From San Francisco Eastward: Victorian Theater in the American West
Autor Carolyn Grattan Eichinen Limba Engleză Hardback – 11 feb 2020 – vârsta ani
Finalist for the 2021 Will Rogers Medallion Award in Western Non-Fiction
Carolyn Grattan Eichin’s From San Francisco Eastward explores the dynamics and influence of theater in the West during the Victorian era. San Francisco, Eichin argues, served as the nucleus of the western theatrical world, having attained prominence behind only New York and Boston as the nation’s most important theatrical center by 1870. By focusing on the West’s hinterland communities, theater as a capitalist venture driven by the sale of cultural forms is illuminated against the backdrop of urbanization.
Using the vagaries of the West’s notorious boom-bust economic cycles, Eichin traces the fiscal, demographic, and geographic influences that shaped western theater. With an emphasis on the 1860s and 70s, this thoroughly researched work uses distinct notions of ethnicity, class, and gender to examine a cultural institution driven by a market economy. From San Francisco Eastward is a thorough analysis of the ever-changing theatrical personalities and strategies that shaped Victorian theater in the West, and the ways in which theater as a business transformed the values of a region.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781948908382
ISBN-10: 1948908387
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 25 photographs
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.57 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: University of Nevada Press
Colecția University of Nevada Press
ISBN-10: 1948908387
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 25 photographs
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.57 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: University of Nevada Press
Colecția University of Nevada Press
Recenzii
“Finally, an analysis of Victorian theater in the American West that transcends descriptive, narrative accounts and smartly dissects theater’s varied social functions as a cultural force and form and a shaper of regional identity. . . . Eichen has impressively uncovered, pieced together, and mapped out the worlds of Victorian theater in the West to reveal a new understanding of its history and impact.”
—Barbara Berglund Sokolov, New Mexico Historical Review
“Eichin’s most exciting contribution may be her embodiment of the Western character itself through a series of thoughtfully curated and engagingly spun vignettes. . . . The book’s wealth of colorful stories and characters will likely also appeal to Western popular audiences who see themselves and their forebears in these pages.”
—Heather Kelley, Theatre History Studies
“ ... a dynamic contribution to American theater history.”
—The Journal of Arizona History
“Eichin provides well-written pros and well-documented history of theater in the American West... a welcome addition to the nineteeth-century history of Nevada theater.”
—Nevada Historical Society Quarterly
“This study would make a useful addition to research or courses in theater history, urbanization, Irish immigration, social and geographic mobility, and women in the American West.”
—Laurie Arnold, Gonzaga University
"[T]he best, most thought-provoking study of the subject to date."
—True West
"From San Francisco Eastward offers a colorful, engaging analysis of activities that may at first seem frivolous or extraneous to the history of the American West, but in fact offer valuable insights into the nation’s social and cultural development."
—California History
"To date, most large-scale studies of theatrical performance in the nineteenth-century U.S. West have taken the form of chronicles as opposed to analyses and have tended to be limited in geographical scope. From San Francisco Eastward is a refreshing departure from this tradition on both counts."
—Andrew Gibb, associate professor of Theater and Dance, Texas A & M University
—Barbara Berglund Sokolov, New Mexico Historical Review
“Eichin’s most exciting contribution may be her embodiment of the Western character itself through a series of thoughtfully curated and engagingly spun vignettes. . . . The book’s wealth of colorful stories and characters will likely also appeal to Western popular audiences who see themselves and their forebears in these pages.”
—Heather Kelley, Theatre History Studies
“ ... a dynamic contribution to American theater history.”
—The Journal of Arizona History
“Eichin provides well-written pros and well-documented history of theater in the American West... a welcome addition to the nineteeth-century history of Nevada theater.”
—Nevada Historical Society Quarterly
“This study would make a useful addition to research or courses in theater history, urbanization, Irish immigration, social and geographic mobility, and women in the American West.”
—Laurie Arnold, Gonzaga University
"[T]he best, most thought-provoking study of the subject to date."
—True West
"From San Francisco Eastward offers a colorful, engaging analysis of activities that may at first seem frivolous or extraneous to the history of the American West, but in fact offer valuable insights into the nation’s social and cultural development."
