social constructs that protected the amateurs' reputa-
tions were meaningless in the face of vague statutes, over-zealous enforce-
ment, and intellectually violated parties. In part, amateur organizations
such as the Mansfield Dramatic Association, which was sued by William
Gillette in 1891 for piracy, were caught up in a larger movement against
1
This paper has benefited from the assistance of numerous theatrical and legal
scholars over the years. I would like to thank John Houchin, John Frick, and the audience at
the ATDS debut panel at ATHE Chicago, as well as Ron Wainscott, Roger Herzel, Heather
May, Angela Laflen, Kristin Bayer, Lea Graham, John Knight, and Annamaria Macioca for
their feedback and advice. I am particularly indebted to Jacqueline Cantwell, Senior Law Li-
brarian at the Brooklyn Supreme Court Law Library for her explanation of the intricacies
of the Brooklyn court system and attempts to locate the trial records. The quest to locate
the trial records also involved conversations with numerous librarians and staff members
at the King's County Clerk's Office and Records Office, the New York City Bar Associa-
tion, the Indiana University Law Library, the New York City Municipal Archives, and the
Marist College Library; I am indebted to all of them for their expertise and willingness to
hunt for records that might not exist. I must thank Joanne Zich at American University's
Washington College of Law Library; without her tutelage, I would never have known how
to embark on this research stream. This paper began as part of my dissertation, and its
current form was made possible by grants received from Martin Shaffer, Dean of Liberal
Arts, and Thomas Wermuth, Dean of Faculty, Marist College.
24 C uRLEY
play piracy and copyright infringement. Amateurs did not need to obtain
performance rights or legal copies of scripts to stage plays in their parlors,
but many amateurs, including the Mansfield, continued to adhere to these
practices when performing outside of their private homes. Playwrights
and the legal establishment, however, sought to classify their performanc-
es in public spaces as being no different than commercial productions.
Despite all attempts to distance themselves from the commercial theatre,
the amateurs who took their productions into a more public performance
realm discovered that often the only distinctions between the two worlds
were societal perceptions that held no standing in court.
Mark Rose has argued that copyright law itself occupied a similar
liminal world between public and private, drawing upon the notion that
by publishing a work, an author is sending a private creation out into the
public sphere. He suggests that the issues surrounding copyright cases are
particularly complex because the distinctions between public and private
are themselves so malleable:
That the meaning of private and public changes according
to where one stands suggests that this dichotomy is not a
part of the world, but a way of organizing the world ....
There is no fixed boundary between the private and the
public; it always waits to be drawn; and since significant
interests are always at stake in copyright questions,
precisely where to draw the line is always a contest.
Copyright does more, then, than govern the passage of
commodified exchanges across the boundary between
the private sphere and the public; it actually constitutes
the boundary on which it stands.
2
Rose argues that copyright law itself can alter the boundary be-
tween public and private by privileging the author or the consumer within
any dispute.
3
Amateurs who chose to perform a copyrighted text in a pub-
lic space in front of a semi-private audience for charitable purposes might
well have seen their act as no different than a performance in a parlor, for
they, the performers, were not professionals. A playwright, on the other
hand, would likely see such a performance as an infringement of his or her
rights. A legal case about unauthorized public performances by amateurs,
such as Gillette's 1891lawsuit against the Mansfield Dramatic Association,
2
Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copynght (Cambridge, Mi\: Har-
vard University Press, 1993), 141.
3
Ibid.
A SHOT OvER THE Bow 25
then, has the potential to determine not only whether or not a law has
been broken, but by default to codify what constitutes a public perfor-
mance versus a private one.
The fad for amateur theatricals that developed in the mid-
nineteenth century in the United States increasingly appeared to imitate
professional theatre, and was accompanied by numerous warnings from
preachers and writers about the inherent dangers and potential immorality
of theatre. Amateur theatricals were initially markedly home-based affairs,
with performers restricting their activities to parlors and seemingly taking
the advice of those who wrote the earliest guides to amateur theatricals
which extolled the benefits of theatre as a developmental experience while
warning of the immorality of the professional stage.
4
As the century came
to a close, however, amateur performers seemed to grow bolder as the
amateur guidebooks' advice on how to justify the morality of theatricals
grew thinner and less emphatic. The waning concern for the morality of
theatre paralleled a noticeable trend toward the use of more public venues
for amateur performances. While the parlor stage can hardly be considered
a wholly private place,
5
a town hall, lyceum, or rented commercial stage
makes the home theatrical seem extremely private in comparison.
Removed from the purview of parents and the family home, the young
performers who displayed their talents in such locations, be it for charity
or for fun, placed themselves in a much less protected position than that
provided by the confines of their parlors. Certainly, the audiences for such
events were still likely to be self-selecting, but the ramifications of this
shift into the public realm extend well beyond discussions of morality
and propriety. Many amateur players in the late nineteenth century soon
found themselves with more than mere moral and spiritual battles to fight,
because their production habits did not change with the venues.
A survey of late nineteenth-century guidebooks and anthologies
for amateur performance reveals commentary on selecting "appropriate"
plays and assigning parts diplomatically, but practically no discussion
of performance rights or how to acquire them. Such omission of
performance rights advice seems logical given that the vast majority of the
guides published in the nineteenth century are directed almost exclusively
4
See in particular,]. E. Frobisher,]. E. Make-Up Book (Boston: Walter
H. Baker and Company, 1882); and A. D. Ames, Hints to Amateurs: A Practical Gmde to Home
and Amateur Theatricals (Clyde, OH: Ames Publishing, 1885).
5
See Karen Haltunnen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-
Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), and Melanie
Dawson, Labonng to Play: Home Entertainment and the Spectacle of Middle-Class Cultural Ufe,
1850-1920 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005).
26 CuRLEY
at practitioners who sought to transform a drawing room into a theatre
rather than make use of a more public venue; rights were not necessary
for parlor performances. Amateur performers, however, moved out of
the parlors long before the guidebook advice caught up with their new
venue choices. Even those guides that did acknowledge the fad for public
theatricals were slow to respond to the legal implications of the trend.
6
Ames's 1886 Hints to Amateurs discusses charity performances, but makes
no mention of performance rights.
7
Likewise, Townsend's 1891 Private
Theatricals includes a section on public performances by amateurs, but it,
too, lacks a discussion of royalties.
8
The absence of advice may be due, in part, to the apparent
differentiation in the publishing world between amateur plays and
commercial plays. The publishing industry that sprang up in response to
the amateur theatricals trend provided guidebooks and anthologies; the
latter often included plays which were deemed "appropriate" for amateur
players and were written expressly for the amateur stage.
9
Of course,
publishing houses also provided lists of professional plays available for
purchase, and amateurs often selected those pieces for their performances
or chose to purchase pirated plays from dealers.
10
The extant advice on
6
The legal establishment had difficulties as well. Certain aspects of perfor-
mance law in New York State were hazy at best in the nineteenth century, particularly when
applied to amateur theatricals. The state was slow to respond to changes in amateur perfor-
mance trends, and for the purposes of licensing, did not differentiate between church or
charity amateur theatricals and purely commercial ventures until 1875. See &vised Statutu
of the State of New York, "Of Jugglers and the Exhibition of Show, &c," Title 8, Chap. 20,
(1875), reprinted in American Theatrical Regulation 1607-1900 Conspectus and Texts, edited by
George B. Bryan (Methuen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1993), 303-6. By this time, numer-
ous clubs had been caught up in the licensing sweeps of the Society for the Reformation
of Juvenile Delinquents. See Brooks McNamara, The New York Concert Saloon: The Devils
Own Nights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
7
Ames, Hints to Amateun.
8
Townsend, presumably motivated by financial gain, instead suggests a num-
ber of plays written by his publisher, T. S. Denison, and other playwrights carried by the
company.
9
See, for example, Sarah Anne Frost, Amateur TheatricaLs and Fairy Tale Dramas
(New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1868);James Bradstreet Greenwood, The Queen of Hearts:
A Dramatic Fantasia for Private TheatricaLs (Cambridge: Charles W Sever, 1875); Mrs. Burton
Harrison, Short Comedies for Amateur ~ e r s (London: Griffith Farran and Company, 1892);
Frank M. Lupton, Comedies and Farm for Amateurs, The Peoples Handbook Series No. 56 (New
York: F. M. Lupton, [189?)); Frank M. Lupton, Popular Plays and Farces for Amateur Theatricals,
The PeopleS Handbook Series No. 26 (New York: F. M. Lupton, Publisher, 1894); and Con-
stance O'Brien, Possible ~ s for Priwte Players (London: G. Farran, 1894).
10
In part, it seems that the allure of producing plays that they had seen per-
A SHOT OVER THE Bow 27
amateur play selection generally follows that of Brander Matthews, who
wrote in the preface to Comedies for Amateur Acting.
First of all, the amateur should never choose a play
which has been recently acted by professional actors.
The amateur, however good, can hardly hope to equal
the professional, however poor. So he must needs avoid
the comparison. Discretion is the better part of valor,
and private theatricals are in themselves a feat foolhardy
enough to be better for an extra portion of discretion.
11
Matthews champions obscure plays, in part because his anthology
comprises translations of French comedies. His marketing interests drive
his preface, and even his note about performance rights, while rare for
the period, seems motivated largely by his potential financial gain: "These
plays may all be acted free of charge by amateurs. Professional performers
who may desire to produce any of them will please communicate with the
editor through the publishers."
12
Still, Matthews's discussion of rights is unusual, and indeed,
regular discussions of rights appear only after the turn of the century
and the passage of new rounds of copyright laws, and these discussions
reinforce the differentiation between plays written expressly for amateurs
and those written for commercial performance. Baker's 1908 Catalogue of
Plt!]s for Use in Amateur Theatricals even has a separate section of "Standard
Popular Plays" which opens with an explicit warning that "[t]he following
plays are all fully protected by copyright, and cannot be performed by
amateurs unless it is so specified in each case . ... In all doubtful cases,
please refer the circumstances to the publishers, before going ahead,
in order to avoid trouble and interference."
13
The warning specifically
forbids the use of public performance spaces, box offices, and newspaper
advertising, and clearly states that performances should not compete with
commercial productions. Not surprisingly, such explicit instructions to
amateurs appear almost solely in catalogues and on individual playscripts,
formed by professionals drove many of the production choices for amateurs who regularly
produced public theatricals. As the public theatricals were largely staged for charity ben-
efits, it also seems that play selection was driven in part by the ability to attract an audience
to the event with a recognizable, and thus commercial, play.
11
]. Brander Matthews, Prefatory Note, Comedies for Amateur Acting (New York:
D. Appleton, 1880), 10.
12
Ibid., 13.
13
Catalogue of Plqys for Use in Amateur Theatricals (Boston: Walter H. Baker, 1908), 67.
28 CURLEY
although infrequently before 1900.
Despite the scarce instructions m the guidebooks, obtaining
the rights to perform plays does not appear to have been a complicated
process, provided the show to be produced was either written expressly
for amateur productions or was no longer running in the commercial
theatre. In the case of the former, the industry seems to have assumed
that rights were obtained simply by purchasing the books. For plays that
did require permission, the amateur could apply for production rights
for a public performance by contacting the publisher or the author.
The marketing of some new pieces, such as E. H. Southern's d i t h a ~
Burglar in 1887, included attestations to numerous performance rights
requests by amateur companies and colleges.
14
This selling point at once
suggests that the piece was appropriate for such venues and reinforces
the presumably routine and straightforward practice of obtaining such
rights. On occasion, playwrights would loan production rights to amateur
groups, such as Miss Clara Morris's choice to let Conscience be performed
for the benefit of the Soldier's Monument Fund in June 1879.
15
But the
amateur group that chose not to follow the rules, or wished to show their
timeliness by producing a popular new play not yet available, needed only
to turn to illegal purveyors of scripts.
The responsibility for acquiring performance rights and legal
copies of the plays lay primarily with the performers, regardless of their
potential ignorance or willingness to deceive. And despite strengthening
copyright laws and clarified interpretations of what constituted a protected
performance, amateur and commercial performers alike chose to ignore
the law. Piracy, as rights violations were called during the period, occurred
with relative frequency in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and
the term covered all manner of sins, including: performing a play without
obtaining performance rights from the author or owner; performing a play
from an unofficial, or pirated, copy; printing illegal copies of scripts; and
performing slightly altered versions of copyrighted scripts under different
titles. These violations often occurred when a company produced a play at
the same time that a legitimately licensed production ran elsewhere in the
country, and fraudulent producers wished to capitalize on the success of
the legitimate production. An 1899 society news column suggested that
the purportedly widespread practice of altering titles was made possible in
part because of the distance of these productions from major urban areas.
The author posits that managers could produce a "winning play [which]
14
"Theatrical Gossip," New York Times, 14 October 1887, 8.
15
"City and Suburban News," New York Times, 8 June 1879, 5.
A SHoT OvER THE Bow 29
may not have been secured by legitimate means, but what inhabitant of
an obscure village is going to recognize the hit of the metropolitan season
under a strange title, the names of the cast changed."
16
Literary piracy was not new in the nineteenth century, nor was
piracy limited to playscripts,
17
but theatrical piracy took on new life
with the 1856 amendments to United States copyright laws, improved
publishing systems, the continued expansion of theatre and circuits
beyond the eastern seaboard, and the development of a relatively new
class of consumer: amateurs. While the 1790 Copyright Act granted
authors "the sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing
and vending" some written materials,
18
dramatic works were not fully
protected as printed and performable documents until the passage of
''An Act Supplemental to an Act Entitled 'An Act to Amend the Several
Acts Respecting Copyright"' on 18 August 1856.
19
Bruce McConachie
argues that the passage of this act led to financial gains for playwrights
and publishers, making possible Samuel French's "near monopoly" on
scripts and enabling the financial success of playwrights such as Dion
Boucicault.
20
This logic of profitability can also be applied to play pirates.
By selling illegal copies of scripts, illicit publishers and purveyors also stood
to make money, particularly in areas away from the eastern seaboard, and
thus away from the eyes of New York-based publishers and playwrights.
This potential for profit from illegally published scripts also increased in
part because prior to the 1856 act, published scripts were not protected
from unauthorized performance, only from unauthorized physical
16
"Music and Drama," Chicago Dai!J Tribune, 3 September 1899, 36.
17
For a detailed discussion of the development of copyright law and
related issues with regards to piracy, see "The Independence of America," in
Catherine Seville, The Internationfisation of Copyright Law: Books, Buccaneers and the
Black Flag in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006),
146-252. While Seville's main argument concerns international copyright and pi-
racy, this chapter provides a thorough overview of the various bills presented to
Congress, authors and organizations who fought for increased copyright protec-
tion, and a particularly useful discussion of the development of the printing trade.
18
"Copyright Act of 1790," 1 Statutes at Large, 124, can be accessed through
the US Copyright Office website at http:/ /www.copyright.gov/hisrory/1790act.pdf (ac-
cessed 6 January 2009).
19
''An Act Supplemented to an Act Entitled 'An Act to Amend Several Acts
Respecting Copyright,"' 18 August 1856, Statutes at Large and Treaties 11 (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1859), 138-9.
20
Bruce McConachie, Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and S ocie!J, 1820-
1870 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992), 252, 210-11.
30
CURLEY
duplication. Oliver Gerland notes that "publication effectively dedicated
the work to members of the public, who then could use it in any way not
explicitly forbidden by statute. By contrast, plays that had been performed
but not printed and sold were considered unpublished and continued to
be fully protected under common law."
21
Here we return once again to
Rose's argument about the fluctuating line between public and private.
22
By keeping plays unpublished, intangible, and legally private documents,
playwrights could, as Gerland demonstrates with a discussion of The Count
of Monte Cristo, prevent potential pirates from easily recording the text and
duplicating it.
23
Another approach to avoiding official publication can be
seen in the 1885 case between Augustin Daly and Chicago producer Mr.
Peattie, who purportedly used a printed but unpublished perusal copy of
a German script and claimed that his work was a legitimate adaptation.
24
Once published, plays and performances of those texts were afforded
protection under the copyright law in 1856, but the physical texts also
became available for any who chose to purchase and duplicate them.
Because some playwrights, as noted above, still resisted publishing their
works in order to avoid illegal duplication, the amendments did not
completely end the practice of hiring people to transcribe the text of a hit
play during a performance.
25
Yet, by guaranteeing playwrights the authority to control
publication and performance of their texts and by encouraging the
registration of plays, the 1856 copyright law also aided and abetted
play pirates, whose scandalous activities were reported in newspapers
throughout the country.
26
One of the most notorious and enduring play
21
Oliver Gerland, "From Playhouse to P2P Network: The History and Theo-
ry of Performance Under Copyright Law in the United States," Theatre Journal 59, no. 1
(March 2007): 79.
22
See Rose, Authors, 139-42.
23
Gerland, "Playhouse," 79-80.
24
"The Gossips of the Stage," New York Times, 21 May 1885, 2.
25
A 1906 Chicago Dai!J Tribune discussion of piracy lists this approach as a still-
popular method of obtaining illegal copies of scripts. "'Play Piracy' Now Fine Art," Chicago
Dai!J Tn.bune, 18 March 1906, 13.
26
Appeals to end piracy, particula.rly of international texts, also came from the
pulpit, as in the case of Henry Van Dyke's 1888 sermon, "The National Sin of Literary Pi-
racy." Van Dyke argues that the refusal of the United States to sign an international copy-
right law into effect has led to public immorality, and that the nation is morally bankrupt
because it permits literary piracy. See Henry Van Dyke, The National Sin of Uterary Pirary
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1888). Catherine Seville notes that the sermon was
so successful that Van Dyke published it and became a featured speaker for the American
A SHoT OVER THE Bow 31
pirates was Alexander Byers of Chicago, who sold pirated scripts for at
least thirty years around the turn of the twentieth century, despite repeated
arrests and prosecutions. In 1882, the Mallory Brothers and Marc Klaw
sued Byers and his business partner E. B. Learoque for selling pirated
copies of Hazel Kirke in Chicago out of their saloon. An 1882 Chicago
Daify Tribune account of the court proceedings reveals that Byers and his
associates had printed lists of plays for sale and issued a receipt for $10.00
for the sale of the play to Mr. Crane, but that they argued that they were
not selling texts for intended productions. The defense argued that Byers
informed Crane at the time of the sale that the play "was very much like
the original, but told him he could not sell him the right to play it" and
"that he had been selling manuscript plays for seven or eight years, but
never sold a copyrighted play, to his knowledge, in his life."
27
While the
defense successfully argued that Learoque was not directly involved in the
pirating, Byers was convicted of copyright infringement, although he was
operating his business again in less than decade and in 1891 was cited as
the source of a pirated play used in Texas.
28
So profitable was the business
that one of Byers's mimeograph operators reportedly stole pirated plays
from him in order to set up his own shop; Byers sued. So .flagrant was
Byers's business by this time that Charles Frohman reportedly hired the
defendant, Clancy, a lawyer and asked him "as far as possible to bring
to light in the trial the methods employed by Byers in pirating plays."
29
The newspapers also obliged, and provided a detailed accounting of his
practice.
For fifteen years he has been selling pirated copies of
plays. So extensive are his operations there is not a play
on the English or American stage manuscript copies of
which cannot be obtained from Byers and that for $5 a
copy. Back of Byers' saloon at No. 102 South Halsted
Street he has a large room in which he has a regular corps
of assistants, for he controls three or four typewriters
and one or two stenographers. These stenographers go
to the theatres on tickets purchased by Byers and there
Copyright League, which worked towards passing the 1891 Copyright Act that eventually
granted protections in the United States for international authors as well as American au-
thors. See Seville, Internationalisation, 229.
