American Drama

(Part One)
 1/Revolutionary Drama
 It evolved chiefly on the page rather than on the stage,
 Continental Congress passed a resolution strongly
discouraging the staging of plays,
 The only composed plays had mission to chronicle the
upheavals of the chaotic wartime birth of the independent
United States of America (yet most of them British in nature);
 The governing genre of the time were comedies which
focused on satirizing the foibles and moral failings of society;
 The tragedies of the time frequently engaged with political
themes, including the conflict between liberty and tyranny
that dominated the rhetorical battles of the Revolution;
 The main Concern of those Plays

 How, should the history of the Revolution be

represented in the theater, and what, precisely,
would this new people known as “Americans”
look like when presented onstage so that
audiences would see themselves in those
characters and thus recognize themselves as
Americans ?
Major playwrights of the Time

 Mercy Otis Warren:

 Coming from a patriotic and politically
involved family, she found a vehicle for
political participation through anonymous
publication, producing both tragedies and
satires on current affairs without revealing
herself,
 The Adulateur 1772 (tragedy) , The Group
1775 (satire),
 John Leacock and Henry Brackenridge:
Dramas of Patriot Sacrifice

 Leacock ‘s The Fall of British Tyranny/ American Liberty

Triumphant 1776 (patriot tragedy produced to promote
a sense of national identity);
 Henry Brackenridge’s The Battle of Bunkers-Hill (1776),
The Death of General Montgomery, and In Storming
the City of Quebec (1777)
 Purpose: “attempt to transform, through an American
dramatic art, Patriot military defeats into triumphant
testimonials to a new national spirit and to translate
colonial military heroes into martyrs to American
liberty” ( Richardson 1993)
2/Drama Representing Ethnic Identity
1825-1861
 Throughout the first half of the 19th c ,
performers on the American stage wrestled
with how to represent a range of ethnic
groups jostling against each other in urban
landscapes or racing across the western
frontier. Irish, German, French, Spanish,
Jewish, British, Southern, Yankee, Native,
Quaker, Catholic…etc
 Purpose

 “To re-define the white American masculinity

and the relationship of the white man to his
racialized counterparts…to set up “ethnic” or
“racial” groups in contrast to what may be
the assumed baseline of American culture:
Anglo/white masculinity”
 Difference, us vs. other, racial identity,
belonging, quest for power and legitimacy
were issues to be tackled on stage.
 Examples
 American plays such as The Contrast (1787) by Royal Tyler,
Slaves in Algiers (1794) by Susanna Rowson, and André/ The
Glory of Colombia (1798) by William Dunlap, Mordecai Noah’s
She Would Be a Soldier; or, The Plains of Chippewa (1819),
and Helbert Judah’s A Tale of Lexington (1822) , certainly
parallel this model. Each of these plays highlights distinctions
between white, Christian American citizens and other groups
ranging from Jews to Muslims to British nationals.
 In each case, the ethnic spectacle onstage is meant to
inoculate citizens in the audience against any potential
contamination from ethnic outsiders.
 3/ The Rise of Women Drama
 Though women clearly constituted a minority of early
nineteenth-century writers, women playwrights
produced a significant body of work in antebellum
America.
 The most successful female playwrights of the era were
professionals who immersed themselves in theatre,
writing only or primarily for the stage and involving
themselves with production either through acting or
close association with a manager. Others were new
comers with no professional or inside ties but could
achieve success.
 Purpose
 Women’s lack of power stands out as the most pervasive
theme of women-authored plays in the antebellum period.
The prevalence of this theme appears particularly striking
when comparing the plays written by women between
1830 and 1860 to those written by women in the period
1795 to 1829.
 They either sought a movement from dependence to
autonomy or a dramatization of the loss of authority and
security inherent in the position of women in the
increasingly urbanized and industrialized America.
 The debated themes include freedom , power, and
marriage.
Examples

 Charlotte Barbess Conner’s Octavia Bragaldi (1837

romantic tragedy),
 The Last Days of Pompeii (1835), Norman Leslie
(1836), and Rienzi (1836) by Louisa Medina.
 Cora Mowatt’s comedy of manners Fashion (1845),
 Elizabeth Crocker Bowers’ The Black Agate; or,
Old Foes with New Faces (1859),
 Carr Clarke’s Sarah Maria Cornell, or The Fall
River Murder (1833)
4/ Realism in American Drama

 “American drama during the twentieth century

would rise to terrific artistic heights and achieve
international influence. Between 1920 and 1970,
American writers such as Eugene O’Neill, Clifford
Odets, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and
Lillian Hellman built a repertory of realistic drama
that equaled or exceeded the quality and scope of
the first wave of realistic repertoire built up by
Ibsen, Strindberg, and Hauptmann, and challenged
even the accomplishments of Shaw and Chekhov”.
 Here is what realism means according
to MARK FEARNOW
 “I am describing realism in drama as a play in which (1) the plot adheres
closely to plausibility and avoids wild coincidence, dreams, fantasies, and
soliloquies;
 (2) characters behave in ways we find socially typical and psychologically
believable in the circumstances in which the writer places them;
 (3) though it may be either serious or comic in tone, the play deals with
serious matters for the society represented and relevant for the real-life
society that comprises the audience;
 (4) the dialogue approximates language used by people in the place,
time, and social setting represented;
 and (5) the play provides adequate resolution in its storytelling and
character development so that the audience is challenged to reconsider
or reject a commonly held view on the moral or ethical questions upon
which the story has focused”. (2014:174)
Examples (most of them melodrama)

 James Herne’s Margaret Fleming (1890),

 Clyde Fitch’s The City (1909),
 Edward Sheldon’s Salvation Nell (1908),
 Rachel Crothers’ called “discussion plays”
include He and She (1912) and A Man’s
World (1909),
To be continued…