—California History
"To date, most large-scale studies of theatrical performance in the nineteenth-century U.S. West have taken the form of chronicles as opposed to analyses and have tended to be limited in geographical scope. From San Francisco Eastward is a refreshing departure from this tradition on both counts."
—Andrew Gibb, associate professor of Theater and Dance, Texas A & M University
Notă biografică
Carolyn Grattan Eichin has contributed numerous articles to western journals and has worked as an archaeologist and historian. She lives in California.
Extras
From San Francisco Eastward: Victorian Theater in the American West
Introduction
Reflecting on a nineteenth-century theatrical performance on the East Coast, an American theater historian recently wrote: “Their close-to capacity audiences were as unsophisticated as anything encountered by actors out West during the Gold Rush and Silver Fever years.”[1] This characterization of unsophisticated hooting, hollering, hand-clapping, and foot-stomping westerners has long prevailed. Out of this boisterous vitality, the western theater acquired a persona that would, correctly, mark it as distinctive. This distinctiveness makes us ask: How did the theater as a social institution affect its patrons in this way? Who were these patrons, these performers, the theatricalities? Why was their need for entertainment manifested in these ‘unsophisticated’ ways? What was the importance of entertainment in the lives of ordinary people coming to grips with the realities of life in nineteenth-century western towns?
The story of Victorian theater is multifaceted, supported by colorful personalities and challenging environments. Victorian theater was ultimately a capitalist endeavor focused on selling cultural forms; thus economics ruled the theater, while culture shaped its importance. Just like today, people of the Victorian era shared a complex set of social behaviors, customs, values, and beliefs used to cope with their everyday realities. Our current beliefs differ from those of the past, of course, but the ways in which these shared values shaped the Victorian theatrical experience—from variety theaters to Shakespeare—informs our understanding of the forces that shaped the West.[2]
Although it may seem surprising Victorian-era melodrama remains relevant for modern audiences. Bombastic, archaic overacting may come to mind; however, certain plays of the era bare strikingly timeless messages. Dion Boucicault’s classic The Shaughraun opened in San Francisco in 1875, and at the Sydney Opera House, Australia, in 1995; the message of overcoming social class limitations continues to be a strong missive in the modern world.[3] More recently, Augustin Daly’s 1862 classic Leah the Forsaken, appeared before Manhattan audiences in Spring 2017, its message of the restrictive paradigms of anti-Semitism and resistance toward immigrants resounding with modern American images and challenges.[4]
The Berkeley California Repertory Theater recently extended a sold-out engagement of a play based on Dion Boucicault’s 1859 classic, The Octoroon. The award-winning adaptation, dubbed An Octoroon, provides perhaps the most important contemporary theatrical insight on race in America.[5] The play, with African-American actors in whiteface and Caucasian actors in blackface, cleverly distorts the reality onstage to remind us that we can easily be manipulated by theatrical constructs. Stereotypes, it suggests, can be transcended.
Less a component of popular culture today than during the Victorian era, the professional theater now draws primarily from college-educated Americans. Yet, the theater of the Victorian West, heavily supported by working classes, more closely mirrors the popular entertainment of modern television. Shows such as Blackish, Fresh Off the Boat, and Modern Family, speak to the ability of entertainment to mitigate cultural differences, as did the Victorian theater. Popular culture, through its ability to normalize, individualize, and humanize, not only facilitates adjustments to societal change,[6] but establishes a function of the melting pot through its ability to reduce the sharp edges of cultural difference.[7] In the twenty-first century, to watch television is to discover America, but in the Victorian age, the theater reflected American life.
In the American West, Victorians were challenged to rethink their perceptions through imagined ideas. The theater sold cultural forms which changed perceptions of what people could and should do. As a manifestation of the melting pot, people of different backgrounds mingled at these social institutions. Attendees viewed diverse theatricalities against a cultural framework acquired from previous lives and nationalities. Patrons were furthermore asked to suspend disbelief in the theatrical product. Each patron, performer, and backstage professional brought a unique cultural filter through which they created and perceived the theatricality, shaping life in the region.[8] The stage provided numerous options for local and personal interpretations, and the power of a market economy influenced the sale of cultural forms.