27
"Play Pirates," Chicago Daify Tribune, 5 March 1882, 11.
28
"Christian Play Piracy," New York Dramatic Mirror, 27 June 1891, 5.
29
"Says He Steals Plays," Chicago Daify Tribune, 18 November 1894, 1.
32
they reduce to shorthand the entire play. They also make
a careful report of the scenes, scenery, furniture and
other accessories of the play. Then a typewritten copy
is made of the play under the personal supervision of
Byers, he having himself seen the play several times.
30
CuRLEY
Despite numerous injunctions, arrests, suits, decisions, and raids, Byers
simply would not go out of business, in large part because there was a
continuing demand for pirated plays. US Marshals raided Byers's saloon
in 1898; a separate building was raided in 1902, and Byers was served
an injunction in 1907.
31
Presumably, these accounts are but a sampling
of the actions against him. Byers's seeming professional immortality
reflected one of the major problems with copyright violators at the time
and a reason why playwrights and producers repeatedly attempted to get
stronger legislation passed.
32
In addition to Byers, numerous commercial companies, touring
stars, combination companies, and amateur groups were accused at various
points of either using unauthorized versions of plays or performing
plays without the permission of the author. The modes of accusation
ran the gamut from personal requests to cease and desist orders to legal
proceedings to outright attempts at public shaming in newspapers. The
New York Mirror was particularly vehement about the issue, and routinely
ran articles that sought to publicly shame the play pirates, both commercial
and amateur, while allowing the editors to rail against piracy and call for
stronger copyright protection.
33
The editors were proud of their efforts,
noting in 1887 "that the Bureau of Stolen Plays in this city and wicked
Chicago, which The Mirror some years ago exposed and temporarily
broke up" was operating again and that it was time that the government
amended the copyright laws to include play piracy.
34
30
Ibid. See also "Play Pirates at War," Chicago Dai!J Tribune, 23 November 1894, 9.
31
See "Break In for Plays," Chicago Dai!J Tribune, 1 January 1898, 4; "Pirated
Manuscripts Seized," New York Times, 1 January 1898, 2; "Raid on a 'Play Factory,"' Chicago
Dai!J Tribune, 22 May 1902, 2; "First Gun Fired in War on Alleged Play Pirate," Chicago Dai!J
Tribune, 20 January 1907, AS.
32
One such petition was the 1894 attempt to get Congress to declare play piracy
a misdemeanor, with penalties of a jail term and a national injunction against productions,
in additional to the then-standard fine. See "Untitled Editorial," New York Times, 15 June
1894, 4; and "Protection Against Play Pirates," New York Times, 21 June 1894, 8.
33
Piracy was, at this time, one of Fiske's pet projects in theatrical justice and also
a vehicle for him to make a name for himself and his paper.
34
"Play-Stealing Again," New York Mirror, 12 February 1887, 6. Presumably,
A SHoT OvER THE Bow 33
The Mirror deemed any and all piracy worthy of public scorn, and
editor Harrison Grey Fiske used the paper to broadcast reports of piratical
behavior, naming names whenever and wherever possible. Amateurs were
not spared the newspaper's wrath, particularly when their actions enabled
the Mirror to rail against old enemies such as Alexander Byers. In the
summer of 1891, a Corsicana, Texas amateur theatre group, the Corsicana
Dramatic Company, purchased a copy of The Old Homestead from a
"notorious 'fence' and dealer in stolen plays, Alex. Byers, of Chicago,"
whose piracy operation had been shut down, one of many times, in 1882.
35
According to the New York Dramatic Mirror, the local YMCA caught wind
of the planned performances and sent a letter to the amateur company's
president, asking that the proceeds of the opening night performance be
donated to the YMCA. In 'case the newspaper's article title, "Christian Play
Piracy," was not successful at conveying a scathing ironic commentary
on the entire affair, the author ended the piece with a note that "[t]here
is something funny in the idea of a piratical performance for the benefit
of the YM.C.A."
36
Clearly, the Corsicana did not read Van Dyke's 1888
pamphlet "The National Sin of Literary Piracy," which argues that literary
piracy leads to an immoral nation because the theft of works by some
necessarily taints all.
37
While the choice to perform a pirated play ultimately garnered the
Corsicana amateurs public scorn in New York, the decision to perform
a pirated play and ignore a cease and desist order resulted in much more
than vituperative newspaper articles for the Brooklyn-based Mansfield
Dramatic Association. On 16 December 1890, the Mansfield produced
a pirated version of William Gillette's Civil War drama Held by the Enemy
at the Criterion Theatre in Brooklyn, thereby reneging on agreements
made with Gillette and leading to an eventual lawsuit and decision against
the association.
38
According to the New York Dramatic Mirror, after the
Mansfield Dramatic Association announced its performance, Gillette's
representative, H. A. Rockwood, contacted the group and the manager
of the Criterion Theatre, J. M. White, and told them not to continue with
their intended production. Some of the company members then met
this comment refers to one of the many times when Alexander Byers's business was shut
down.
35
"Christian Play Piracy," New York Dramatic Mirror, 5.
36
Ibid.
37
Van Dyke, The National Sin of Literary Pirary.
38
Ironically, Gillette starred in the first production of Held qy the Enemy in this
same theatre on 22 February 1886.
34 CURLEY
with another of Gillette's representatives, Julius Cahn, and agreed not to
produce the play. Cahn, in a gesture of kindness that was unlikely to have
been extended to a commercial company, offered to reimburse the group
for the theatre rent if they were unable to rehearse and produce another
play in that time slot. Cahn "also stated that at some future date the club
should have permission to perform one of Gillette's pieces without
cost."
39
The Mansfield group agreed to Cahn's rather generous offer.
Cahn, perhaps doubtful of their intended compliance, also sent a letter
to White notifying him that an injunction would be delivered to White if
any work continued on the production. At this point, the two sides of the
story conflict, but it seems that White sent a reply to Cahn fairly close to
the production date and notified Cahn that he was not going to stop the
production.
40
Advertisements informed the public, and presumably Gillette, that
the Mansfield association would be staging The Big Bonanza.
41
On the night
of the performance, however, the company members carried on with their
plans to stage Held ry the Enemy, "and upon the night of the production they
barricaded every entrance to their entertainment to prevent the service of
papers adjoining them from going on with the play."
42
Exactly why they
chose to continue with the performance is unknown, for none of the
extant published material about the case includes any commentary from
the amateurs, but their advertising reveals clearly intentional subterfuge, as
does their choice to barricade the doors to the theatre to prevent anyone
from stopping the performance.
43
Eventually, Gillette and producer Charles Frohman decided to
39
"Amateurs Pirate Gillette," New York Dramatic Mirror, 3 January 1891, 3.
40
Ibid.; J. M. White, "Letter to the Editor," New York Dramatic Mirror, 10 Janu-
ary 1891, 7.
41
"Amateurs Sued," Brook!Jn Dai!J Eagle, 31 December 1890, 6; "Points," New
York Dramatic Mirror, 20 December 1890, 14; Brook!Jn Dai!J Eagle uses an abbreviated title,
Bonanza.
42
"Mr. Gillette Sustained," New York Times, 1 July 1891, 8.
43
While names of amateur performers regularly appear in the society news and
in announcements of theatricals, none of the cases involving society members includes
their names except for those which became part of the public record through court deci-
sions or arrests. Indeed, it appears that papers may have sought to protect the identities of
amateur parties involved in this case, for there are comments from none of the amateurs
and only the Treasurer, Adolph Meyer, is ever publicly named. Meyer, however, figures
only in articles discussing the outcome of the case. Presumably, the amateurs themselves
were choosing to maintain class-appropriate decorum rather than engage in the public
reputation-saving war upon which White embarked. It seemed they saved their energies
for a poem cited later in this article.
A SHOT OvER 1HE Bow
35
pursue their lawsuit against both the Mansfield Dramatic Association and
White, the manager of the Criterion, in an attempt to set a legal precedent
for future piracy cases. Frohman noted, "It is not such an easy matter to
prosecute play pirates in the Far West, but when a play is pirated right
across the Bridge, we believe that we can establish a legal precedent that
will be heartily welcomed by all managers who control manuscript plays."
44
Indeed, Gillette and Frohman were successful in setting their precedent,
which resulted in the manager and the company being held responsible
for damages. And yet, while Gillette and Frohman might have desired
to set a precedent with their case, they do not appear to have been cited
by any later court cases or included in the Abbot's New York Digest.
45
Thus, the effectiveness of their pursuits might have been limited to its
influence in the press and the development of their reputations as people
who prosecute pirates.
While court transcripts have not been located, the sides of the
legal argument can be gleaned from letters to the editor and interviews
published in the New York Dramatic Mirror and the Brook!Jn Dazjy Eagle.
46
White, in response to the initial article about the pirated play, wrote a letter
to the editor and argued that he, as the manager, was not responsible for
the activities of those who rent his theatre: "My time is too well occupied
to permit me to investigate as to the ownership of plays presented at
my house, and I considered it none of my business what the Mansfield
44
"Play Pirates, Beware!" New York Dramatic Mi"or, 17 January 1891, 1.
45
Jacqueline Cantwell, e-mail message to author, 9 January 2009. Cantwell also
notes that "(t]he Digest was created after federal copyright law was enacted and its editors
then did retrospective classification of 19u. century cases." Presumably, this case was not
considered sufficiently relevant or groundbreaking to the legal historians in the period to
warrant inclusion.
46
The case does not appear in legal digests or secondary sources other than the
newspapers, which necessitates locating the original court materials. The trial transcripts
may still exist in the King's County (Brooklyn) Clerk's Office off-site storage facility, but
they are inaccessible to scholars and the Clerk's Office's staff. Trial court cases were filed
in storage according to an index number that was recorded in a bound ledger. During the
twentieth century, some of the ledgers were microfilmed, but while the Clerk's office has
microfilms of matrimonial records from 1891 onwards, there is no fiche for trial court cas-
es pre-1900. The ledgers have gone missing, and without the index number from the led-
ger, there is no hope of locating the original trial materials, presuming they survived both
the years and the changes in storage facilities after the construction of the new courthouse
in the 1950s. Some Brooklyn materials have ended up in other locations, including the New
York City Municipal Archives. If the Mansfield Dramatic Association had appealed the
decision rather than writing a poem about it, then we would likely have had access to the
appeals and the decision because those materials are stored separately in the Law Library. I
am deeply indebted to Jacqueline Cantwell, Senior Law Librarian at the Brooklyn Supreme
Court, and the staff at the King's County Clerk's Office for their assistance with this quest.
36 CURLEY
Society played."
47
White also argued that he chose to honor the contract
he signed with the Mansfield Dramatic Association rather than stop the
performance. "Having rented them the house, and they having paid for [the]
same, I considered I would be more liable to a suit for breaking contract
with them than by declining to interfere for Rockwood and Frohman."
48
For White, the logical choice was to avoid the lawsuit that he knew he
would face if he broke his contract with the amateurs. The interference
to which White refers constitutes one of the murkier parts of the story,
for it appears that Gillette's representatives sent a formal notice to White,
requesting that he stop the production from taking place. White replied
that he refused to do so, but his reply arrived at Gillette's representatives
"too late to get out an injunction."
49
White attempted to argue that he
was neither responsible for preventing the production nor negligent for
his delayed response to the request. Frohman, however, countered in a
published interview that White could not maintain plausible deniability.
He received continuous caution both verbally and
by letter against allowing the piece to be produced at
[White's] house. Yet, with all the caution required by any
sane man and with full knowledge of the fact that the
Mansfield Club were producing a stolen version of Held
by the Enemy, he rented his theatre to the Club. 5
The issues at hand, then, became whether the amateurs should have been
producing a pirated play, and whether White could be held responsible for
the actions of those who rent his theatre.
The King's County Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gillette in
regard to producing work without permission, thereby establishing the
precedent that Gillette and Frohman had desired. The decision, according
to the New York Times, "declares that an American author who succeeds in
writing and securing for himself the production of a successful play should
be upheld by the courts."
51
According to the New York Dramatic Mirror,
Justice Bartlett's decision was as blunt as the Timels assessment of the
case, as he ruled, "It was plain that Myer produced it with sufficient notice
47
White, "Letter to the Editor," 7.
48
Ibid.
49
"Amateurs Pirate Gillette," New York Dramatic Mirror, 3.
50
Quoted in "Play Pirates, Beware!" New York Dramatic Mirror, 1.
51
"Mr. Gillette Sustained," New York Times, 8.
A SHOT O vER THE Bow 37
of the ownership and of the objection of its owner to its production."
52
At
issue here are two interlocking concerns: piracy as it applies to scripts and
as it applies to production rights. Piracy involves the use of unauthorized
versions of scripts and thus the unauthorized production of those scripts.
In the case of Held qy the Enemy, the source of the production script was
not apparently contested, as neither summation of the ruling attests to
the illegal copy of the script, but rather addresses solely the fact that the
production was performed despite the express objections of the author.
White's liability in the production was significantly more
questionable, as he was neither bound by contract to Gillette nor expressly
producing Gillette's work without permission. The issue became whether
White, as the owner of the building, could be held responsible for the
behavior of the Mansfield Dramatic Association. According to the Mi"or,
Bartlett ruled:
White is liable, not as the lessee of the building, but
by reason of the fact that his employees, the stage
carpenter and superintendent, participated indirectly in
the production of the play. On the other hand, it would
appear that White acted in good faith and did what he
could to dissuade Myer from producing the play. On that
question the Judge said he would reserve his decision,
and if he found that White is liable, he will not impose
any costs, and that counsel may submit briefs as to his
liability.
53
Presumably, then, if no one under White's employ had "participated" in
the production, then the Criterion Theatre would not have been at all
responsible, so long as White had attempted to tell the amateurs not to
perform the piece. Again, since the court transcripts cannot be located,
we cannot know for sure if the implications of the decision are that
building owners must oversee how others use their property, or if they
simply must attempt to intervene when illegal activity takes place in their
property. This point remains unclear because the phrase "participated
indirectly in the production" is not explained. Did they actively assist in
the production, building scenery for example, or were they simply present
at the performance or the rehearsals per contractual arrangement with the
company or as a function of renting the space. Perhaps the degree of their
52
"In Favor of Gillette," New York Dramatic Mirror, 11 July 1891, 2.
53
Ibid.
38 C URLEY
involvement is a moot point, for oversight of activity may indicate implicit
involvement. Certainly, such a decision might well have influenced theatre
managers' willingness to rent their spaces to amateur groups who might
be less likely to be able to stage an entire production without the assistance
of building staff.
The implications of the decision for the Mansfield society are,
likewise, somewhat muddied, although the monetary and social costs of
the lawsuit clearly were not sufficiently high to cause the group to cease
producing. While the total damages awarded by the court are not known,
Mr. Rosenblatt, Gillette's attorney, does mention that he felt that "it will
cost the boys between $3,000 and $4,000 for their evening's fun."
54
Even
more revealing is a poem that the Mansfield Dramatic Association included
in the program for their 12 October 1891 joint production of Sydney
Rosenfeld's A Possible Case with the Forty-Seventh Regiment. By this time,
the Mansfield association had lost the lawsuit with Gillette and had recently
joined dramatic forces with New York's Forty-Seventh Regiment of the
National Guard. Their fledgling production career, totaling three shows,
did not prevent them from presuming they were matches in talent and wit
with professional performers, and they used a poetic retelling of the Held
by the Enemy performance to prove their superior intelligence. They do, of
course, neglect to mention the outcome of the lawsuit, seeming instead
to focus on their ability to supposedly outsmart Gillette and Frohman by
manipulating advertising. Nods to false advertising-"The 'Mansfield,' a
new acquisition, I Our host of this evening, the same, I Was to make its
debut, between me and you, I In a drama 'Bonanza' by name" -accompany
an attempt to cast Frohman as the villain, while still acknowledging that
the play was legally protected by copyright:
One day it leaked out, just how I can't say,
And got to Frohman's ears
That "Bonanza" was "Held by the Enemy,''
A copyright play of his,
"Great guns!" he cried, "this cannot be;
If so, I'm in for a fight,"
Then laughed as in fancy he pictured great fun,
And the "Mansfield's" sorry plight.
Assured 'twas no idle rumor,
Away he sped in haste
54
''Amateurs Pirate Gillette," New York Dramatic Mirror, 3.
A SHOT OvER THE Bow 39
To give the daring Amateurs
Of law---dreadf'llaw-a taste.
55
At this point in the poem, as in the documentation of legal battles
between the company and Frohman, it is clear that Gillette, Frohman,
and their representatives knew of the Mansfield's intents to circumvent
the earlier agreements through false advertising. The nature of the legal
materials which were drawn up and sent on the night of the performance
is unknown, but they apparently also believed the Mansfield group
intended to show the performance on multiple nights and sought to stop
as many performance as they could. The poem indicates that a Sheriff
was purportedly on the way: ''A rumor, it spread through the house like
fire, / Frohman has triumphed they say, / A Deputy Sheriff is near at
hand-/ They cannot put on the play."
56
Newspaper accounts confirm
that the police were indeed called in, but precisely what happened between
the Sheriff and the company on night of the performance is murky, for
Cahn notes in an interview that he was unable to get an injunction in time,
but that Gillette's lawyer "served a notice of written warning on all the
actors, as well as on Mr. White, that we would hold them all responsible
for personal damages."
57
While it is unknown whether the papers made it
around the barricade or were delivered at a later time, the performance did
occur on the night of the 16'h as scheduled. The Mansfield, clearly basking
in their albeit short-lived victory, was still gloating about outsmarting the
professionals nearly ten months later:
Up, up goes the curtain; how slowly it crawls.
The end is near. Ah! see!
The "Mansfield" wins! Hurrah for the boys!
'Tis "Held by the Enemy."
What say you now, professional friends?
How now? This is Amateur wit;
And as for the matter of acting- 'tis talk-
Each one in the cast made a hit.
58
55
Forty-Seventh Regiment and Mansfield Dramatic Association, Program for
"A Possible Case" at the Academy of Music, 12 October 1891, Mansfield Dramatic As-
sociation Clippings Folder, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library, New
York.
56
Ibid.
57
"Amateurs Pirate Gillette," Ne1v York Dramatic Mirror, 3.
58
Program for "A Possible Case."
40 CuRLeY
If the ensuing performances were actually planned, they did not get staged,
and it is likely that the legal documents might have prevented their staging,
although it is also possible that the group presumed that their barricade
might hold for only one night. The decisions to bar the doors and advertise
a different play certainly smack of the intent to deceive and suggest that
they expected Gillette's lawyers to attempt to stop the production.
From their initial choices and this poetic response, one can
only imagine that the Mansfield company and other amateur performers
involved in similar suits assumed that their non-commercial status and
intentions permitted them to operate in a less than legal or ethical manner.
Indeed, an interview with William Gillette in the New York Times reveals
that he, at one point, had a similar attitude towards amateurs. "'I used to
wink at the liberties taken with my works by amateurs,' he said, 'but an
experience I once had in Texas made me resolve in the future to insist
upon my rights."'
59
Gillette then recounted a tale wherein he stopped by
an amateur performance of Esmeralda to "see what kind of people were
pirating my property."
60
After learning that the performers were society
members, he approached the leader of the club and told him that he
would not sue or stop the performance, adding that his "terms are $20
a performance in a case of this kind, and that is certainly cheap enough.
I leave it to your sense of justice how you should act."
61
The amateurs
decided to give the performance without contacting Gillette again, much
less sending along the royalty, which appears to have been specifically set
at a different level for amateur performances. Gillette notes that such
complete disregard for his property even after a gentlemanly conversation
"made me rather sore about amateur piracy" and led to his decision to
pursue the case against the Mansfield Dramatic Association.
62
Indeed, if
being ignored after an in-person conversation with an amateur performer
irritated Gillette, then it is hardly surprising that the Mansfield Dramatic
Association faced legal action after their decision to bar the doors to
prevent delivery of an injunction.
While Gillette and Frohman set out to create a precedent to
undermine play piracy and likely keep their own anti-piracy stance clearly
in the press, this particular court decision appears to have addressed only
production rights, not the copyright issues raised by illegal reproductions.
For commercial performers, then, the case only reinforced the precedence
59
"Gillette and the Amateurs," New York Times, 2 July 1891, 8.
60
Quoted in ibid.
61
Quoted in ibid.
62
Quoted in ibid.
A SHOT OI'ER THE Bow
41
of obtaining performance rights from the author, and despite the ruling, the
issues of piracy persisted, as exemplified by Byers's repeated resurfacings
and the continued petitions to Congress for stronger copyright laws. For
amateurs, however, the case has far-reaching and potentially confusing
ramifications. Indeed, the implications of the case for the amateur theatrical
community are clear only insofar as they pertain to amateur performances
held in public venues. Regrettably, there is no evidence to suggest the
nature of the Mansfield production. The ruling suggests presumably that
any performance whose proceeds would benefit a charitable entity would
require the producing company to obtain performance rights from the
author. The Mansfield production, however, could just as easily have been
an amateur production that did not charge admission and was not open to
the public. In this case, the ramifications of the decision are more wide-
ranging. Do all performances held outside of a home require permission
of the author or just those that are advertised and charge admission,
much like the current arrangements that publishing companies have with
amateur student productions held on campus? While it seems safe to
assume that home performances do not require permission, how does one
account for amateur charity performances held in large estates with their
own theatres on site? What is it that determines whether or not in those
cases permission must be obtained: location of performance, admission
fees, or intent? Clearly, the status of the performers was no longer seen as
an excuse for performances in public venues. But what is public?
Without access to the court decision, many of these specific
questions cannot be answered, and yet the fluctuating definitions of
public versus private performance spaces were solidified at the time by
the court's decision to treat the amateurs like professionals. In the Gillette
case, Justice Bartlett determined that commercial and amateur productions
alike were supposed to obtain production rights before staging a play in
a public venue, the Criterion Theatre, and that they should have been
purchasing scripts from authorized agents and publishers. Amateurs, such
as the Mansfield association, who chose to perform in rented halls or
public theatres were required to adhere to a different set of regulations
than they would have if their intent was to perform the show in their
parlors. Thus, those ever-important steps out of the residence and into
a semi-public world placed the amateurs in a liminal realm where the
law deemed them professionals even though society did not. As such,
Rose's notion about the social implications of copyright law is validated
by this case study. The case not only shows that copyright law sits on the
borderline between public and the private amateur performances in public
spaces, but it also highlights how legal propriety could be circumvented by
youthful enthusiasm and societal perceptions.
j OURNAL OF AMERICAN D RAMA AND T HEATRE 22, NO.3 (FAll. 2010)
Surfeit of Influence: Listening as Retreat and Antidote in
Topdog/Underdog
Sandy Alexandre
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
- John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
1
SUGGESTION #1: CULTIVATE THE ABILITY TO
THINK PO R YRSELF. When someone gives you advice,
you lay their advice along side yr own thoughts and
feelings, and if what they suggest jives with what youve
got going on inside, then you follow their suggestion.
ON THE OTHER HAND- there are lots of people
out there who will suggest all kinds of stupid stuff for
you to incorporate into your life .... THINK for yrself,
LISTEN to yr heart, TUNE IN to yr gut. ... Excellent
education, is just a kind of ear training. That's all it really
is-Inner Ear Training.
- Suzan-Lori Parks, Commencement Speech to the
Mount Holyoke College Class of 2001
2
The steady development of consciousness and rational
thought has transformed the inner voice into a symptom
of psychic disorder.
- Murray Schaferl
1
John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," in Jobn Keats: The Major Works, edited by
Elizabeth Cook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 288.
2
"Suzan-Lori Parks Commencement Speech," Commencement Speech to the
Mount Holyoke College Class of 2001, 27 May 2001, http:/ /www.mtholyoke.edu/ offices/
comm/ oped/loriparks.shtml (accessed 22 September 2010).
3
Murray Schafer, "Open Ears" in The ANditory Cultural Header, edited by Michael
Bull and Les Back (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2004), 34.
44 ALEXANDRE
"Watch me close," the directive which opens Suzan-Lori Parks's play
Topdog/ Underdog, is an exhortation that should not be taken lightly. Indeed,
important as it is, like a mnemonic or refrain, it is necessarily repeated at
various intervals throughout the play as both a reminder and a piece of
good advice. For, ultimately, what is at stake in failing to watch closely is
money, understanding, and even life itself. In the dicey world of hustling
and gambling you absolutely must watch your back as a hustler, and as a
customer you most certainly must watch t he cards, lest you find yourself
quite suddenly "played," duped, broke . .. dead. The one brother Booth,
for example (as if he had eyes in the back of his head), is always anticipating
and on the look out for imaginary interlopers threatening to touch his
cards. To one such imaginary threat he aggressively warns, "Don't touch
my cards, man, don't- Don't do that shit. Don't do that shit. Don't do
that shit!"
4
Furthermore, he certainly has to be a close watcher if he can
shoplift as often, much, and skillfully as he does. His big brother, Lincoln,
the one-time king of Three-card Monte, certainly had to have been a close
watcher to garner as much street credibility and become as famous as
he had within the hustling circles of the unnamed urban neighborhoods,
which are his old haunts. And now, sitting as he does all day at work in
his role as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, Lincoln has become an
intent watcher of another kind- at once a conspicuous watcher of an
invisible (albeit spectrally present) play, Our American Cousin, and (thanks
to a reflective metal box) a surreptitious watcher of the customers lined
up behind him who have paid for the opportunity to play his infamous
assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
5
Much like a Janus figure, Lincoln is at once backward looking in
that he is re-enacting the bygone scene of Abraham Lincoln's notoriously
fatal theatre-going experience and forward looking in that he is watching
presciently for his soon-to-be assassin(s) in real time. And, of course, as
audience members of the play, we are also watching closely. To be sure, in
a play that opens with the play-by-play protocols of Three-card Monte's
sleight of hand, watching becomes an important skill to have. But in a dog-
eat-dog world in which a character is, in one minute, the "topdog" and in
the next, the "underdog'' (or, by extension, first the hustler and then the
hustled), one should probably be leery of such advice that suggests we
hone one sense (watching) to the possible detriment of another sense-
our capacity to listen, for example. In such an environment, in which we
4
Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog (New York: Theatre Communications
Group, 2001), 9. All subsequent references will be made parenthetically.
5
President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while attending a theatre perfor-
mance of Our Amencan Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on 14 April 1865.
SURFEIT OF I NFLUENCE 45
cannot really trust anyone, perhaps the best advice (although and because
it is never uttered) would be that we cultivate the ability to think for
ourselves, as Parks put it. The best advice would suggest that we be more
attuned and alert than what watching alone can make us-that we keep
both our eyes peeled and our ears open, lest we miss something important
about the play and maybe even about ourselves.
Indeed, the tragicomic, existentialist discovery of missing
something, of discovering that one is actually deficient in something-
that Godot is just not coming, for example-actuates the very form and
subject matter of the play. We are encouraged to ponder the ramifications
of missing out on something, whether it is something about the brothers,
the play, or even life itself. In the sparse setting of the one room bachelor
pad in which the play transpires, we are not surprised to discover that
something as basic as a telephone is missing and that furniture is missing,
too (for example, milk crates substitute for a bookshelf and a dining
room table). Intermittent conversations about the brothers' family history
reveal that their parents are missing. The much-anticipated appearance of
Booth's girlfriend, Grace, followed-so disappointingly-by her failure
to arrive suggests that she herself may not even exist. Grace, in multiple
meanings of that name, is just not coming. A scene of masturbation and
a large collection of sticky porn magazines underneath Booth's bed
might indicate that sexual intimacy is missing. Alcohol, as a substitute for
what the brothers call "medicine," suggests that (emotional) therapy is
missing. For instance, when Booth springs the news on his brother that
he and Grace have decided to get married, that she will be moving in, and
that Lincoln will have to move out, Booth attempts to smooth Lincoln's
transition by offering him a whiskey bottle.
Go head, take thuh med-sin, bro. You gonna need it
more than me. I got, you know, I got my love to keep me
warm and shit (88).
When a love to keep one warm is missing, whiskey will have to serve as
the next best thing.
All of these valiant and makeshift (if not entirely prudent)
instances of attempting to make up for deficiencies and absences encourage
us likewise to take our own initiative in making the best of our theatre-
going or play-reading experience in light of all that seems in front of
our eyes to be missing from these brothers' lives. This essay argues, then,
that listening must compensate for what watching alone cannot manage.
For Parks, listening is not only a judicious act, it is also a spiritual act.
For example, in trying to understand what could have gone wrong with a
46 ALEXANDRE
hypothetical writer who has been writing the same way (monotonously)
for thirty years, she comes up with the following diagnosis in which she
links the sensory faculty of listening to good (spiritual) health: "What
happens is the pipeline between the writer and the spirit is pretty clogged;
if that's the life you're living, you're not listening anyway. You're just kinda,
I don't know. I don't know what you're doing, but you're not listening."
6
As far as Parks sees it, whether you are a writer, a graduating
student, or a theatregoer, to "listen" closely to that pipeline, which we
all possess, is to take that initial step to hear in a work of art the spirit
ditties of no tone. Thus, to apply that inner-ear training, of which Parks
speaks, to our reading and watching of the play is-curiously enough-to
separate the wheat of its silences from the chaff of its hype and white
noise (whether the masking, distracting, or overpowering quality of that
noise comes in the form of masculine bravado, in the heft of historical
weight, or in the ocular exigencies of the ever-shifting cards). In other
words, to watch and listen to the play is an exercise in circumspection
and discernment. Parks exhorts us to mind and mine the gap between
the audible and the inaudible/the visible and the invisible.
7
The end result
is that the more resistant we are to consuming uncritically, the more
spiritual we become as spectators-the less likely we are to clog up our
own pipelines.
The minimalist setting of the play eschews what could have been
an abundance of props and consequently can be seen as rejecting the
play's opening imperative to privilege watching when there is, in fact, not
much to see. In other words, the bare essentials of this minimalist aesthetic
already lead us to focus less on looking outward than inward. Again, we
are encouraged to think for ourselves, listen to our hearts and guts, and
train our inner ears. The minimalist setting is a pedagogical, philosophical,
and spiritual choice meant to draw our attention to the subtexts that really
matter to the characters (and, one hopes, to us). In Ghost!J Matters, Avery
Gordon asserts that
6
Quoted in Robert Faires, "Finding Writer's Voice," The Austin Chronicle, Arts
Section, 12 May 2006.
7
Parks is actually a big fan of gaps (apertures, in general; holes, to be more
precise). In The America Play (1994), the main action revolves around a "great hole in the
middle of nowhere. The hole is an exact replica of the Great Hole of History." For Parks,
such holes do not suggest lack; rather, they suggest opportunities, tabulae rasae, possibili-
ties, and multiplicities of interpretation. See Suzan-Lori Parks, The America Play (New York:
Dramatists Play Service, 1995).
SURFEIT OF INFLUENCE
In a culture seemingly ruled by technologies of
hypervisibility, we _ are led to believe not only that
everything can be seen, but also that everything is
available and accessible for our consumption. In a culture
seemingly ruled by technologies of hypervisibility, we are
led to believe that neither repression nor the return of
the repressed, in the form of either improperly buried
bodies or countervailing systems of value or difference,
occurs with any meaningful result.
8
47
Parks writes against these technologies of hypervisibility in an effort to
counter the ways in which we have been anesthetized not to want more
than meets the eye. The audio equivalent of hypervisibility, as evidenced
by the barrage of information- the white noise- that characterizes the
information age, is working in tandem with the hypervisible to deleterious
effect. For Parks, the barrage of audio-visual information ultimately
has the capacity to do three things: to produce in us a reaction I will
henceforth refer to as being "surfeited with influence"; to bury what she
calls the "pure true simple state" of her thusly influenced characters; or
to encourage us to be more discerning-that is, to cultivate the ability to
think for ourselves.
9
Conseguendy, in order to counter the first two and achieve
the third, the play makes an attempt to get back to that elusive "true"
state of nature, for better or worse. I want to emphasize, however, that
Parks's attempt in the first place is motivated less by misguided idealism
and nostalgia for a prelapsarian or Rousseauian vision than by a desire
to learn and instruct- that is, to attempt for attempting's sake. Can we
actually cultivate the ability to think for ourselves or be our individual
selves, especially during a historical moment in which individuality is under
attack and under the influence of everything from the Macyizing to the
iPodification of America? What good is attempting to hear one's inner
voice or uncover a character's pure state, especially in a play in which the fate
of its characters seems determined by the already well-known fate of the
great and notorious historical figures, Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes
Booth, after whom they are named? These are some of the questions that
Parks challenges herself and her audience to answer in Topdog/Underdog.
Ultimately, the subject of this essay is the assumed authority and
8
Avery F. Gordon, Ghost(y Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 16.
9
Parks, Topdog/ Underdog, 3.
48
ALEXANDRE
superiority of the visible in the dramatic arts. I am interested in what it
means for a playwright to question that prima facie value placed on the
visible aspects of theatre. Because a play is so much about what and who
on stage is on display and (consequently) seen by the audience, to propose
that there is more to a play than meets the eye is to introduce something
like faith into the theatre. Rather than require that we suspend disbelief,
the play enjoins us to activate belief via its implied and explicit absences.
In fact, I want to see Parks's work as deliberately attempting to provide
"evidence of things unseen"; particularly in this play, she is not so much
invested in the visual aspects of theatre as she is in the various conduits
of what I call the audio-spiritual-echoes, whispers, ellipses, silences.
Through these conduits, we are encouraged to listen, whether we hear it
or not, to the harmony Parks creates between erstwhile antinomies-the
visible and invisible, the spirit ditties of no tone, and the chest-thumping
machismo of masculine egotism, past and present, as well as personal and
national. Henceforth, the "spiritual" will be discussed in both meanings
of that term: as relating to the spectral (hauntings, lingering memories,
allusions, echoes, etc.), and to the more mystical, as the salutary rewards
bestowed upon the human soul. When we think about theatre as a spiritual
venue, it gains added purpose besides its obvious entertainment value.
As a long-time practitioner of yoga and karate, Parks seems to
have found a way to imbue her work with the lessons she has learned
from these spiritual practices; she herself has acknowledged that "Art's
not just something that you get as a luxury; art is essential .... Art nurtures
the spirit. It helps the mind grow strong. It helps us to think deeply
and clearly."
10
In her oeuvre, Parks's fascination with everything from
whispers to echoes contributes to soundscape studies by adding a hitherto
unexplored spiritual dimension to how we relate to these ubiquitous but
often muffled sounds in our daily lives. Her work attempts to repurpose
the white noise of our historically saturated and cumulated lives into
a meditational opportunity. Most important, Parks attempts to make a
claim for the "pure true simple state" of her characters by holding their
identities in critical tension with the ever-overdetermining factors of race,
class, gender, history, and biography. That close proximity or juxtaposition
requires that we listen for those instances of asserted difference-of
individuality-as they manifest themselves in lesser-valued sounds such
as echoes and silences.
10
Quoted in Mark Collins, ''All the Year's a Stage," Boulder Dai!J Camera, 12
November 2006.
SURFEIT OF I NFLUENCE
II
Warnings are, unfortunately, a new reality in American
life-and we have recently seen an increase in the
volume of general threats. Americans should continue
to do what you're doing- go about your lives, but pay
attention to your surroundings. Add your eyes and ears
to the protection of our homeland.
- President George W Bush, Address to the
Nation
11
We gotta be vigilant: sit-with-thuh-lights-out-crouch-in-
thuh-kitchen-holdin-hard-soled-shoes. GOTCHA!
- Suzan-Lori Parks
12
49
On 26 July 2001, Topdog/Underdog premiered at the Joseph Papp Public
Theater in New York City. Only a month and a half away, 11 September-
what would happen on that date and what it would come to mean-had
not yet arrived. But the US National Security Agency was ever on the
alert even before 9/11, always "watching closely' ' (as it were) for would-
be terrorist threats. Indeed the Agency watched so closely that it focused
its surveillance activities close to home, using domestic spying techniques
to further its mission of "protect[ing] U.S. national security systems."
13
Unfortunately, watching did not suffice, and it was not until after 9/ 11
that US citizens were asked to contribute and ratchet up their own
surveillance skills in the cause of protecting our homeland. From anthrax
scares to terrorist groups, something or someone sinister was out there,
and Americans absolutely had to be vigilant, lest they become witnesses to
or victims of something as heinous as or more heinous than the tragedy
of 9/11. At that precise moment in time, "watch" was the buzzword that
implanted a gamut of emotions- from a sense of fear and paranoia to
nationalism and valor-into the hearts of American citizens. Curiously,
in the 9 April 2002 New York Times issue in which the announcement that
Topdog/ Underdog had won the Pulitzer Prize appeared, the announcement
11
"President George Bush Address to the Nation," http:/ / www.dhs.gov/
xnews/speeches/speech_0048.shtm (accessed 22 September 2010).
12
Suzan-Loti Parks, "Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom," Theater
24, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 92.
13
"National Security Agency," http:/ / www.nsa.gov/about/ (accessed 22 Sep-
tembet 2010).
50
ALEXANDRE
was subsumed under a 9/11-focused headline and a 9/11 photograph:
The announcement was buried under the article titled "Pulitzers Focus
on Sept. 11, and The Times Wins 7 ," and the article itself was juxtaposed
alongside an image of the North Tower collapsing.
14
The point I am trying to make here is that the need for vigilance
loomed especially large in the historical context in which Parks's play was
produced and staged. In other words, Booth (however fictional) was not
the only prescient one launching pre-emptive warnings against a yet-to-be-
identified- but highly probable-enemy. And Lincoln was not the only
one fully expecting and watching for assassins. We were all watching, too.
But as much as watching.forothers can be an act of self-preservation, it can
just as well become an act of complete self-disregard. For example, Philip
Culbertson argues that "gazing affects the gazer much more deeply than
the one toward whom the gaze is directed [because the gazer inevitably]
capitulat[es] to an imposed external [or socially constructed] meaning
[and ultimately] abandon[s] ... humanjouissance."
15
In the last epigraph
of this section, Parks also seems to warn against the perils and the sheer
absurdity of gazing too intently. Where, indeed, is the jouissance or even
the human dignity to be found in having to be the one designated as the
lookout for, of all things, cockroaches? Although referring to a different
context, Culbertson's argument seems universally instructive, for too
much attention to a potentially dangerous "other" at best transforms the
self into caricature, and, at worst, takes much needed attention away from
the self. It is almost to say that for theatre attendees, scopophilia looms
large as a pathology, which they must continually struggle to suppress lest
they become mere voyeurs. When that theatre consists especially of two
black brothers, who are consistently sharing banter between themselves
14
Felicity Barringer, "Pulitzers Focus on Sept. 11, and the Times Wins 7," New
York Times, 9 April 2002, B4.