Cultural venues, typically found in the urban areas of the West—theaters included—were places where people met and conferred in face-to-face interactions. They followed social rules and created social geographies based on the cultural norms they had internalized as members of the larger culture. The cultural concepts of —manliness, the role of women, ethnic and racial identities, and ideals of respectability that theatergoers shared as members of a larger cultural order would structure and delimit the theatrical experience. The theater building’s architecture—its seating patterns, saloons, and separate entrance—as well as the theatricality presented onstage were subject to definition by the larger culture. Through the faux reality of the stage these customs were enforced, challenged, satirized through humor, or otherwise reinterpreted in some way and offered to audiences.
Cultural values, capitalism, society, and urbanization triggered the tensions that created the fantasy of the stage. Diverse audiences were spread thinly over a wide landscape of isolated settlements, necessitating travel between locations for mobile thespians ever anxious to make a living with their chosen passion. San Francisco dominated the West’s theatrical life and tied hinterland urban centers together in reciprocal exchanges. Larger towns exported theatricalities to smaller towns challenged by a lack of theater professionals. An examination of the Victorian theater includes the ways that it reflected, and also how it was shaped by, the exigencies of the western region, including the larger forces of American culture. In turn each western settlement followed a pattern of theatrical development based on the demographics of that location. And as these populations changed, the theater adapted to supply and demand. When young men dominated the population, a woman’s sexuality became a commercialized theatrical commodity. Fallen women attended theatricalities both as patrons of the arts and as meeting grounds for potential clients. Although at times restricted to certain areas of the theater, their patronage sustained the business financially and influenced theater programming. As demographic gender imbalances decreased and towns developed a middle class, respectable women’s needs pushed entertainment toward greater gentility.
Variety entertainments based on solo or small family troupes, a long list which included singers, dancers, magicians, musicians, tight-rope walkers, contortionists, child prodigies, trained animals, and lecturers, dominated Western theaters as practical and adaptable. Minstrelsy ruled the variety stage as its most common and popular form and eased adjustment to urbanization through humor. Minstrelsy elevated working-class conceit and challenged power structures for the dispossessed—particularly the immigrant Irish—facilitating assimilation for some, at the expense of marginalizing others.
In responding to the challenges of the West, theater businesses demonstrated innovation and creativity. Some attempted to be all things to all people, rotating risqué entertainment with respectable legitimate theater—Shakespeare, melodrama and classic plays—while others split along class lines and made no attempt at respectability. Poor economic times found the theater resorting to cost-cutting strategies and sensationalized theatricalities that would find support among working men and women. Only during good economic times did respectable patrons support legitimate presentations to the degree necessary for sustained success. Many of the greatest achievements on the Western dramatic stage resulted from the talents of those from Irish backgrounds who became role models for Irish immigrants struggling with discrimination. Borrowing plays and players from the Eastern states spread a common set of Victorian cultural norms, tempered by the challenges inherent in the region. Trouping performers demonstrated a self-reliance often attributable to the Western ethos.
The story of Western theater is not one of crisp beginnings or ends. It is a story of transitions and adaptations to changing social and economic circumstances. The variety and legitimate theaters of the 1860s and 70s anchored the theatricalities of a cacophony of immigrant and native-born experiences. Acting styles became more realistic, while the celebrity status of stars increasingly captivated Victorian sensibilities. Stock company actors—the back-up players at each discrete theater—developed extensive repertoires of musical and comedic talents. A typical night of entertainment meant a four or five-act melodrama followed by an afterpiece, a short farce. Entr’acte interest did not wane as the cast transformed an interlude into a song and dance opportunity before the curtain. The protean talents of stock company actors – employees of one theater - gave way to traveling combination road shows, complete with cast, backstage crew and star personalities. Touring companies went on to dominate the 1880s into the early twentieth century. Theater—both a social and economic institution—operated through times of economic uncertainty and societal distress. Ultimately, the institution was both shaped by that reality, and reciprocally shaped the observers, while ever-changing to meet the demands of a dynamic and diverse population.