15
Philip Culbertson, "Designing Men: Reading the Male Body as Text," Journal
of Textual &asoning, 7 (1998), http:// etext.virginia.edu/journals/tr/archive/volume7 /Cul-
bertson1.html (accessed 22 September 2010). One recent example of this side effect can
be found in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Academy-Award-winning German film
Das Leben der Anderen (The Uves of Others, 2006). Set in the socialist state of East Germany
during the early 1980s, the film explores the effects of the gaze through the relationship
between the gazer, secret service agent Gerd Wiesler, and the artist-couple on whom he
has been hired to spy. Wiesler's saving grace is that he discovers early on that he is losing
jouissance on the job (precisely because of the job), and he decides to counteract that loss by
no longer capirulating to the dictates of the state. For the sake of protecting his dignity
and the artists from punishment, he gives himself delightful creative license to invent and
report back to the state scenarios, that neither his gaze nor his ears acrually ever witness.
SURFEIT OF lNA.UENCE 51
about their sexual exploits, then that probability is even higher.
16
I am interested, therefore, in the costs associated with watching,
with the voluntary desire to watch, and with the involuntary compulsion
to watch. Ultimately, I want to understand how the play negotiates or
treats the implications of there being too much to watch (and listen) for
in the first place-of the very existence of the now proverbial too much
information! How does a play, which invests in our desire to watch, attempt
to transform us into more discerning watchers and listeners? Why would
the vehicle of drama-the preeminent live inducer of spectatorship-
want to investigate and challenge the politics of watching? I think Parks
would agree with Peter Morville's idea that, rather than add more grist
to the watching mill, we should "shift our focus from creating a wealth
of information to addressing the ensuing poverty of attention" in the
world.
17
Topdog/Underdog is an exhortation to meditate; it is quite literally a
play about being spiritually in the "here and now."
18
Thus, to consider the
importance and the influx of the visual in our current moment prompts
us to investigate the nature of our relation to time more generally. Can
spirituality be gleaned from our distance from or immersion in the trends
and the often self-depleting exigencies of our time? In an effort to answer
this question, I want to borrow and simultaneously shift away from
Harold Bloom's theory of the "anxiety of influence," which involves the
fraught and competitive intra-poetic relationships through which poets
consolidate their individual identities. In anxiety's stead, I want to advance
the claim that identity formation (artistic or otherwise) is as much about
being surfeited with influence and the means by which one expresses
that satiation as it is about feeling compelled to engage-by revising-
one's precursor. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in "Quotation and
16
Here, in the context of my argument, I would like to amend Laura Mulvey's
thesis, which suggests that the female form is the main scopophilic spectacle of narrative
cinema, and submit that the black male body on stage works just as well as a source of
scopophilic desires in spectators watching that same body on stage. This is especially true
in the case of this play since the one female character the play repeatedly alludes to never
actually makes an appearance on stage. See Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema" in Film Theory and Critiasm: Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy and Mar-
shall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 833-44.
17
Peter Morville, Ambient Findabili!J (Cambridge, MA: O'Reilly Media, 2005),
44-5.
18
"Here" and "Now" are the generic words Parks uses to designate the place
and time of the play's setting. The immediacy or urgency suggested by these terms serves
not only as a reminder of what it means to be mired in one's present circumstances, but
also as a plea to consider the ramifications of allowing the world to be too much with us.
52
ALEXANDRE
Originality" (a text I consider a prescient antidote to Bloom's agonistic
vision of intergenerationalism), although our literary "debt to past thought
1s Immense,"
the [present] moment has the supreme claim. The Past is
for us; but the sole terms on which it can become ours
are its subordination to the Present .... Vast memory is
only raw material. The divine gift is ever the instant life,
which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the
old in the omnipotency with which Nature decomposes
all her harvest for recomposition.
19
For Emerson, to be indebted need not mean to be passively overwhelmed
or to feel helplessly besieged. It is perhaps no coincidence that Parks
(acknowledging her own sense of indebtedness) quotes Emerson in the
epigraph to the printed text of her play. In the particular context of this
play, to think about the place of surfeit in the art world is also to consider
Parks's place in the history of experimental theatre. Indeed, for Parks,
influence can present itself as a sledgehammer:
The Great Tradition is an enormous sledgehammer that
comes with very few operating instructions. Many writers
use the hammer incorrectly-grasping it firmly by the
handle ... and then-horror-hitting ourselves over the
head with it. ... Inside every great work of literature,
inside every theatrical production that has moved and
amazed us, there we all were and are, conceived within its
every line and gesture, as part of the Next New Thing .
. . . Be a John Henry with the sledgehammer, build a
railroad.
20
Far from allowing the sledgehammer (of influence) to induce anxiety
in her, Parks chooses to build something with that very hammer, which
initially seemed so heavy and intimidating.
19
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Quotation and Originality," in Letters and Social Aims
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894), 163.
20
Suzan-Lori Parks, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Theater 29, no. 2
(Summer 1999): 29.
SURFEIT OF INFLUENCE 53
III
Having information is painful and troublesome.
- Calvin Mooers
21
In the socio-scientific parlance of "nature versus nurture," both Lincoln's
and Booth's identities seem so much informed by nurture that it is initially
quite difficult to understand or see what Parks even means by their "pure
and natural" state. Whatever that natural state may be, it is hidden; it
clearly has to contend with the formative-if not greater-influence of
their nurture: the brothers' historic names, the personal history of their
abandonment by their parents, the "here-and-now" notions of urban
masculinity, and the incursion of technology. When in conversation with
Booth, Lincoln (without warning) suddenly reveals the backs tory of their
given names. After the account, we don't know whether to take the story
as flippant dismissal or respectful acknowledgment of the overwhelming
historical weight of these names.
Lincoln
Daddy told me once why we got the names we do .... He was
drunk when he told me, or maybe I was drunk when he told me.
Anyway he told me, may not be true, but he told me. Why he
named us both. Lincoln and Booth.
Booth
How come. How come, man?
Lincoln
It was his idea of a joke (23-4).
Although Parks chooses to end the first act of the play with this Qocular)
revelation, it continues to weigh heavily on our minds as we enter into
the next act. In other words, its placement at the end indicates its very
significance. But to discover that the names are merely the result of a
joke- and an inebriate's joke at that-is to take some (if not all) of the
weight off of those names. Indeed, in an interview with NPR radio host
Lisa Simeone, Parks insists that she had no particular agenda in mind
when she decided on the brothers' names: ((I wasn't thinking; I wasn't
planning; I wasn't plotting; I wasn't strategizing; I wasn't thinking of issues
or themes or anything. . . . I was just moving my hands around on the
keyboard."
22
Whether or not we choose to take Parks at her word, the
21
Calvin N. Mooers, quoted in Moreville, Ambient Findability, 44.
22
The Topdog Diaries: An Intimate Portrait of Pltrywnght Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by
54 ALExANDRE
overwhelming responsibility of having to bear the weight of American
history on one's person, even if only nominally, is one from which Parks
seems to take pleasure in relieving her characters. She is not in the business
of sledgehammering her characters with history. The historical weight
of their names may indeed give much to ponder and consequently add
significance and meaning to their individual (and collective) identities. But
their names' weight, significance, and meaning ultimately deny an ideal
lifestyle or pure and natural state in which the brothers could possibly
live-either in their minds or when nobody is watching.
23
In other words,
as much as Parks depends on an audience to watch her plays, she is also
just as interested (if only hypothetically, experimentally, or for fun) in
what it would mean for people to live their lives without the supervision
or imposition of the gaze(s) . In physics, this would be considered an
experiment in challenging what physicists call the "observer effect"-that
is, the impact that observation has on the very thing being observed.
If theatergoers are watching the play closely, they are perhaps
watching it to see whether the Lincoln character-and likewise the Booth
character-will fulfill the prophecy of their names. But ultimately this is
not what Parks means by "watching closely," for her sense of watching
requires us to look beyond and penetrate through the veneer of historical
names in order to get at the "individual talent" of these two characters.
In her essay which borrows its name from T. S. Eliot's famous 1919 essay,
"Tradition and the Individual Talent," Parks argues that as important as
the Great literary Tradition may be to shaping the work of artists today,
the Personal Tradition (a.k.a. the Individual Talent) is also essential to the
artist's development.
24
In other words, Booth and Lincoln are also creators
or artists of their own destinies. And the question that looms large
throughout the play is whether the two brothers (and we) are capable of
sloughing off what amounts to a Great Tradition of too much influence-
Oren Jacoby, DVD, Image Entertainment, 2002.
23
The notion of behaving or existing without a stigmatizing or classifying gaze
is one with which Parks seems particularly concerned in her work. See Imperceptible
ties in the Third Kingdom wherein the character Mona fantasizes about existing without being
seen: "Once there was uh me named Mona who wondered what she'd be like if no one was
watchin." Suzan-Loci Parks, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (New York: The-
atre Communications Group, 1995), 27. An unnamed character, who frequents the arcade
where Lincoln works, also waxes philosophical about this possibility when he whispers
strange things into Lincoln's ear every time he visits: "Does thuh show stop when no ones
watching or does thuh show go on?" and "Yr only yrself when no ones watching" (34).
24
By signifying Eliot's classic essay, Parks practices what she preaches about
listening to her own spirit despite the overwhelming presence and influence of the Great
Tradition(s) that have come before her.
SURFEIT OF INFLUENCE
55
indeed, of "too much information" about the value of the ever-venerable
"Tradition." Eliot strongly endorses this need for veneration when he
writes:
Tradition ... cannot be inherited, and if you want it you
must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first
place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly
indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a
poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical
sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of
the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels
a man to write not merely with his own generation in his
bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature
of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the
literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence
and composes a simultaneous order. This historical
sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the
temporal and of the timeless and the temporal together,
is what makes a writer traditional. And it is what makes a
writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his
contemporaneity.
25
In light of this strong-arm theory, Parks challenges us with the following
questions: Do we have the capacity to see and hear the personal tradition,
the individual talent, or the "pure and natural state" behind the veneer of
the Great Tradition? Do Lincoln and Booth? By co-opting Eliot's title,
Parks calls into question the Great Tradition's ostensibly intimidating
factor. ''Who's Afraid of T. S. Eliot?" she implicitly asks. I ndeed, Who's
Afraid of the Great Tradition?
For Parks, the Great Tradition has its greatest adversary in the
personal tradition, which "flows from the river of [a person's] spirit, [a
person's] own private Mississippi."
26
If anything in that river's path,
including the Great Tradition, does not "get out of the way," then
someone or something will go under and drown.
27
In other words, the
Personal Tradition is a force to reckon with. One way in which Parks
attempts to show how formidable that tradition can be is by making it
25
T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," from The Sacred Wood: Essqys
on Poetry and Criticism (London: Methuen, 1960), 49.
26
Parks, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," 29.
27
Ibid.
56 ALEXANDRE
resemble, if even just superficially, the Great Tradition. Far from flattery,
the resemblance is meant to be deceiving. It is meant to prove how truly
difficult it can be to forge a discrete identity separate from the Great
Tradition. When a person's personal tradition has an air of the Great
Tradition about it, that person has to work harder to assert his or her
own individuality. Of course, this is precisely the dilemma in which the
brothers find themselves. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the story of
the inheritance left to Booth and Lincoln closely resembles the biblical
story popularly referred to as the Parable of the Talents.
28
As the story
goes, a master who was traveling to a foreign country gave each of his
three servants different sums of money (talents), presenting them with
five, two, and one talent, respectively. While the first two chose to invest
and thereby double their talents, the servant who received one talent chose
to hide his talent in a hole in the ground. When the master returned to
discover what the servants did with the talents, he rewarded the first two,
and proceeded to excoriate the third--damning him to hell, even.
Booth, as we shall later discover, is like that third servant: he
chooses to hide the inheritance/ talent his mother left him in a stocking. In
the first scene of the play, his is the fortune cookie that, quite prophetically,
reads "Waste not want not" (17). Lincoln, on the other hand, like one of
the first two servants, chooses to gamble (albeit unsuccessfully) with the
inheritance his father left him in an effort to increase it. Coincidentally,
in that same scene, his is the fortune cookie that predicts, ''Your luck
will change" (18). The echo of the biblical story overlays the echo of
the historical Lincoln-Booth story whose ending we know so well (if not
better than the biblical story). In this light, the play becomes less about
the (predictable) fate of a black man named Lincoln and his brother
Booth, and more about what each decides to do with the " talent" he has
been given. In other words, the play suddenly looks to be more about
choice than about destiny or prophecy. The "pure and natural state of
the characters" can be found in that space where these echoes mingle,
where that time delay between the audibility and the inaudibility of these
echoes (or their figurative visibility and invisibility) has been filled by the
brothers' choice of actions. In other words, personal tradition counteracts
and destabilizes the Great Tradition through the individual actions of the
two brothers. Here, I believe, Parks challenges the prophetic quality of the
name, especially a prophecy as fateful as that suggested by these brothers'
names. Lincoln even has a moment when he articulates his quintessential
difference from his namesake:
28
A comparison with the similarly titled work of science-fictio n writer, Octavia
Butler, could be made here as well. Both offer lessons in self-sufficiency and self-reliance.
SuRFEIT OF INFLUENCE
Lincoln
[fhe job of playing a Lincoln impersonator] don't make
me .. . . Fake beard. Top hat. Don't make me into no
Lincoln. I was Lincoln on my own before any of that
(30).
57
Booth has a similar moment in which he tries to escape the tyranny of
the Great-Man theory by renaming himself. Booth tries to eschew self-
fulfilling labels.
Booth
Don't be calling me Booth no more, K?
My new names 3-Card. 3-Card, got it? You wanted to
know it so now you know it .... Call me 3-Card from
here on out (13, 19).
The brothers have had enough with the Great-Man theory of identity
formation and each is trying to transcend his namesake in an effort, literally
and figuratively, to make a new name for himself Moreover, far from
exhibiting symptoms of the anxiety of influence by wanting, for example,
to "wrestle with (his] strong[ est] precursor"-his father- Lincoln goes so
far as to burn the clothes his father left behind when he abandoned the
farnily.
29
Lincoln makes no pretense to fantasies of trying to fit into either
his forefather's or his biological father's clothing.
Despite their determination to forge their own paths, it is quite
clear from dialogue between the brothers that they were and continue
to be emotionally distraught by their parents' abandonment. However
much we are a part of Lincoln's and Booth's "here and now," we also get
glimpses of their past in the ways in which they speak more like boys than
men. In one scene in which the brothers are still trying to figure out why
their parents would have abandoned them so unceremoniously, they come
up with the following story:
Booth
Theyd been scheming together all along. They left
separately but they was in agreement. Maybe they arrived
at the same place at the same time, maybe they renewed
they wedding vows, maybe they got another family.
29
Harold Bloom, Anxiety of Influence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 5.
58 ALExANDRE
Lincoln
Maybe they got 2 new kids. 2 boys. Different than us,
though. Better (70).
In this familiar childish language of anxiety and self-blame, we hear the
boys in the very adult men who appear before us on stage.
If their traumatic past is not emotionally stunting and damaging
enough, the pressures associated with being modern men in the "here
and now" makes for further damage. These brothers do not necessarily
fit the stereotypical image of manhood that American society has doled
out and they have imbibed. The word "fit" is especially apt because of the
scene in which Booth seems to fail in his attempts to put on a magnum-
sized condom-"for the larger man" (42). The assumption is that Booth
is just not large enough, not man enough. If the magnum condom does
not fit, then Booth can't wear true masculinity, or at least he can't wear it
well. From the Great Man theory to the Larger Man theory of how they
ought or ought not live, these brothers have many pressures with which
to contend.
However, latex technology is not the only factor that determines
who is and isn't "the man." Telecommunications technology proves just
as essential to a classification system that separates the men from the boys.
The scene that makes this classification all too dear is especially instructive
in extenso:
Booth
How you gonna get a woman if you dont got a phone?
Women these days are more cautious, more whaddacallit,
more circumspect. You go into a club looking like a fast
daddy, you get a filly to give you her numerophono and
gone is the days when she just gives you her number and
dont ask for yrs.
Lincoln
Like a woman is gonna call me.
Booth
She dont wanna call you she just doing a preliminary
survey of the property. Shit, Link, you dont know nothin
no more.
R e s ~
She gives you her number and she asks for yrs. You give
her yr number. The phone number of yr home. Thereby
telling her 3 things: 1) you got a home, that is, you aint
no smooth talking smooth dressing homeless joe; 2) that
SURFEIT OF INFLUENCE
you is in possession of a telephone and a working
telephone number which is to say that you got thuh cash
and thuh wherewithal to acquire for yr self the worlds
most revolutionary communication apparatus and you
together enough to pay yr bills!
Lincoln
Whats 3?
Booth
. . . that its cool to call if she should so please, that is,
that you aint got no wife or wife approximation on the
premises (31-2).
59
Booth's logic is not without its merits. In a shallow world in which people
are watching closely (as opposed to critically), image is everything. The
brothers have certain unspoken guidelines they must follow if they expect
to keep up with trends in modern-day masculinity. And, of course, it is
Lincoln's inability to keep up or be one step ahead of the technological
trends that gets him fired. To be sure, by classifying the brothers as either
"man enough" or "not man enough" and robbing them of everything from
jobs to girlfriends, technology threatens to dispossess the brothers (and,
by extension, all humanity) of their very dignity. In the play, moments of
swearing come to testify to a dynamic, vital, and dignified humanity, which
is constantly being threatened by the incursion of literally and figuratively
"dumb" technologies (in this case, a wax dummy with an electronic voice
box).
Lincoln
I do my best for them. And now they talking bout cutting
me, replacing me with uh wax dummy.
Booth
You just gotta show yr boss that you can do things a wax
dummy cant do. You too dry with it. You gotta add spicy
shit. . . Like when they shoot you, I dunno, scream or
something.
Lincoln
A wax dummy can scream. They can put a voicebox in it
and make it like its screaming.
Booth
You can curse (50-1).
60 Ar.EXANDRE
The tension between the robot technology, which is unable or not
programmed to curse, and the cursing human being provokes the
following question: How is cursing a recuperation of the dignity of man?
Expletives, in this case, fall under the audio-spiritual, for to curse is to
get at the pure and natural state of humankind. Cursing, in this scene,
is what Toni Morrison calls an "eruption of funk" -that is, eruptions
of "passion, nature, [and] the wide range of human emotions"-that
transcends the dictates of soulless corporations and technologies that
subvert the challenges to the kind of uncritical veneration of "historical
sense" that we see both in Eliot and in the arcade.
30
But Lincoln ultimately
undoes this encouraging moment, which seems to promise an imminent
encounter with his pure and natural self, by "toeing the party line," as it
were:
Goddamn you! ... I'd scare the customers. Then I'd be
out for sure. Y r trying to get me fired .... People are
funny about they Lincoln shit. Its historical. People like
they historical shit in a certain way. They like it to unfold
the way they folded it up. Neatly like a book. Not raggedy
and bloody and screaming. You trying to get me fired ...
. I ts a sit down job. With benefits. I dont wanna get fired.
They wont give me a good reference if I get fired (52-3).
The world is too much with Lincoln, and he cannot transcend or revise
the script he is paid to follow, especially if he expects to survive in the
here and now. He depends so on that very script for his livelihood and his
future prospects that the line "Its a sit down job. With benefits," becomes
something of a mantra for him, a mantra that simultaneously reminds him
of the privilege he may lose if he does anything disagreeable on the job,
and of the absurdity of this dead-end job-of all jobs-that keeps him
so dutiful as to inspire him to chant a mantra about its merits practically
every day.
IV
Quiet as it's kept ....
- Well-known phrase signaling the subsequent revelation
of a secret or a tidbit of gossip.
The silences in Topdog/ Underdog play are so palpable and heavy that
30
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York: Holt, 1970), 68.
SURFEIT OF INFLUENCE
61
they demand our attention. While card tricks require that we watch
closely throughout the play, silences implore us to listen attentively. Yet,
because the best advice we've intuited is not to divide our attention but to
compound it, we quickly come to realize that the silences are asking us
to watch closely as well. One form of these silences, which Parks coins
"Spells," may not have much audibility to "speak," but in the play's script
they do assert their visibility by occupying space; they fill up a room and
much of a page with the weight of unspoken thoughts.
Lincoln
Booth
Lincoln
Booth
(21)
"Elongated and heightened [with an] architectural look" (3), these spells
literally and figuratively stand out.
31
Further, the double meaning of the
word "spell," as moment in time and visual enchantment, figures these
spells not only as temporal, but also spatial and visible, especially their
rhythmic and hypnotic repetition of the brothers' names and in being
so long Oonger in duration than the "rests"-the short pauses and
breathers-that are also woven into the play). The pendulum of time
swings back and forth between Lincoln's and Booth's individual thoughts,
and we are held spellbound, or as if in meditation, for that elongated
period of time.
But far from being merely the synaesthesic magic of being both
loud and visibly clear silences, these spells also seem ready and willing
to make trouble by opening up old wounds, thereby making progress
toward that elusive pure and natural state. As Booth explains, these impish
spells can wreak havoc in a household because of their nostalgic quality.
Nostalgic thoughts are anathema to individuals whose past, traumatic
experiences are best kept repressed. Like a horrible stench, these nostalgic
thoughts linger. Like a quiet storm, they destroy things:
Don't be going down memory lane man, yll jinx thuh
vibe I got going in here. Gracell be walking in here and
wrinkling up her nose cause you done jinxed up thuh
joint with yr raggedy recollections (65).
31
The language of "architectural look" begs the question of the very structural
integrity of the spell.
62 ALEXANDRE
These spells have odor. These spells have texture. Spells become smells.
Spells portend mayhem. Spells cast spells. Spells suggest that raggedy
metaphorical skeletons hidden in closets remain buried there. But it is
precisely the silence of these spells that allows us one of our only entry
points into those buried zones, which we can neither see nor hear but
that we are certain exist--even if only because Parks tells us outright that
"This is [the] place where the figures experience their pure true simple
state" (3).
While these "silent and deadly'' spells loudly suggest that some
things are better left unsaid, they also suggest that unsaid things are of
better quality than those articulated.
32
This pendulum, which vacillates
between judging spells "bad" and "good" is one of many ways in which
Parks attempts to reinforce the atmosphere of trickery and conning that
pervades the play, which in turn works to eschew the logical fallacy of
false dichotomies. Even in a play titled as if it were describing a heirarchy
of two, we are immediately encouraged to dismantle that hierarchy. A la
Derrida, Parks opens the play with an epigraph, which seems to suggest
that we read the play with an eye not to division, but to deconstruction-
conflation. Quoting Emerson, she writes, "I am God in nature / I am a
weed by the wall" (5). In this new monistic order of things, the highest
(God) is the ostensibly lowliest (a weed), and vice versa. The two are one
and the same and therefore interchangeable. Throughout the play, we are
discouraged from coming to easy conclusions about what we observe and
hear, for even in this small rooming-house room for two, we are made
to imagine missing persons and to piece together missing elements in a
family history that comes to us only in snippets. For instance, in scene 5,
Lincoln waxes nostalgic about how good it felt to throw the cards when
he was a big-time hustler. Those days were great, especially compared with
his current situation in which his sit-down, with-benefits sinecure as an
Abraham Lincoln impersonator is being threatened by a wax dummy:
It felt good .... Felt really good. Like back in thuh day
when I was really making money. Throwing thuh cards
all day and strutting and rutting all night. Didnt have to
take no shit from no fool, didnt have to worry about
getting fired in favor of some damn wax dummy. I was
thuh shit and they was my fools (67).
32
In the Author's Notes to Topdog/Underdog, Parks seems to suggest this second
interpretation. Such moments of truth or transparency seem like much needed reprieves in
a play so much about keeping appearances, playing a part, and about Lincoln's belief that
there is "more to life than cheating some idiot out of his paycheck or his life savings" (55).
SURFEIT Of INFLUENCE 63
Reminiscing about his glory days, however, is soon followed by a meaningful
"rest," Lincoln's almost trancelike summoning of the past, a more pregnant
pause, and finally a sudden curveball of a question about his parents:
R e s ~
Back in thuh day.
R e s ~
R e s ~
Why you think they left us, mao? (67).
In a play where you can be ambushed by the past (where we are unprepared
for and possibly startled by this serious question), false dichotomies are
dangerous because they are misleading. Things are not what they seem; they
are not black and white, and neither are they either/ or. We cannot expect
that we have only one of two outcomes from which to choose, especially
if (on the most basic level) we are dealing with the play's overarching
Three-card Monte game in which the odds of winning are 1 in 3.
When we can hear the broken flow in a character's train of
thoughts so well that it startles us, we know that we are working with
an unpredictable, perhaps even unstable character who harbors repressed
memories. We have to listen closely for these eruptions, these startling
moments when traumatic memories begin to rip through the seams of
smooth narratives of glory days gone by. We have to listen closely for
those moments when the democratic project of equalizing God and a
weed is on the brink of collapsing, and we regress to a competitive and
primitive (top)dog-eat-(under)dog world, where harmony and smooth
dialogue suddenly begin to sound like desperate, yet indecipherable and
random, barks. And here is where I would suggest that Parks is toying with
the notion that the precious "pure and natural state" which she prizes is
not Rousseauian at all but Hobbesian.
v
The only grace they could have was the grace they could
imagine .... If they could not see it, they would not have it.
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
33
Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound.
- Famous Christian hymn (my emphasis)
34
33
Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 88.
34
John Newton, ''Amazing Grace" (1779).
64 ALExANDRE
Besides listening for brinks, we are also encouraged to listen for chinks
in the narratives these two brothers spin throughout the play. The first
suspicious story is that Booth supposedly has a girlfriend named Grace
whom we actually never get to see. From Booth's mention of her size 7
ring finger to the half-naked picture he verbally paints of her "wearing
nothing but her little nightie," the play teases us while it gradually fashions
her into full view for our mind's eyes, but only from Booth's skewed
perspective (40). We get synecdoches of Grace but never the whole
woman. Interestingly enough, Grace is evoked whenever Booth needs a
"saving grace" to save face in front of his big, topdog brother Lincoln.
In the opening of scene 6, we hear Lincoln soWoquizing about his latest
exciting foray into the world of Three-card Monte hustling. He has just
won a big wad of money from this gambling venture, and he is feeling like
a new man-vindicated and reborn:
They all thought I was down and out! They all thought I
was some NoCount HasBeen LostCause motherfucker.
But I got my shit back. Thats right. They stepped on
me and kept right on stepping. Not no more. Who thuh
man?! Goddamnit, who thuh- (85).
Unbeknownst to Lincoln, Booth has been standing behind a screen
listening to Lincoln's entire chest-thumping soWoquy. When Booth finally
makes his presence known by audibly closing the door, Lincoln asks,
"Another evening to remember, huh?" (85). Stunned and angry because
Lincoln, who had allegedly sworn off the cards, would throw the cards
one last time without him (and behind his back, to boot), Booth responds
cautiously to a question that begins to appear a little sarcastic:
Uh-yeah, man, yeah. Thats right, thats right (85).
But when Lincoln then reveals that he also had a memorable evening,
Booth throws down his rhetorical trump card. "I got news .... R e s ~
Grace got down on her knees. Down on her knees, man. Asked me tuh
marry hel' (85-6). This is a timely news flash, to say the least. Just when
big brother is about to reveal his good news, little brother suddenly has
an amazing and unprecedented turn of events to share. To add further
injury, Booth tells Lincoln that he has to move out of the rooming house
room because Grace will be moving in. Perhaps thinking that he has dealt
his brother the ultimate blow by finally making good on his threat from
the first scene of the play- ''You gonna have to leave"-Booth is actually
stunned by Lincoln's blase response:
SURFEIT OF INFLUENCE
Lincoln
No sweat. I'll just pack up.
Booth
Just like that, huh? "No sweat"?! Yesterday you lost
yr damn job. You dont got no cash. You dont got no
friends, no nothing, but you clearing out just like that and
its "no sweat"?! (87).
65
Booth's reaction seems to suggest that his demand that Lincoln move
out was a hollow one-made insincerely, only in the hope of eliciting
supplication from Lincoln and to undercut Lincoln's good news. "No
sweat" spits in the face of Booth's news and trumps Booth's very effort
to trump. Booth turns the conversation into a competition to determine
who had the most memorable evening and to decide, once and for all,
who throws the shots. Without a doubt-with "no sweat"- Lincoln wins
this round.
Grace is expecliently conjured up in another scene in which Booth
finds himself in a bit of a bind-i.e., feeling a sense of inadequacy. In
the very last scene of the play, Booth has just lost his entire inheritance
to his brother after losing against him in a game of Three-card Monte.
Although Booth claims his inheritance was presented to him in a stocking
by his mother that he has never opened since it was bequeathed to him, it
remains unclear whether or not there actually is an inheritance. One can
go so far as to argue that neither Booth nor we know whether or not there
is money in the stocking. Just as "Lincoln brings the knife down to cut the
stocking" (an obvious symbol for castration), Booth suddenly reveals that
he has murdered Grace:
Booth
I popped her.
Lincoln
Huh?
Booth
Grace. I popped her. Grace
(Res f)
Who thuh fuck she think she is doing me like she done?
Telling me I don't got nothing going on. I showed her
what I got going on. Popped her good. Twice. 3 times.
Whatever.
(Res f)
66
She aint dead.
(Rest)
ALEXANDRE
She werent wearing my ring I gived her. Said it was too
small. Puck that. Said it hurt her. Puck that. Said she was
into bigger things. Puck that. Shes alive not to worry, she
aint going out that easy, shes alive shes shes-
Lincoln
Dead. Shes-
Booth
Dead (107-8).
Booth needs Grace (dead or alive) to shore up his manhood,
which was in imminent threat of being cut down to a size even smaller
than that about which he is already self-conscious. It seems that Grace
is not so much a person as a rhetorical conceit--conveniently invoked
every time Booth needs to save face and one-up his big brother. Indeed,
Grace is the proving ground for Booth's sense of manhood. In another
conversation he has with Lincoln about his alleged sexual exploits with
Grace, we can hear in Lincoln's responses a clear desire to humor Booth-
to play along with Booth's fantasies about having a sexually desirable and
doting girlfriend. Indeed, Booth has to pause for a short moment (as if to
come up with a plausible picture) before he can continue the story about
his hot date with Grace. But ultimately, this scene of call and response is
less about confirming the truth of Grace's existence than about getting
caught up in the rhetorical volley and exciting frenzy of the catechism that
this spectral girlfriend makes possible. Ordinary Grace becomes ''Amazing
Grace." It's virtually a hallelujah hour in this scene in the play.
Booth
(Rest)
Well, uh, you know what shes like. Wild. Goodlooking.
So sweet my teeth hurt.
Lincoln
A sexmachine.
Booth
Yeah.
Lincoln
A hotsy-totsy
Booth
Yeah.
Lincoln
Amazing Grace.
SURFEIT OF I NFLUENCE
Booth
Amazing Grace! Yeah. Thats right. She let me do her
how I wanted. And no rubber ....
Lincoln
Amazing Grace (40-1).
67
Here the form of the scene matters more than the content. The scene
privileges a moment of camaraderie between the brothers irrespective
of Grace's existence. In its call-and-response form it parallels a previous
scene of brotherly banter in which Lincoln and Booth play a fictive "Pa"
and "Ma," respectively, and which ends with "lots of laughing and slapping
on the backs" (27).
Perhaps the most important reason why listening is also a useful
skill to hone despite and because of the play's ironized attempt to steer
us in the direction of watching is the ever-present sound of echoes
throughout the play. Inheritance is not only important to the characters
in its material instantiation; it is also important as a reference to the play's
indebtedness to its own intertextuality. The play's theme of "inheritance"
evokes everything from the Parable of the Talents, to Shakespeare's King
Lear, to the Lincoln-Booth story, to vicious family cycles or narratives that
refuse to stop recycling themselves in the here and now.
It is perhaps difficult to see how a play that announces rivalry,
competition, and hierarchy in its very tide could be an advocate for what I
have called audio-spirituality. But the spiritual comes when we choose not
to be anxious by influence-by the influences of visual aide, by history,
by heard melodies, by great men, even by the lure of paratexts. When we
decide we have had enough of all of that- that we are surfeited with that
influence-then we enter a stage of inner ear training, which endows us
with the freedom to think for ourselves. That suspension of anxiety, that
gesture of non-compliance (of shaking off the albatross of influence by
playing with it, tweaking it, or working it to your advantage) is spiritual,
because it is freeing. If as Parks demonstrates, the God (of Past influence)
can be likened to a weed, then this means that such influence can be
stripped of whatever intimidating quality it may have possessed or we may
presume it possessed. Booth, however, remains mired in and dominated by
the various strong precursors that have shaped his life. At the end of the
play, like his namesake, "Booth shoots Lincoln. lincoln slumps forward,
falling out of his chair and onto the floor. He lies there dead. Booth
paces back and forth, like a panther in a cage, holding his gun" (109). All
opportunity for Booth's spiritual awakening has been stamped out by a
predatory bestial quality that takes over. One's "pure and natural state,"
however precious and laudable that state is, should not come at the price
68 ALEXANDRE
of another's (a brother's) life. One's "pure and natural state" need not be
achieved through agonistic methods, especially jf (as Parks suggests) that
"pure and natural state" has divine potential. That state can be achieved
through spiritual moments of silence, meditation, and reconciliation-
reconciling the past, present, and future; reconciling brother and brother;
reconciling God and the weed by the wall. That the final achievement of
Booth's pure and natural state comes in the form of a primal scream at
the end of the play would suggest that the opening imperative to watch
closely has been trumped by a new sense of urgency-that is, that we
listen closely, next time, for those moments when one might predict or
pre-empt the breaking point of those individuals whose lives are surfeited
with influence. In the end, Parks seems at least hopeful that the life we
save may be our own.
j OUIU'lAL OF AMERJCAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 22, NO.3 (I' ALL 2010)
"THREE vARIATIONS ON A NATIONAL THEME": GEORGE O'NEIL'S
AMERICAN DREAM, 1933
Cheryl Black
Although the concept of the American Dream has been a part of
American consciousness at least since the Declaration of Independence's
famous promise of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the iconic
phrase is of fairly recent vintage. Pulitzer prize winning historian James
Truslow Adams is generally credited with coining the phrase, "the American
dream," in his 1931 work, The Epic of Amenca. The phrase is explained
as "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and
fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or
achievement." On the following page, Adams extends the dream to "man
and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected
in older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed
for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any
and every class."
1
Adams wanted to use the phrase as the title for his work,
but his editor objected, arguing that "no red-blooded American would pay
S3.50 for a dream."
2
Two years later, Adams expanded his notion of the
American dream in a New York Times article to "the dynamic belief that it
was possible to create and order a society in which, every man, woman and
child would have the opportunity of living the fullest possible life of which
they were capable ... [with] no barrier whatever beyond their own natures
in their efforts to attain to the fullest expression of themselves.''
3
Although,
as Adams admitted, "this dream has never been fully realized" (blaming
the failure on the lure of material gain-"we forgot to live in the struggle
to 'make a living"'),
4
he claimed that it had been more near!J realized in
America than anywhere else, and he was emphatically not arguing in favor
1
James Truslow Adams, The Epic of Amenca (New York: Blue Ribbon Books,
1931), 404-5. This widely read work was a book-of-the-month club selection and headed
the bestseller list in 1932.
2
Adams to Leland Case, 13 May 1946, in Allan Nevins, James Truslow Adams:
Historian of the Amencan Dream (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1968), 296, quoted in
Jeffrey Louis Decker, Made in America: Se(f-Styled Success from Horatio Alger to Oprah Winfrey
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 154-55, n. 44.
3
James Truslow Adams, ''What of the American Dream?" New York Times, 14
May 1933, 1.
4
Adams, The Epic of America, 406.
70 BLACK
of a socialist revolution. In fact, he was distinctly wary of FDR's New
Deal. Adams's writings read like sermons: he argued competitive excess
and greed (particularly the monopoly capitalism of the late nineteenth
century), selfishness, lust for material objects, and cheap amusements (he
decried movies in favor of the burgeoning movements in folk drama and
poetry) had led Americans astray, and that salvation lay in renewed faith in
a democratic "dream" not entirely restricted to material gain.
Historian Jeffrey Louis Decker has recently noted that it was not
until the Great Depression, and the concomitant crisis in national identity
(and as Paul P. Ruben similarly observed, "until there emerged a profound
sense of loss''), that the phrase "American dream" entered the lexicon.
5
In that sense, the American dream, as a cultural trope, has since carried
with it an evocation of nostalgia, loss, failure, disillusionment, deferral; or
death. As such it has frequently recurred in American drama, becoming
perhaps the most significant theme in American drama, the ur-trope of
the American dream deferred, lost, or denied. The list of notable works
on this theme includes Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes (1939), Tennessee
Williams's Glass Menagerie (1944), Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
(1949), Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959), Edward Albee's
The American Dream (1961) and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woo!f? (1962),
David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross (1982), August Wilson's Fences (1986),
Tony Kushner's Angels in America (1992), and Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/
Underdog (2001). These plays expose the flaws in America's utopian myth
of "equal opportunity" and critique its focus on material and superficial
values. Along with exposes of greed and materialism-the most important
factors in Adams's treatise on the unfulfilled promise of the American
Dream-these works also expose the essentialist ideology and politics of
exclusion (of which the white, wealthy, Yale-educated Mr. Adams-like
most of his generation and class-seemed oblivious). In the process these
works render hollow the dream's promise of equal opportunity "with no
barrier whatever" to equal achievement. Implicit in all these works is the
perennially crucial question of identity: for whom is the dream explicitly
deferred or denied? The authors and/ or protagonists of these works
that critique, or indict, American society, laying bare the hollowness of
its idealist rhetoric, are generally located in marginal positions; they are
working class, poor, female, aging, or sexual, racial, or religious minorities,
on the outside looking in. Arguably, all of them originate from queerness
in the sense Jill Dolan offered that "to be queer is not who you are, it's
5
See Decker, Made in America, 92; and Paul P. Ruben, "Appendix S: The Ameri-
can Dream," in PAL Perspectives in American Literature--A Research and Reference Guide,
hrtp:/ /www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/append/axs.hrml (accessed 27 June 2010).