What can the study of Victorian theater tell us about the West? An examination of any aspect of American experience from any time period faces complexities in interpretation. Without an appreciation of Victorian theater, historians have the potential to misread primary documentation and diminish the influence of popular culture in the lives of Westerners.[9] This study attempts to help isolate the theater’s importance as an agent of cultural change and regional identity. The presentation at any Western theater spread American culture to the patrons—the local was the universal.[10] Disparate hinterlands were knit together through commercial and cultural exchange, as a hierarchy of urban centers compelled a differential impact upon the recipients of culture. The business of theater worked toward the re-ranking of class and privilege in the West, both with women as an economic force supporting theater that met their needs and reinforced certain performance genres, and as a cultural force progressing toward the re-shaping of traditional race, ethnicity and class patterns. The theater served a function of the melting pot—helping to create homogeneity from a heterogeneous culture—and at the same time, acting as a democratizing influence upon the West.
Introduction
Reflecting on a nineteenth-century theatrical performance on the East Coast, an American theater historian recently wrote: “Their close-to capacity audiences were as unsophisticated as anything encountered by actors out West during the Gold Rush and Silver Fever years.”[1] This characterization of unsophisticated hooting, hollering, hand-clapping, and foot-stomping westerners has long prevailed. Out of this boisterous vitality, the western theater acquired a persona that would, correctly, mark it as distinctive. This distinctiveness makes us ask: How did the theater as a social institution affect its patrons in this way? Who were these patrons, these performers, the theatricalities? Why was their need for entertainment manifested in these ‘unsophisticated’ ways? What was the importance of entertainment in the lives of ordinary people coming to grips with the realities of life in nineteenth-century western towns?
The story of Victorian theater is multifaceted, supported by colorful personalities and challenging environments. Victorian theater was ultimately a capitalist endeavor focused on selling cultural forms; thus economics ruled the theater, while culture shaped its importance. Just like today, people of the Victorian era shared a complex set of social behaviors, customs, values, and beliefs used to cope with their everyday realities. Our current beliefs differ from those of the past, of course, but the ways in which these shared values shaped the Victorian theatrical experience—from variety theaters to Shakespeare—informs our understanding of the forces that shaped the West.[2]
Although it may seem surprising Victorian-era melodrama remains relevant for modern audiences. Bombastic, archaic overacting may come to mind; however, certain plays of the era bare strikingly timeless messages. Dion Boucicault’s classic The Shaughraun opened in San Francisco in 1875, and at the Sydney Opera House, Australia, in 1995; the message of overcoming social class limitations continues to be a strong missive in the modern world.[3] More recently, Augustin Daly’s 1862 classic Leah the Forsaken, appeared before Manhattan audiences in Spring 2017, its message of the restrictive paradigms of anti-Semitism and resistance toward immigrants resounding with modern American images and challenges.[4]
The Berkeley California Repertory Theater recently extended a sold-out engagement of a play based on Dion Boucicault’s 1859 classic, The Octoroon. The award-winning adaptation, dubbed An Octoroon, provides perhaps the most important contemporary theatrical insight on race in America.[5] The play, with African-American actors in whiteface and Caucasian actors in blackface, cleverly distorts the reality onstage to remind us that we can easily be manipulated by theatrical constructs. Stereotypes, it suggests, can be transcended.
Less a component of popular culture today than during the Victorian era, the professional theater now draws primarily from college-educated Americans. Yet, the theater of the Victorian West, heavily supported by working classes, more closely mirrors the popular entertainment of modern television. Shows such as Blackish, Fresh Off the Boat, and Modern Family, speak to the ability of entertainment to mitigate cultural differences, as did the Victorian theater. Popular culture, through its ability to normalize, individualize, and humanize, not only facilitates adjustments to societal change,[6] but establishes a function of the melting pot through its ability to reduce the sharp edges of cultural difference.[7] In the twenty-first century, to watch television is to discover America, but in the Victorian age, the theater reflected American life.
In the American West, Victorians were challenged to rethink their perceptions through imagined ideas. The theater sold cultural forms which changed perceptions of what people could and should do. As a manifestation of the melting pot, people of different backgrounds mingled at these social institutions. Attendees viewed diverse theatricalities against a cultural framework acquired from previous lives and nationalities. Patrons were furthermore asked to suspend disbelief in the theatrical product. Each patron, performer, and backstage professional brought a unique cultural filter through which they created and perceived the theatricality, shaping life in the region.[8] The stage provided numerous options for local and personal interpretations, and the power of a market economy influenced the sale of cultural forms.