"THREE VARIATIONS ON 1\ NATIONAL T HEME" 71
what you do, it's your relation to dominant power, and your relation to
marginality, as a place of empowerment."
6
Within this critical, dramaturgical tradition of interrogating the
American dream, a pioneering example has been forgotten. In 1933, The
Theatre Guild presented a sprawling, epic play in three acts (essentially
a trilogy) by the "other O'Neil," poet and novelist George O'Neil. In a
decade noted for revolutionary theatre-including critiques of capitalism
and its abuses-O'Neil's American Dream, described by a contemporary
critic as a "bitter caricature,"
7
may be viewed as an important forerunner
of this dramaturgical tradition, particularly the dysfunctional-family-as-
metaphor-for-social-degeneration that would culminate in the mid- and
late-twentieth century works of playwrights like Arthur Miller, Edward
Albee, and Tony Kushner. It is more than likely that O'Neil was aware
of Adams's just-published, widely-read work, and that O'Neil very well
may have been influenced by Adams's call for a return to spiritual, rather
than material, values. George O'Neil's American Dream, however, seems
remarkably mindful of the essentialist ideology and politics of exclusion
that many of his generation, gender, and class (including Adams) failed
to address. The play's significance is enhanced by its early exploration of
homoerotic desires (albeit tortured) in a central character, the (presumedly
closeted) queer sexuality of its author, and its resonance with later works
in the genre, including Tony Kushner's similarly epic masterwork, Angels
in America. This study analyzes both the nature of O'Neil's vision of the
American Dream and his critique of a host of social and cultural systems
that render hollow the promise of that dream-including patriarchy, moral
hypocrisy, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism. In an attempt
to illuminate the play's significance as "queer" theatre, or queer cultural
criticism, this study also looks at O'Neil's life and other works, and his
personal and professional relationships. Reading this work as "queer" is
aided by Dolan's expanded notion of queerness as well as David Savran's
explication of queer theatre as "less a fixed attribute of a given text than an
effect produced by the interplay between and among text, actor, director,
and spectator."
8
6
Jill Dolan, Introduction, The Queerest Art: s s ~ s on Lesbian and G ~ Theater,
edited by Framji Minwalla and Alisa Solomon (New York: New York University Press,
2002), 5.
7
Richard Lockridge, "American Dream, a Bitter Caricature, Opens at the Guild
Theatre," New York Sun, 23 February 1933, American Dream clippings file, Dorothy and
Lewis B. Cullman Center, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
8
David Savran, "Queer Theater and the Disarticulation of Identity," in The
Queerest Art, 154.
72 BLACK
When the Theatre Guild produced American Dream in February
1933, O'Neil was already well known in literary and bohemian circles.
He was born George Rowley O'Neil in 1898 to a wealthy family in St.
Louis (one of his maternal ancestors, James Wilson, was a signer of the
Declaration of Independence). As a child, O'Neil was taken to the Olympic
Theatre in St. Louis, where he developed a keen interest in drama, reading
every play he could find. O'Neil was a prep school dropout who eventually
graduated from Washington University, eschewing entry into the family
lumber business to pursue his artistic passions: art and poetry. His youth
included a brief stint in the Navy and a similarly brief sojourn in Paris.
Returning to New York he began to write book and play reviews. By 1933,
O'Neil had published several books of poetry, two novels, a fictionalized
biography of John Keats (very favorably reviewed in the New York Times),
a number of essays, short stories, reviews, a one-act play (published in
George Jean Nathan's Smart Set), and another full-length play, Something
to Live For, inspired by the life of D. H. Lawrence, commissioned by the
Theatre Guild, and eventually produced by Westchester County Centre
in White Plains and the Cleveland Playhouse.
9
He was a friend to Ernest
Hemingway and John Dos Passos, with whom he vacationed in France
and Spain in 1923-4. One of O'Neil's closest friends was the "quietly gay"
playwright Lyon Riggs, author of Green Grow the Lilacs, produced by the
Theatre Guild in 1931 and famously adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein
as Oklahoma! in 1943.
10
According to Riggs's biographer Phyllis Braunlich,
the two young Midwestern men of letters met at Yaddo writers' colony in
1927 and remained close friends, travelling companions, and occasional
collaborators until O'Neil's death in 1940.
11
Riggs's papers at Yale include a
significant correspondence from O'Neil during these years, and Braunlich,
who described O'Neil as "handsome as a Hollywood star," with a "gay
disposition," has documented their frequent travels together.
12
Although
Braunlich refrains from overt discussion of Riggs's homosexuality, scholar
9
Biographical information acquired from "Meet Two American Playwrights:
Sidney Howard, Author of A lien Corn and George O'Neil, Author of American Dream,"
New York Times, 19 February 1933, X3. See also "Plays for White Plains Listed," New York
Times, 9 April 1933, 2; and "News of the Stage," New York Times, 14 January 1935, 13.
10
Roy Meador, "Tell Everybody I'm Alive," Book Source, www.booksourcemag-
azine.com/showstory.php?sid=feature/0911 (accessed 27 June 2010).
11
Braunlich identified O'Neil as Riggs's closest companion from the time of
their meeting to O'Neil's death and characterized their friendship as "a lifelong close rela-
tionship." See Phyllis Braunlich, Haunted fry Home: The Uft and Letters of Lynn Riggs (Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 51.
12
Ibid., 124-26, 159-60.
"THREE VARIATIONS ON A NATIONAL THEME" 73
Craig S. Womach has argued that "attention to Riggs's homosexuality is
central to an understanding of his work."
13
Riggs and O'Neil were both
closely associated with the more experimental and socially-minded theatre
artists like the former Provincetown Players Susan Glaspell and Ida Rauh.
Rauh and Riggs enjoyed an ambiguously intimate relationship; he was
frequently a guest in her homes in New Mexico and Provincetown, and he
introduced her to O'Neil in 1928. Rauh became a mentor to both young
men (O'Neil dedicated the published version of American Dream to her,
and Riggs dedicated two volumes of published plays to her in 1928 and
1936). O'Neil, along with Riggs and Mark Connelly, was also part of the
early Group Theatre meetings. In the 1930s, Riggs helped O'Neil get a
contract to write in Hollywood, where he was a scriptwriter on a number
of notable films, including Intermezzo; High, Wide, and Handsome; and
Magnificent Obsession. O'Neil's promising career was cut short when, at the
age of 42, he was found late one night in a critical condition in Pershing
Square Park in downtown Los Angeles, and taken to Cedars of Lebanon
Hospital where he died, in the company of his friends-actor Melvyn
Douglas and producer and agent Jack Leighter. The cause of death was
reported as cerebral hemorrhage.
14
According to the National Institute of
Health website, one possible cause of cerebral hemorrhage, or aneurysm,
may be "trauma" or "injury to the head."
15
Although as far as I know,
O'Neil's death was never investigated as anything other than a death by
natural causes, evidence suggests at least the possibility that he may have
been a victim of homophobic violence. For one thing, I have uncovered
no biographical information suggesting any physical vulnerability that
would explain his death at the age of 42. Secondly, the park in which
O'Neil was found near death, Pershing Square, located at S'h and Hill, was
at the time a notable meeting ground for gay men. According to Gcry L
A. authors Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Pershing Square had a
"national reputation" among gay men from the 1920s through the 1960s,
and "visitors staying at the adjacent Biltmore Hotel knew through the gay
grapevine that they would find what they were looking for in the Pershing
13
Craig W Womack, "Lynn Riggs as Code-talker: Toward a Queer Oklahomo
Theory and the Racticalization of Native American Stucties," in &:don Red: Native American
Litera')' Separatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 272.
14
George O'Neil, Obituary, New York Times, 25 May 1940, 22.
15
Other causes cited include congenital conctitions, high blood pressure, infec-
tion, tumors, atherosclerosis, and drug abuse. See "What is Cerebral Aneurism?" http://
www.ninds.nih.gov / ctisorders/ cerebral_aneurysm (accessed 29 June 201 0). For head injury
as a cause of cerebral hemorrhage see also "Head Injury," http:/ /www.wrongctiagnosis.
com/h/head_injury/intro.htm (accessed 29 June 2010).
74 BLACK
Square underbrush."
16
According to several websites, it was in Pershing
Square, in 1933, that then-popular MGM star Billy Haines made the pick-
up of a male partner that resulted in his arrest, the termination of his
contract with MGM, and the end of his film career.
17
I agree with Womack
that an artist's sexual (as well as national, ethnic, cultural, or class identity)
may be central in understanding his or her work, and the strong likelihood
that George O'Neil was "quietly gay" in an era of overt homophobia and
even, perhaps, died because of it, increases the tragic resonance of his
"bitter caricature" of the American Dream.
Like Tony Kushner's celebrated Angels in America, O'Neil's epic
American Dream features explicit reference to America's Puritan roots
and an angel as an important, recurring image. A Theatre Guild press
release offered the subtitle for O'Neil's play of "three variations on an
American theme,"
18
that interestingly evokes Angels in Americds subtitle:
''A Gay Fantasia on National Themes." Like many American masterworks
to follow, O'Neil uses the metaphor of the dysfunctional family, especially
a mutilated husk of a (heterosexual or "traditional") marriage, to stand in
for society/ community at large, and a house as a metaphor for the nation.
O'Neil wrote the play in reverse chronological order, his first act presenting
a scene from the near future (summer 1933), the second act, set in 1849,
and the first in 1650. The action of all three acts unfolds in one room of
a house in New England, the homestead of the Pingree family of Puritan
heritage, and they all occur within the span of one day. Theatre Guild
director Philip Moeller, however, inverted O'Neil's structure, presenting
the three acts in chronological order.
As produced at the Theatre Guild, Episode 1 introduces the
Calvinist Puritan Pingree family (location and characters suggestive of
Arthur Miller's The Crucible), headed by patriarch Roger Pingree, with
his piously submissive wife and two sons. Luke, the younger of the sons
is strong of back and narrow of mind, anxious to please his father and
follow in the paths of patriarchal righteousness, and Daniel Pingree,
16
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gqy LA.: A History of Sexual Outlaws,
Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 82-3.
Faderman and Timmons cite William Mann, Behind the Screen: How Gqys and Lesbians Shaped
Hoi!Jwood, 1910-1969 (New York: VIking, 2001), 87, and Kenneth Marlow, The Mak Homo-
sexual (Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, 1965), 45, as sources ..
17
"Gay History, Gay Celebrity, Gay Icons," http:/ /www.circa-club.com/gal-
lery/gay_history_icons_william_haines.php (accessed 29 June 2010). Haines's story, how-
ever, has a happy ending. He developed a successful, second career in interior design and
enjoyed a long relationship with his partner, Jimrrlle Shields.
18
"Guild to Produce American Dream," New York Times, 14 January 1933, 10.
"THREE VARIATIONS ON A N ATIONAL THEME" 75
the older son, is the rebel who refuses to take his "rightful place" in the
community. More specifically, Daniel is unwilling to seek the power and
authority that his father intends him to have by marrying the Governor's
daughter, the sadistic Lydia, played by Gale Sondergaard, who expresses a
wish to own an African slave and enjoys seeing Daniel lashed by his father's
whip. Daniel was played by blond matinee idol Douglass Montgomery,
a graduate of gay director George Cukor's stock company.
19
Physically,
Montgomery epitomizes the embodiment of the American Dream in
Albee's play of that title, self-described as: "Clean-cut, Midwest farm boy
type, almost insultingly good-looking in a typically American way. Good
profile, straight nose, honest eyes, wonderful smile."
20
The play begins with a failed real estate transaction between
Roger Pingree and a Native American ("Indian," in O'Neil's text) in which
O'Neil lays out in microcosm the white European settler's imperious theft
of Native American lands, with an attitude unequivocally sympathetic to
the indigenous population. The first line of the play is Roger's insolent
question: "Do you hear me? I will buy your land but I will not give as
much as your chief asks for it. I will give what it is worth. And I know
what it is worth."
21
The Indian remains silent, infuriating Roger who
repeats his offer/ demand with growing impatience, finally ordering his
wife to "offer him something to eat" (4). The Indian gestures refusal,
and leaves, making another silent "rhythmic rejecting gesture with both
hands" before disappearing. Despite this setback, a moment later Roger
declares his need for "more ~ a n d this year to keep my cattle on. I'll take
that strip beyond the herring brook. ... I'll buy that too of the Indians
who own there still" (7). That the Puritan patriarchs believe their robbery
is mandated by God is evident. As Luke says, looking to his father for
approval, "this is the home ordained for us in the will of God, the high
preserver of man. It hath pleased the Lord to give us blessing here, in
peace and health and plenty" (5). His father, Roger, confirms: "The Lord
designed great conquest through a handful of men .. .. We who are chosen
to lead cannot refuse the charge. We are appointed" (14).
Visual images suggest Puritan family values proliferate: a Bible,
an hour glass (time is money?), long matchlock guns and a powder horn,
19
Montgomery also appeared as Laurie in Cukor's film, Little Women, and ap-
pears frequently in Cukor's screen tests for Gone With the Wind. See Patrick McGilligan,
George Cukor: A Double Life (New York: St. Martin's Press 1991), 36-41.
20
Edward Albee, Two Plays by Edward Albee: The American Dream and The ZooS tory
(New York: Signet Books, 1961), 107.
21
George O'Neil, American Dream (New York: Samuel French, 1933), 4. All
subsequent references to this play will be made parenthetically.
76
BLACK
a deer knife, and a whip (the latter objects suggesting man's dominion
over beasts, discipline and punishment). The stage directions highlight the
house's pristine cleanliness (next to Godliness) and whiteness: "the room
looks brightly clean, freshly whitewashed. The floor has been scrubbed
and sanded .... [f]he most striking object in the room, however, is a
wooden ship's figurehead, salvaged from the ship, the White Angel, which
brought the Pingrees from England years ago" (3). Faithfully represented
from O'Neil's stage directions and as evident in production photographs,
the figurehead is "an angel, the body arched forward, with arms swung
upward, palms outward, holding a silver star. The face is very white,
the blown hair and angular garments painted and faded. The eyes are
grotesquely outlined, staring straight ahead" (3), vaguely reminiscent of
the Klee painting, Angelus Novus, that Walter Benjamin interpreted as the
"angel of history," who saw the past as one great catastrophe and the
future as a storm blowing from Paradise.
22
As David Savran has noted,
Tony Kushner's Angel is "clearly derived from Benjamin's text," as are
the ideas invoked by Kushner's play of "history, progress, and Paradise."
23
Unlike Kushner's angel, however, O'Neil's angel seems sinister, prompting
Daniel to suggest that it was "in the way" and "should be moved" (7).
Daniel is "different" from his father and brother, his mother's
favorite. He is gentle; he wants to be left in peace, to love the land, to "read
the sky," to inhale the fragrance of wild roses, and to listen for the call of
the whippoorwill. His difference seems related to gender and ideology. He
is less "manly" than his stern, domineering father and brawny brother, but
Daniel is a spiritual, as well as a gender, outlaw in this staunchly Protestant
Christian household. His ideas and behavior are described as "perversity,"
"unholy insolence," "heresy," and "stubbornness which Satan will
approve" (1 0, 33, 35, 8). He refuses to obey his father's command to "take
his place in the life of the community, as virtuous men must, to purify
the community and uplift our state," claiming, "It's against my soul" (10,
35). When Daniel tells his fathel', "I do not believe in your God, for your
God is a god of vengeance," Roger proclaims, "You are an enemy to the
government with such beliefs!" (35). To this, Daniel replies, "You are an
enemy to the people. You will get your yoke on them in the name of God"
(36). When Roger insists, "we will not tolerate dissenters, reprobaters of
22
Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, volume 4: 1938-1940, translated by Harry
Zohn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 392-93. O'Neil may have been aware
of !<lee's painting (1920) but could not have been aware of Benjamin's writings about it,
published in English after Benjamin's death in 1940.
23
David Savran, A Queer Sort of Matenalism: Recontextualizing American Theater
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 111-12.
"THREE V ON A ATIONAL THEME" 77
the law!" Daniel retorts, "You are afraid to let one man stray from meeting,
lest he have a thought of a hope which would endanger your avarice ....
What freedom can there be where a man may not call his soul his own and
live as he would choose?" (36-7).
Rejecting the sadistic governor's daughter, Daniel reveals that he
is in love with Celia, who is a wood nymph of a girl, the daughter of a
woman accused of witchcraft, and who is pregnant with Daniel's child. On
learning this, Daniel's father whips him and banishes him from his home
forever. Daniel accepts banishment with equanimity, asserting: "There's
bread here, but no breath. And that is the evil of the world" (39). With
this Daniel describes an America already more concerned with material
than spiritual sustenance, but in the episode's conclusion he prophesies a
different, halcyon future for the new world:
Here, here I tell you the right shall be done at last. Millions
of men will live together as friends, yes, as lovers. I tell
you that will happen here. The inner sadnesses which
eat the soul shall waste the world no more. Here let the
faithful earth be answered worthily in this moving dream
it carries. Here there will be a state such as the world has
never seen. This is the land. Here will the seasons move
to feed the earth; long summers standing by to give us
ease and heavy harvest. Now let men stand, each a pillar
to the dream that feeds all space. Here- in this land, at
last- men shall step into the sun (41).
Daniel leaves with great confidence in the future, promising his
mother "I shall survive," and warning his father, "wherever I am I will
work against you-and men will oppose your inheritors until they gain
what they know in their hearts is here for them-on this earth" (41). His
father, however, has the last word; in the closing speech of this episode,
Roger Pingree, American Puritan patriarch, offers an alternate version of
the future, for "rewards of peace and plenty," specifically excluding Daniel
from it:
Never let his name be named so long as any of you live.
He will be forgotten . . .. He will have had no life among
us. For he hath stood against us who do God's will in
this New Canaan. And the rewards of peace and plenty
shall descend here only upon the righteous. There shall
be no mockers, no murmurers or complainers in the new
day here, nor any walking after their own lusts. Let our
78
enemies, the disturbers of our peace, be discountenanced.
I have given my son. The blessing of God be on this
house, and the sacrifice noted. Amen (42).
BLACK
I n Episode 2, it is winter 1849, and the Industrial Revolution and
the mills (monopoly capitalism) have destroyed the Pingree fortunes. We
are not told what happened to the outcast Daniel, but this family seems
descended from Luke, who married the governor's daughter after Daniel's
departure, and the daughter of the house is named Lydia, after her. In
the Guild production, Stanley Ridges played the new Daniel Pingree of
this episode, who is in his 40s. He has lost two sons, one in the war with
Mexico (another reference to an imperially expanding nation, specifically
the acquisition of land from native, nonwhite populations) and one of
consumption. Daniel now lives in near poverty with three women who
depend on him: his aging mother, his anxious wife, and his young and
pregnant unwed daughter, a situation that suggests aspects of both Willy
Loman and Walter Lee Younger. This Daniel is also a rebel, a working
class revolutionary who has rebelled against those in power, in this case
the mill owners, as his mother decries, are "flying in the face of authority"
and "stirring up more ungodly trouble" by striking (47). The Angel
figurehead is still in its place, now draped with a faded flag, a memento
of the Mexican war, in which Daniel's son lost his life. The Angel now
seems explicitly a symbol of loss and grief, and again a character, this time
Daniel's mother, expresses distaste for it: "I never did like this thing. It's
spooky. I wish we'd stowed it away in the garret" (53). Protestant Christian
authority still reigns in close harmony with the capitalist socio-economic
system, and by this time its representatives have learned more benevolent
but arguably more devious (certainly less direct) methods. The women are
kept in line by a man of God less stern than Roger Pingree, a minister
played by Claude Rains, who exhorts Daniel's mother to "take heart, my
child .... [I bring] the word of His grace to build you up" (56). In addition
to Daniel's rebellious streak, his wife Susannah indulges in unorthodox
spiritual habits. As her mother-in-law complains to the minister, "she keeps
an old-church prayer-book ... full of forbidden pomp and ritual. After
you've been here and gone, she sneaks off and reads it" (59). There are
numerous hints that Minister Bell has more than a professional interest in
Susannah; he refers to her in words from the sensuous Song of Solomon
(''A garden enclosed is my sister-my spouse") before offering, after a
pregnant pause, "I'll go to her. I'll help her" (59).
The minister, Ezekiel Bell, has negotiated with the mill owners
who, having been "shown the tolerance of the Lord," are willing to take
the family back ("perhaps even your daughter ... when she's well enough'')
"THREE VARIATIONS ON A N ATIONAL THEME" 79
on "very fair" terms, cutting the working day to a mere 13 hours (57).
"The machines," Minister Bell declares, "will make it easier for everyone"
(58). Daniel's response to this "generosity" is bitter: "So the lords of this
land will listen to reason, eh? Do they want us to eat all the splintered glass
scattered about the yards down there?" (64) . When Minister Bell exhorts
him that "the trophies of the Lord fall into hands that labor," Daniel
retorts, "What are they? The prizes for being allowed to go in there and
slave til we're senseless to make a pack of parvenus up in Boston richer.
AU-for the well being of all men" (75, 78). With sentiments that evoke
Walter Lee Younger's famous "life is (divided] between the takers and the
'tooken,' ... [and] he who takes most is smartest" speech in A Raisin in
the Sun,
24
Daniel continues: "But let us who haven't been born crafty try
to catch up with those far seeing men who set this system going! We can
run til our hearts wither! Starvation! Impotence! Who gives a damn about
things like that running over the countryside like plagues .... If there's a
God he's against me, and I'll waste no more time puzzling his will among
men. I'll get what I can on this earth" (78, 81). Also like Walter Lee, and his
seventeenth-century ancestor, Daniel dreams of more than just surviving.
He tells his family he has sold the house and the land for $300.00-so
that they can strike out for the west, the frontier. This Daniel's hopes
for the future are strikingly similar to those of his seventeenth-century
ancestor, but in the nineteenth century the American Dream seems to
have a more specific geography; it is out west, where "the rivers are swift
and wide and they shine like silver, the fields along those great rivers are
green and deep, the loam's rich and will blossom if a man but touch it,
cattle multiply and roam far, wheat waves glitter mile on mile like a golden
sea. There's endless promise on the frontier" (71). When his wife declares
her gratitude that "we can go back and earn our bread" in the mills, he
counters, again echoing his ancestor Daniel, "isn't it more than bread we
need to keep us living?" (66). Like Walter Lee's female relatives, Daniel's
have different dreams-his wife and mother refuse to leave their house to
go with him. In vain, and again, much like Walter Lee, Daniel rails against
the women who "stand out against" him (75). He leaves all his money with
them, and departs, taking only a pistol with him, and advising Minister Bell
that the ''Almighty" that strengthens him is the "almighty dollar" (81). As
soon as Daniel leaves, the Minister turns to comfort Susannah, "staring"
at her and picking up again from the Song of Solomon, intoning, "Set
me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong
24
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, in Contemporary B/a(k Drama: From A
Raisin in the Sun to No P/a(e to Be Somebotfy, edited by Clinton F. Oliver and Stephanie Sills
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 113-14.
80 BLACK
as death" (82). The final image is that of Daniel's mother Abbie, as she
huddles against the Angel figurehead. ''Well where are you taking us now?
Go on stare- stare-you senseless painted thing!" (82). Despite the play's
apparent loyalty to the rebellious Daniels, in this episode Daniel betrays
his own cultural/ ethnic biases in referring to his daughter's unnamed
seducer as "some dirty Polack" (79).
Episode 3, set in the summer of 1933, is nearly twice as long as the
first two episodes. In this episode, we learn that the adventurous Pingree
of the nineteenth century did indeed make good in the gold mines of
California, simultaneously finding personal happiness with a dancing girl
in a mining camp, who became his second wife after the luckless Susannah
died, and that his son, the present Daniel's grandfather, became an empire
builder. The original house has been restored to its former glory. The
wooden figurehead is still in the room, but now "near the fireplace" (85).
Early on in the evening, a guest (the banker Stern) rather directly equates
house and nation: ''What a fine old house! Here the pilgrims praised
their stern god and planted ideals which have shaped America's destiny.
And here-we have the delightful present. You have restored this room
admirably" (106).
The twentieth century Daniel Pingree, again played by Douglass
Montgomery (strengthening the connection between the first and third
episodes), is a writer. Daniel's sophisticated wife Gail, played by Gale
Sondergaard (Lydia from episode 1), is a painter, the "swan of New York"
(86). With the movement into the modern era, the play changes tone and
style, prefiguring Albee in its privileged class, cocktail hour setting, satire
and biting wit, as well as the frankly naturalistic/ shocking language and
behavior of its characters. The action of the episode spans one long
evening, an Albee-esque "Walpurgisnacht," during which the Pingrees
"celebrate" the fifth year of their miserable marriage.
The guests for the Pingrees anniversary party are supposedly
recognizable caricatures of real people, rendering this episode something
of a drame a eli: a New Mexican memoirist and her Navajo husband are
surely Mabel Dodge and Tony Luhan; the wealthy banker/art patron
of German Jewish descent might be Otto Kahn; the Negro poet from
Harlem is most likely Langston Hughes (although O'Neil had reviewed
the poetry of several Harlem poets, including Hughes, Claude McKay, and
Countee Cullen for Outlook, Hughes was also a friend of his); a gay pianist
was played by Sanford Meisner who may or may not have been "out" at
the time; other characters include a lesbian couple (actress and dancer), a
self-identified nymphomaniac, referred to by Daniel as a "bitch in heat"
(92); a drunken Harvard biology professor, and a Jewish communist party
leader.
"THREE VARIATIONS ON A NATIONAL THEME" 81
Although he and his wife live a life of privilege, complete with
Russian butler, Daniel has inherited the rebellious gene in the Pingree
family, expressing his disdain for his class in various ways, including the
fairly superficial manner of dress, arriving at his anniversary party in "a
blue turtle neck sweater, old corduroy trousers, and a pair of soiled tennis
shoes" (92). 1933, of course, was the height of the Great Depression in
America, just one year into Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, with a nearly
25% unemployment rate. Daniel is in sympathy with the rising radical
left, but he has written a book (a best seller) that exposes him as merely
a liberal- rather than a revolutionary-as one critic put it, a "parlor
Bolshevik."
25
As the drunken Harvard professor more acutely surmises, "I
bet I know what's wrong with it. Too hopeful, too idealistic-leavin' the
little loophole for the good in our present system" (95). Daniel himself
describes his book briefly as one that "offers theory and persuasion
toward a richer and fuller life for every man. It guarantees all human kind a
better, a more realistic basis for life than money" (137-8). These intriguing
hints suggest that Daniel's unnamed book might be something like James
Truslow Adams's Epic rf America, which does indeed offer a cogent
critique of contemporary American culture that in no way threatened its
fundamental institutions. His wife complains that "Daniel's had a bellyache
all his life," but reaction from the left to his book has made him a "grouse
extraordinaire" (87). To which the gay pianist blithely replies, "This craze
for labor troubles, bread lines and things like that-personally I think it's
just a fad" (88). Perhaps indeed stung by the accusation of idealism, this
evening finds Daniel in a decidedly bitter mood. He cynically denounces
his "great American" ancestor as one who dispossessed farmers, bled
laborers, cornered markets, bought legislation, and caused panics in
Wall Street in order to bolster the family fortune (135). For Daniel, in
his current mood, the American dream has never been anything but a
hollow promise. When a visitor questions Daniel regarding ghosts in the
old house, he replies, "There's a ghost here, all right. There's a ghost in this
house of something that never was allowed to live in it" (114) . For those
who missed the metaphor, Daniel continued, ''We were just discussing the
survival of the Jeffersonian principle in the American mind .. .. You see
to keep our money, we've been obliged to forget that all men were created
equal" (115).
This Daniel, despite his bitterness, is connected spiritually to his
seventeenth-century ancestor. In the midst of the chaotic sounds of laughter,
drunkenness, and jazz, he hears and responds to the cry of a whippoorwill,
25
"American Dream like a Nightmare to Critics," unsigned review, Newsweek, 4
March 1933.
82 BLACK
appealing to the poet from Harlem as the most sympathetic ear in the room:
Then you know which way is forward. Inside, through
the heart and mind- toward others through ourselves.
We must organize all our virtue and intelligence and
fight what is in this room tonight-to probe what is out
there- that marvelous rich silence-that darkness ....
There's night all around us- pressing this house and
this land and the seas that touch it. Yet, at this instant,
the earth is shining, shining high and far- if anything
watches it. For the earth is a glittering star. We forget that
(125-6).
Communist leader Jake Schwartz arrives, but only to deliver a
crushing blow; a check for five thousand dollars given to him for the party
by Daniel has been rejected. Schwartz has come, not to welcome Daniel
as a comrade in arms, but to return his money. But Daniel's despair is not
entirely due to his political failings; at home his very manhood is under
siege. Although the Pingrees are a glamorous couple, their marriage is a
nightmare, and their alcohol-induced, acid exchanges anticipate those in
Albee's h o ~ Afraid of Virginia Woo!f?
26
Gail: You're tight aren't you?
Daniel: Just because I'm pleasant?
Gail: I'll expect the worst now (111).
Gail subtly and overtly questions Daniel's masculinity, declaring him "ten
times as disinclined as he was the year I married him" and advising him
that "all men aren't as unemotional as you are, darling" (87, 153). Gail
flagrantly pursues guest and Communist leader Jake Schwartz, one of
Daniel's closest friends, confiding to him that her husband is "not on fire,
in any sense of the word, if you know what I mean" (150).
In response, Daniel calls his wife a "whore" and a "bitch," and
their bedroom a "chamber of horrors" (153). Daniel seems equally
attracted to Jake, a fact that does not escape his wife. When Jake invites
Daniel to go fishing with him, Gail sneers at them, ''Am I in the way?
Wouldn't you two come to an arrangement if I left the room? You're both
so sensitive and shy. It's just lovely to watch. An ideal couple. If you ask
me, it's rather excessive, isn't it-this attachment between you two? Of
26
See, for example, Edward Albee, Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (New York:
Atheneum, 1962), 23.
"THREE VARIATIONS ON A NATIONAL THEME" 83
course there's so much of that thing these days, I suppose" (155). Later,
when Gail refers to Jake, quoting Ibsen, as "cock of the walk," Daniel
explodes: "That makes me a homo-sexual hero-worshipper I guess. Yes,
I'm a fairy then! A pansy! In your stinking mind, I'm in love with Jake
Schwarz! Would it be remarkable? Look at her-the sacred vessel of my
holy, manly love-an arch example of American womanhood" (156). In a
passion, Daniel switches to the subject of America:
They've all been yapping about America here tonight-
this house-the great American epic. Well, I am the
American story. I'm the end of a family that helped to
build the whole damned business. I'm here fully equipped
to revel in the Utopia produced by those relentless
idealists of the past. And that's what we've got. (He points
toward the door, toward the blaringjazz) All right, god damn
it! Let me spit it out! I'm nothing! I don't give a god damn
for anything (156).
Grabbing a pistol he strides out into the hallway and shoots
himself, falling inward, against the figurehead, on which he leaves a trail
of blood. Referencing Ibsen even more consciously, a party guest who
is told that Daniel has shot himself exclaims, "I guess I know my Ibsen.
People don't do such things" (159).
27
From another room, we hear the
Negro poet singing "St. Louis Blues."
O'Neil's treatment of race and sexuality in this episode is
ambiguous. The Negro Poet, Lindley Carver, is a departure from
stereotype (the actor who played him, Spencer Barnes, had played a
laundryman in his last two Broadway appearances). Carver is an artist
who deflects racist gaucheries with grace, and is the only character other
than Daniel who responds to the whippoorwill's call. Jake Schwartz, the
Jewish communist leader who firmly but gently rejects both Gail's sexual
overtures and Daniel's money, is also an admirable character. O'Neil
brings racist attitudes to the forestage, however, in one of the disturbing
exchanges between Daniel and Gail. Gail kisses Jake Schwartz in front of
her husband, declaring archly, "I like Jews. Do you know that? I do. I like
them." To which Daniel responds, ''And how do you feel about niggers?"
(152). Immediately following this scene is the triangular confrontation,
bristling with sexual tension, after which Daniel shoots himself. The
play's treatment of queer sexuality in this episode is similarly ambivalent.
27
O'Neil seems quite a Hedda Gabler fan; there are other references to "vine
leaves" in the hair of the tipsy Ivy League professor at the party.
84 BLACK
The minor gay characters are a bit ridiculous but no more so than the
presumably heterosexual bohemians. And if we are to read Daniel as gay,
his self-destruction, especially given its timing, seems motivated by shame
or self-hatred. Jake's sexuality is entirely ambiguous, although both sexes
find him attractive.
The play closed after 39 performances, a relatively short but not
entirely disgraceful run by Guild standards. The Guild's production of
Maxwell Anderson's Both Your Houses (1933), a similarly caustic look at
America's political system, by comparison, ran for 74 performances later
that spring.
28
Critical reaction was not the sort to sell tickets, but neither
was it the sort to discourage a budding playwright from the profession.
Not surprisingly (because of its length, its placement in the evening, and
its immediacy), most reviewers focused on the final, modern-day episode,
which they found shocking for being "as foul an outburst of language as
ever disgraced a pothouse"
29
and its depiction of the "degeneracy" of, as
the Newsu;eek critic phrased it, "the queer lot of guests."
30
Richard Lockridge
betrays typical sexist and racist attitudes of the era by characterizing
"lady novelists" and "Negro poets," along with "bohemian women from
Arizona who have married Indians" and "nymphomaniacs," as "freaks."
31
The reviewer for Catholic World is even more overt in his reference to the
Negro poet and woman from Arizona as "darky" and "white squaw."
32
Although many recognized O'Neil's satirical and lyrical skills
(Benjamin de Casseres compared him favorably to Marcel Proust),
33
they
deemed the message hopelessly depressing, a forthright denunciation of
American culture. Richard Lockridge pronounced the play "eloquent,
violent, [and] ... entirely hopeless. If Mr. O'Neil is right, the old America
is quite done for."
34
Arthur Ruhl similarly described the play as a "vicious
and hopeless but lively satire," and the playwright as one who "distrusts,
28
I n the same season The Good Earth ran for 56 performances and S. N. Beh-
rman's was a major hit at 267 performances. Both were also staged by Philip
Moeller.
29
"American Dream," Catholic World 137 (April 1933): 79-80.
30
"American Dream," unsigned review, Newsweek.
31
Lockridge, "American Dream, a Bitter Caricature," New York Sun.
32
"American Dream," Catholic World, April 1933, 137: 79-80.
33
Benjamin de Casseres, "Broadway to Date," Arts and DecoratiotTJ, April 1933,
38:58.
34
Lockridge, "American Dream, A Bitter Caricature," N ew York Sun.
"THREE V ARIA110NS ON A NATIONAL THEME" 85
not to say detests, the whole American Idea, and finds it false and base."
35
Several critics found O'Neil's vision more "nightmare" than "dream."
36
Although he later revisited the play, with a longer, more positive assessment,
Brooks Atkinson initially characterized O'Neil's dream as "a bitter one,"
his philosophy "defeatist," and the play's ultimate message a "dogmatic
assertion of failure." Even so, Atkinson praised the "sardonic vigor" and
"malicious humor" of O'Neil's writing.
37
Despite the fact that this satirical scrutiny of the American dream
shocked, offended, and depressed the critical establishment, it was not
dismissed out of hand. Several critics recognized the play as "important"
despite its unpleasantness, and commended the Theatre Guild for having
the courage to produce it.
38
The WallS treet Journal reviewer acknowledged,
"It does its share toward pushing American drama forward."
39
Robert
Garland offered one of the most favorable opinions, pronouncing the play
"finely wrought, beautifully written, genuinely perturbing ... something
that manages to be both beautifully moving and bitterly satirical." Garland
then praised the Theatre Guild for producing it "with complete sympathy
and comprehension and without apology to the human ostriches it will
most certainly offend."
40
A week after his first review appeared, New York Times reviewer
Brooks Atkinson revisited the play, observing, "it is difficult to hand down
a glib decision concerning George O'Neil's American Dream." Maintaining
that the evening is "tantalizingly incomplete," the connection between
episodes "muddled," and the protagonist's suicide "sophomoric," Atkinson
nevertheless declares, "Mr. O'Neil is a poet. His American Dream .. . has
largeness of conception and imaginative sensitivity; it is worthy of the
finest poetic feeling in the American heritage . ... It is a play that lingers
in the mind because of the essential truth of Mr. O'Neil's thesis. When
it talks in terms of poetry it catches fire and generates heat." By contrast,
Atkinson found O'Neil unconvincing as a "social economist." Atkinson
concludes by urging O'Neil to write another, more "purely poetic" play
35
Arthur Ruhl, New York Herald T ribtme, 26 February 1933.
36
The Newsweek critic subtitled his review, "American Dream like a Nightmare
to Critics." See also Wilella Waldorf, New York Post, 22 February 1933.
37
Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, 22 February 1933, 24: 5.
38
See, for example, Unsigned review, The Stage, March 1933; Theatre Arts Monthfy,
April, 1933; Burns Mantle, New York Daify News, 22 February 1933; and Robert Garland,
New York World Telegram, 22 February 1933.
39
Wall Street Journa4 24 February 1933, 4.
40
Robert Garland, New York World Telegram, 22 February 1933.
86 BLACK
expressing the same ideas.
41
The overall critical response to O'Neil's American Dream, in fact,
is strikingly similar to some of the negative criticism that greeted Edward
Albee's nearly identically entitled play three decades later.
42
In his preface
to the published play, Albee writes that one Off-Broadway critic "had his
sensibilities (or something) so offended by the content ... that he refused
to review the next play of mine that opened." Others, Albee continues,
"went all to pieces over the (to their mind) nihilist, immoral, defeatist
content of the play."
43
In a somewhat similar vein, another three decades
later, Frank Rich perceived an "ecumenical depression" underlying Tony
Kushner's Angels in America, and its message that America in the 1990s has
"lost its moral bearings."
44
In both cases, of course, critics and audiences
also recognized the significant gifts of these new dramaturgical voices.