Cultural venues, typically found in the urban areas of the West—theaters included—were places where people met and conferred in face-to-face interactions. They followed social rules and created social geographies based on the cultural norms they had internalized as members of the larger culture. The cultural concepts of —manliness, the role of women, ethnic and racial identities, and ideals of respectability that theatergoers shared as members of a larger cultural order would structure and delimit the theatrical experience. The theater building’s architecture—its seating patterns, saloons, and separate entrance—as well as the theatricality presented onstage were subject to definition by the larger culture. Through the faux reality of the stage these customs were enforced, challenged, satirized through humor, or otherwise reinterpreted in some way and offered to audiences.
Cultural values, capitalism, society, and urbanization triggered the tensions that created the fantasy of the stage. Diverse audiences were spread thinly over a wide landscape of isolated settlements, necessitating travel between locations for mobile thespians ever anxious to make a living with their chosen passion. San Francisco dominated the West’s theatrical life and tied hinterland urban centers together in reciprocal exchanges. Larger towns exported theatricalities to smaller towns challenged by a lack of theater professionals. An examination of the Victorian theater includes the ways that it reflected, and also how it was shaped by, the exigencies of the western region, including the larger forces of American culture. In turn each western settlement followed a pattern of theatrical development based on the demographics of that location. And as these populations changed, the theater adapted to supply and demand. When young men dominated the population, a woman’s sexuality became a commercialized theatrical commodity. Fallen women attended theatricalities both as patrons of the arts and as meeting grounds for potential clients. Although at times restricted to certain areas of the theater, their patronage sustained the business financially and influenced theater programming. As demographic gender imbalances decreased and towns developed a middle class, respectable women’s needs pushed entertainment toward greater gentility.
Variety entertainments based on solo or small family troupes, a long list which included singers, dancers, magicians, musicians, tight-rope walkers, contortionists, child prodigies, trained animals, and lecturers, dominated Western theaters as practical and adaptable. Minstrelsy ruled the variety stage as its most common and popular form and eased adjustment to urbanization through humor. Minstrelsy elevated working-class conceit and challenged power structures for the dispossessed—particularly the immigrant Irish—facilitating assimilation for some, at the expense of marginalizing others.
In responding to the challenges of the West, theater businesses demonstrated innovation and creativity. Some attempted to be all things to all people, rotating risqué entertainment with respectable legitimate theater—Shakespeare, melodrama and classic plays—while others split along class lines and made no attempt at respectability. Poor economic times found the theater resorting to cost-cutting strategies and sensationalized theatricalities that would find support among working men and women. Only during good economic times did respectable patrons support legitimate presentations to the degree necessary for sustained success. Many of the greatest achievements on the Western dramatic stage resulted from the talents of those from Irish backgrounds who became role models for Irish immigrants struggling with discrimination. Borrowing plays and players from the Eastern states spread a common set of Victorian cultural norms, tempered by the challenges inherent in the region. Trouping performers demonstrated a self-reliance often attributable to the Western ethos.
The story of Western theater is not one of crisp beginnings or ends. It is a story of transitions and adaptations to changing social and economic circumstances. The variety and legitimate theaters of the 1860s and 70s anchored the theatricalities of a cacophony of immigrant and native-born experiences. Acting styles became more realistic, while the celebrity status of stars increasingly captivated Victorian sensibilities. Stock company actors—the back-up players at each discrete theater—developed extensive repertoires of musical and comedic talents. A typical night of entertainment meant a four or five-act melodrama followed by an afterpiece, a short farce. Entr’acte interest did not wane as the cast transformed an interlude into a song and dance opportunity before the curtain. The protean talents of stock company actors – employees of one theater - gave way to traveling combination road shows, complete with cast, backstage crew and star personalities. Touring companies went on to dominate the 1880s into the early twentieth century. Theater—both a social and economic institution—operated through times of economic uncertainty and societal distress. Ultimately, the institution was both shaped by that reality, and reciprocally shaped the observers, while ever-changing to meet the demands of a dynamic and diverse population.
What can the study of Victorian theater tell us about the West? An examination of any aspect of American experience from any time period faces complexities in interpretation. Without an appreciation of Victorian theater, historians have the potential to misread primary documentation and diminish the influence of popular culture in the lives of Westerners.[9] This study attempts to help isolate the theater’s importance as an agent of cultural change and regional identity. The presentation at any Western theater spread American culture to the patrons—the local was the universal.[10] Disparate hinterlands were knit together through commercial and cultural exchange, as a hierarchy of urban centers compelled a differential impact upon the recipients of culture. The business of theater worked toward the re-ranking of class and privilege in the West, both with women as an economic force supporting theater that met their needs and reinforced certain performance genres, and as a cultural force progressing toward the re-shaping of traditional race, ethnicity and class patterns. The theater served a function of the melting pot—helping to create homogeneity from a heterogeneous culture—and at the same time, acting as a democratizing influence upon the West.
[1] Thomas A Bogar, Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, (Washington, D. C.: Regnery History, 2013), 228.
[2] The term Victorian is used throughout the document to highlight specific cultural sensibilities and characteristics of the time period associated with the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901.
[3]Daily Alta California (hereinafter DAC), July 31, 1875, 1; In the Townhouse bed and breakfast, Dublin, the birthplace of Dion Boucicault, a poster for the Sydney show provides dates of January 5, to February 18, 1995.
[4]New York Times, February 22, 2017, C6, Leah the Forsaken at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Playhouse.
[5] Boucicault’s play was The Octoroon, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon, 2014 Obie award winner premiered off-Broadway in 2014. American Theatre magazine, May 2014; Summer 2017 sold-out run at the Berkeley Rep.; Jacobs-Jenkins has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize in drama.
[6] LeRoy Ashby, With Amusement for All, A History of American Popular Culture Since 1930, (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006, paperback edition, 2012), xxix.
[7] Tamar Jacoby, Reinventing the Melting Pot, the New Immigrants and What it Means to be American, (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 3–17., found assimilation to be less a homogenization of immigrant groups, rather than a shared opportunity toward success, adoption of American habits and values which have supported democracy, a feeling of belonging to the new society, the promotion of a national story that immigrants can identify with, and sustaining a balance between what makes us different and what we have in common. ”The melting pot is the best shorthand that we have for the age-old American tradition of integrating and absorbing newcomers,” 15.
[8] Anne F. Hyde, “Cultural Filters: The Significance of Perception in the History of the American West,” Western Historical Quarterly 24 (1993) 351–374; William Cronon, “Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner,” Western Historical Quarterly, XVIII 2 (April 1987), 175.
[9] Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp; The Social World of the California Gold Rush, (New York: Norton and Comp, 2000), 336, 422, n 32. An old California forty-niner drew on the story of Damon and Pythias when describing a male couple visited in 1895 near Yosemite. The footnote interprets the story as coming from a college-educated man, without considering the possibility that working-class men attended theatrical presentations of Damon and Pythias, a popular Victorian play.
[10] Felicia Hardison Londré, The Enchanted Years of the Stage; Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theater, 1870–1930, (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 2.
Cuprins
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter I: The Western Setting: Reciprocity with the Hinterland
Chapter II: Deconstructing Western Audiences; Class, Ethnicity, Gender, and the Necessary Evil
Chapter III: Earliest Entertainment Venues—Sexualized Genres
Chapter IV: Theater’s Social Setting—Transition to Respectability
Chapter V: Moving the Cultural Frontier with Combination Companies
Chapter VI: The Fluid World of Variety Theater
Chapter VII: Sculptors in Snow: Legitimate Theater Successes
Chapter VIII: Minority Voices in the Theater—a Productive Dissonance
Conclusion
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
Chapter I: The Western Setting: Reciprocity with the Hinterland
Chapter II: Deconstructing Western Audiences; Class, Ethnicity, Gender, and the Necessary Evil
Chapter III: Earliest Entertainment Venues—Sexualized Genres
Chapter IV: Theater’s Social Setting—Transition to Respectability
Chapter V: Moving the Cultural Frontier with Combination Companies
Chapter VI: The Fluid World of Variety Theater
Chapter VII: Sculptors in Snow: Legitimate Theater Successes
Chapter VIII: Minority Voices in the Theater—a Productive Dissonance
Conclusion
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Descriere
An examination of Victorian theater as it moved out of San Francisco and into the smaller towns of the American West