That the American Dream has, in reality, been endlessly deferred
is no longer a shocking revelation. Although the endless deferral of the
American Dream is no longer a shocking revelation, in 1933 it was, and
O'Neil's American Dream is important as one of the earliest and most overt
dramatic expressions of that inconvenient truth. What gives the play
even more significance is that its critique goes beyond blaming greed and
materialism to a recognition of how greed and materialism came to be
imbedded within a particular vision of the American Dream, representing
a kind of American morality associated with a mandate from God for
the "righteous" to take what God wanted them to have. In the first
episode (that of the seventeenth century), O'Neil gives us two competing
versions of the American Dream (perhaps the subtitle should have been
"two variations on a national theme"). The first is Daniel's dream-one
concerned with men's souls, with brotherhood, love, individual freedom
and fulfillment, pantheistic spirituality, and a desire that the "faithful earth
be answered worthily" ( 41 ). At the same time, Daniel's father articulates
his own, Calvinist dream for the "New Canaan": There will be "rewards
of peace and plenty" but only for "the righteous" (42). Daniel's dream
is inclusive, but Roger's excludes anyone who opposes the "righteous"
orthodoxy, including sexual rebels "walking after their own lusts" (42). A
very specific, Calvinist God has blessed this house (nation), "appointed"
41
Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, 5 March 1933, IX, 1.
42
Albee's play is The American Dream; O'Neil's omits the article.
43
Albee, Preface to The American Dream, in Two Plays by Edward Albee, 53.
44
Frank Rich, "Critic's Notebook: The Reaganite Ethos, With Roy Cohn As a
Dark Metaphor," New York Times, 5 March 1992, C15.
" T HREE VARIATIONS ON A N ATIONAL T HEME" 87
its leaders, and mandated its dominance. "This is the home ordained for
us in the will of God, the high preserver of man. It hath pleased the Lord
to give us blessing here, in peace and health and plenty" (5).
O'Neil explicitly identifies Protestant, Calvinist Christianity
(ultimately wedded to capitalism) as "social orders which had developed
for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any
and every class" that Adams identified as antithetical to the American
dream.
45
As revealed in this play, it was both repressive and a "barrier" to
the alternate dream of richer, fuller lives for all individuals. O'Neil offers
seventeenth-century Daniel's version as the true American dream, and the
truly moral doctrine, but the "false" dream is the one that triumphs. In
the first episode, the play points to both the displacement of the native
population and the presence of slavery in direct contradiction to a promise
of life, liberty, and equality. Clearly, the native population as well as the
recently imported Africans are automatically barred from the community
of "the righteous" who will receive God's bounty in the New Canaan.
Although hardly manifesting the sophistication of late twentieth
to twenty-first century's postcolonial and postmodern scrutinies,
American Dream is remarkable in its expose of Calvinist ideology as the
root of a host of oppressive social systems, including patriarchy, sexism,
heterosexism, racism, imperialism, and capitalism. The Angel in O'Neil's
play symbolizes Calvinist ideology, which is presented as blind, sinister, and
white, a "senseless" thing taking us God knows where and which the play
repeatedly suggests should be "stowed away" (7, 53). O'Neil's American
Dream demonstrates how the Calvinist/ capitalist order specifically
integrated, rather than separated, church and state, rendering spiritual
"otherness" as immediate grounds for exclusion, even among otherwise
privileged identities-the Daniels of the play are white males of European
descent whose exclusion from the social order results from rejection of
Calvinist ideology (which they all do), sexual/ gender ambiguity, as well
as a failure to embrace capitalism. O'Neil's critique of capitalism is not
quite as unequivocal as his critique of Calvinism, however. In the second
episode, the play seems to support both the gold mining entrepreneurship
and the opposition to exploitative mill owners of the second Daniel.
The play's treatment of racial, ethnic, and sexual diversity is
similarly ambiguous. In all three episodes, O'Neil introduces racial and
ethnic diversity, and whether consciously or unconsciously, exposes the
racism and prejudice of the white social order, even among other excluded
groups (i.e., O'Neil exposes exclusions within exclusions, as the exploited
working class Daniel II rails against a "dumb Polack" or when the possibly
45
Adams, The Epic if America, 405.
88 B LACK
gay Daniel III uses a racist epithet). In all three episodes, O'Neil introduces
gender and sexual outlaws: from the premarital, heterosexual behaviors in
the first two episodes, to the more complex depictions of homoeroticism
and ambiguous gender and sexual identities in the third episode, arguably
both sustaining and subverting heterosexist and homophobic attitudes.
The response of contemporary spectators to the play's queer
content was predictably homophobic and heterosexist. The press noted,
with varying degrees of shock or disgust, the presence of homosexual
characters ("sexual perversion") in the play, some making the reference
with obvious euphemisms, referring to the pianist as "effeminate,"
"degenerate," "violet," or "pansy" and the lesbian couple as "women
who had anticipated the Marlene Dietrich mannish vogue."
46
Remarkably,
no one seemed to consider that the protagonist of the third episode
was anything but a heterosexual man who made a bad choice of wife,
suggesting a mystifying degree of heterosexist/ sexist assumption. No
one seemed to take Daniel's wife's accusations seriously; not one single
reviewer discussed Daniel as homosexual, or related his suicide to his
sexuality. They opined that he shot himself because he was disillusioned
or because he hated his wife. One writer declared that any man whose wife
gave a party like that would feel like shooting himsel.
47
Equally remarkable
is the fact that contemporary spectators did not seem to notice the queer
content in the expression of an American dream by the first Daniel, who
prophesied, "Here, here I tell you the right shall be done at last. Millions
of men will live together as friends,yes, as lovers" (41).
48
More ambiguity? If
this is meant to be taken as brotherly/ platonic love, it is odd phrasing, and
oddly distinguished from "friendship." Was O'Neil actually advocating
acceptance of same sex desire in the first episode? Was he advocating or
demonizing it in episode 3? Whatever O'Neil's intentions, contemporary
spectators seemed especially oblivious to subversive content, and episode
3 may have functioned, at the time, to sustain homophobic and heterosexist
attitudes. Nevertheless, with this play George O'Neil brought queerness
and race on stage in a significant way, and he integrated notions of
queerness and outlaw identities (sexual, racial, ethnic, religious, gender,
and class) with ideas about American identity and the American dream in
the modern age.
46
The sources for these quotes, in order, are Arthur Pollock, Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, 22 February 1933; R. Dana Skinner, Commonwea/17 (8 March 1933): 525; Percy Ham-
mond, New York Herald Tribune, 5 March 1933; Percy Hammond, New York Herald Tribune,
22 February 1933; New York Evening Post, 18 February 1933.
47
"American Dream," Catholic World, April 1933.
48
Emphasis mine.
"THREE VARIATIONS ON A N.\TIONAL THEME" 89
Philip Moeller's decision to reverse the order of the episodes
as written may have skewed perceptions by contemporary critics who
saw O'Neil's message as utterly hopeless. The death of Daniel III seems
largely futile (without even the financial motive of a Willy Loman)
although it could be read, following Miller's theory of modern tragedy,
as a compulsion to "evaluate himself justly," and his "destruction in the
attempt," a confirmation of "a wrong or an evil in his environment."
49
This last episode is also the most ambiguous in ferreting out the precise
nature of the evil, much more clearly represented in the first two episodes
as the unholy alliance between Church and socio-economic system.
Perhaps part of the message is the degree to which, by the early twentieth
century, all classes, genders, and races were to some degree complicit in the
continued failure of the dream. O'Neil did not seem to have much faith in
his own generation, and it seems he did not want to make the mistake of
his character, Daniel III, by creating something that was "too hopeful, too
idealistic-leavin' the little loophole for the good in our present system"
(95). In that sense, O'Neil is more revolutionary than his "parlor radical"
creation or the esteemed historian who seems to have influenced him to
some degree. In O'Neil's critique of the "epic of America," the "false"
dream has triumphed, the "true" dream is a stillborn idea that can never
be realized within the present system. The situation is only hopeless if
there is no possibility of changing the system. Whether we see it first or
last, O'Neil provides us with a radical, utopian vision of the American
dream. Only a profound idealist could have articulated it, and perhaps it's
still a dream worth resurrecting:
Here, here I tell you the right shall be done at last. Millions
of men will live together as friends, yes, as lovers. I tell
you that will happen here. The inner sadnesses which
eat the soul shall waste the world no more. Here let the
faithful earth be answered worthily in this moving dream
it carries. Here there will be a state such as the world has
never seen. This is the land. Here will the seasons move
to feed the earth; long summers standing by to give us
ease and heavy harvest. Now let men stand, each a pillar
to the dream that feeds all space. Here-in this land, at
last- men shall step into the sun (41) .
49
Arthur Miller, "Tragedy and the Common Man," in The Theater Ess'!JIS of Ar-
thur Miller (New York: Viking Press, 1978), 7.
CONTRIBUTORS
Sandy Alexandre is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her first book, The Nature of
L:ynching: Racial Violence & Black-American Pastoral Poetry, examines how the
history of American lynching violence informs the ways in which African
American poets write about nature. Her second book project, The Plqys.
The Thing.: The Drama of Objects in Black Theater, analyzes black theatrical
deployments of props, "invisible gorillas," objective correlatives, and "el-
ephants in the room."
Cheryl Black is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Mis-
souri-Columbia, Secretary of the American Theatre and Drama Society,
an Executive Board Member of the Susan Glaspell Society, and Book
Review Editor of Theatre History Studies. She is the author of The Women
of Provincetown, 1915-1922, and numerous book chapters and articles on
women in theatre and theatre in the early twentieth century. She is also
an actress (member SAG and AEA), director, dramaturg, and playwright.
Eileen Curley is Assistant Professor of English and Theatre at Marist
College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her research interests include nine-
teenth-century British and American theatre and drama, as well as the
performance of gender and nation. She holds an MA and PhD in Theatre
History, Theory, and Literature from Indiana University.
Jonathan Shand ell is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at Arcadia Uni-
versity, in Glenside, PA. Hi s scholarship focuses on issues of race and in-
tegration on the American stage in the 1930s-1950s. He is currently work-
ing on a book-length critical history of the Hedgerow Theatre.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Barcelona Ploys: A Collection of New Works by
Catalan Playwrights
Translated and edited by Marion Peter Holt and Sharon G. Feldman
BARCELONA PLAYS



. '. ....
- s- ..
. - - . ....,--...

. --- ,, .. ,
The new plays in this collection represent outstanding
playwrights of three generations. Benet i Jornet won
his first drama award in 1963, when was only twenty
three years old, and in recent decades he has become
Catalonia's leading exponent of thematically chal
lenging and structurally inventive theatre. His plays
have been performed internationally and translated
into fourteen languages, including Korean and Arabic.
Sergi Belbel and Llu'lsa Cunille arrived on the scene
in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with distinctive and
provocative dramatic voices. The actor-director-play-
wright Pau Mir6 is a member of yet another generation
that is now attracting favorable critical attention.
}osep M. Benet i }ornet: Two Ploys
Translated by Marion Peter Holt
josep M. Benet i Jornet, born in Barcelona, is the
author of more than forty works for the stage and has
been a leading contributor to the striking revitalization
of Catalan theatre in the post-Franco era. Fleeting, a
compelling "tragedy-within-a-play," and Stages,
with its monological recall of a dead and unseen
protagonist, rank among his most important plays.
They provide an introduction to a playwright whose
inventive experiments in dramatic form and treatment
of provocative themes have made him a major figure in
contemporary European theatre.
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016-4309
Visit our website at: www. segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Czech Plays: Seven New Works
Edited by Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, and Daniel Gerould
Czech Plays: Seven New Works is the first English-
language anthology of Czech plays written after
the 1989 "Velvet Revolution." These seven works
explore sex and gender identity, ethnicity and
violence, political corruption, and religious taboos.
Using innovative forms and diverse styles, they
tackle the new realities of Czech society brought on
by democracy and globalization with characteristic
humor and intelligence.
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
}an Fabre: I Am A Mistake. Seven Works for the Theatre
Edited and forward by Frank Hentschker
Flemish-Dutch theatre artist jan Fabre is considered
one of the most innovative and versatile artists of his
day. Over the past twenty-five years, he has produced
works as a performance artist, theatre maker,
choreographer, opera maker, playwright, and visual
artist. This volume represents the first collection of
plays by jan Fabre in an English translation. Plays
include: I am a Mistake (2007) , History of Tears (2005),
je suis sang (conte de fees medieva{) (2001), Angel of
Death (2003) and others.
Price US $15.00 each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY1oo16-4309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
roMANIA After 2000
Edited by Saviana Stanescu and Daniel Gerould
Translation editors: Saviana Stanescu and Ruth Margraff
This volume represents the first anthology of new
Romanian Drama published in the United States
and introduces American readers to compelling
'f.l!"'PP'io!o' playwrights and plays that address resonant issues
of a post-totalitarian society on its way toward
democracy and a new European identity. includes
the plays: Stop The Tempo by Gianina Carbunariu,
Romania. Kiss Me! by Bogdan Georgescu, Vitamins by
Vera lon, Romania 21 by $tefan Peca, and Waxing West
by Saviana Stanescu.
This publication produced in collaboration with the
Romanian Cultural Institute in New York and Bucharest.
Buenos Aires in Translation
Translated and Edited by Jean Graham-Jones
BAiT epitomizes true international theatrical
collaboration, bringing together four of the most
important contemporary playwrights from Buenos
Aires and pairing them with four cutting-edge US-
based directors and their ensembles. Throughout a
period of one year, playwrights, translator, directors,
and actors worked together to deliver four English-
language world premieres at Performance Space 122
in the fall of 2006.
Plays include: Women Dreamt Horses by Daniel
Veronese; A Kingdom, A Country or a Wasteland, In
the Snow by lola Arias; Ex-Antwone by Federico leon;
Panic by Rafael Spregelburd. BAiT is a Performance
Space 122 Production, an initiative of Salon Volcan,
with the support of lnstituto Cervantes and the
Consulate General of Argentina in New York.
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY1oo164309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Witkiewicz: Seven Ploys
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould
'
SEVEN PLAYS
This volume contains seven of Witkiewicz's most
important plays: The Pragmatists, Tumor Brainiowicz,
Gyubal Wahazar, The Anonymous Work, The Cuttlefish,
Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes, and The Beelzebub
Sonata, as well as two of his theoretical essays,
"Theoretical Introduction" and "A Few Words About
the Role of the Actor in the Theatre of Pure Form."
Witkiewicz . .. takes up and continues the vein of dream
and grotesque fantasy exemplified by the late
Strindberg or by Wedekind; his ideas are closely
paralleled by those of the surrealists and Antonin
Artaud which culminated in the masterpieces of the
dramatists of the Absurd . ... It is high time that this
major playwright should become better known in the
English-speaking world. Martin Esslin
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Four Works for the Theatre by Hugo Claus
Translated and Edited by David Willinger
Hugo Claus is the foremost contemporary writer of
Dutch language theatre, poetry, and prose. Flemish
by birth and upbringing, Claus is the author of some
ninety plays, novels, and collections of poetry. He is
renowned as an enfant terrible of the arts throughout
Europe. From the time he was affiliated with the
international art group, COBRA, to his liaison with
pornographic film star Silvia Kristel, to the celebration
of his novel, The Sorrow of Belgium, Claus has
careened through a career that is both scandal-ridden
and formidable. Claus takes on all the taboos of his
times.

==-=:::: fOUR \\"ORKS
! OR TilE THf:ATRF.
IIUC.O CI.AUS

0

iiiiia-: ..

0 , .
;.
-= ......
E!!!!!!!!!!: 0 ! (;
.... "! '-

iiiiii:5!
Price US $15.00 each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016-4309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Theatre Research Resources in New York City
Sixth Edition, 2007
Editor: jessi ca Brater, Senior Editor: Marvin Carlson
1'HEA TRB R.F..St.I\JtCH RESOURCES
Nf.'&I'YottKCrt"'\'
A C.. ....,_, __ ._.u.,.....,c.--
\t'INT I .... 1!. ~ u . A L ru.-.-.kt Ct,.,u .. k
Theatre Research Resources in New York City is the
most comprehensive catalogue of New York City
research facilities available to theatre scholars. Within
the indexed volume, each facility is briefly described
including an outline of its holdings and practical
matters such as hours of operation. Most entries
include electronic contact information and web
sites. The listings are grouped as follows: Libraries,
Museums, and Historical Societies; University and
College Libraries; Ethnic and Language Associations;
Theatre Companies and Acting Schools; and Film and
Other.
Comedy: A Bibliography
Editor: Meghan Duffy, Senior Editor: Daniel Gerould
This bibliography is intended for scholars, teachers,
student s, artists, and general readers interested in
the theory and practice of comedy. The keenest minds
have been drawn to the debate about the nature of
comedy and attracted to speculation about its theory
and practice. For all lovers of comedy Comedy: A
Bibliography is an essential guide and resource,
providing authors, titles, and publication data for over
a thousand books and articles devoted to this most
elusive of genres.
. . . . _ . ~ _ . . . _ . . ....... _,._
--"-,__,__....__.
Price US $1o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments i n US dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY100164309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 2128171868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Four Plays From North Africa
Translated and edited by Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four modern plays from the
Maghreb: Abdelkader Alloula's The Veil and Fatima
Gallaire's House of Wives, both Algerian, )ulila Baccar's
Araberlin from Tunisia, and Tayeb Saddiki's The Folies
Berbers from Morocco.
As the rich tradition of modern Arabic theatre has
recently begun to be recognized by the Western theatre
community, an important area within that tradition is
still under-represented in existing anthologies and
scholarship. That is the drama from the Northwest of
Africa, the region known in Arabic as the Maghreb.
This volume contains four plays based on the Oedipus
legend by four leading dramatists of the Arab world.
Tawfiq Al-Hakim's King Oedipus, Ali Ahmed Bakathir's
The Tragedy of Oedipus, Ali Salim's The Comedy
of Oedipus, and Walid lkhlasi's Oedipus as well as
Al-Hakim's preface to his Oedipus on the subject of
Arabic tragedy, a preface on translating Bakathir by
Dalia Basiouny, and a general introduction by the
editor.
An awareness of the rich tradition of modern Arabic
theatre has only recently begun to be felt by the
Western theatre community, and we hope that this
collection will contribute to that growing awareness.
The Arab Oedipus
Edited by Marvin Carlson
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: Marti n E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY1oo16-4309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
The Heirs of Moliere
Translated and Edited by Marvin Carlson
POUl Pl!l\ICH COMtDIU Or JHt
17 AHO I & CUITVIIU
"-"""".w.l'-
o.--t-

t-11.'-ia.L-
This volume contains four representative French
comedies of the period from the death of Moliere to
the French Revolution: The Absent-Minded Lover
by Regnard, The Conceited Count by
Philippe Nericault Destouches, The Fashionable
Prejudice by Pierre Nivelle de la Chaussee, and The
Friend of the Laws by Jean-Louis Laya. Translated in
a poetic form that seeks to capture the wit and spirit
of the originals, these four plays suggest something
of the range of the Moliere inheritance, from comedy
of character through the highly popular sentimental
comedy of the mid-eighteenth century, to comedy that
employs the Moliere tradition for more contemporary
political ends.
Pixerecourt: Four Melodramas
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould & Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four of Pixerecourt' s most
important melodramas: The Ruins of Babylon or }afar
and Zaida, The Dog of Montargis or The Forest of
Bondy, Christopher Columbus or The Discovery of the
New World, and Alice or The Scottish Gravediggers,
as well as Charles Nodier's "Introduction" to the 1843
Collected Edition of Pixerecourt's plays and the two
theoretical essays by the playwright, "Melodrama,"
and "Final Reflections on Melodrama."
Pixerecourt furnished the Theatre of Marvels with
its most stunning effects, and brought the classic
situations of fairground comedy up-to-date. He
determined the structure of a popular theatre which
was to last through the 19th century.
Hannah Winter, The Theatre of Marvels
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to : Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Ci rculation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY100164309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 2128171868