Overview

When movies replaced theatre as popular entertainment in the 1910s, the world of live drama was wideopen for reform. American advocates and practitioners founded theatres in a spirit of anticommercialism, seeking to develop an American audience for serious theatre, mounting plays in what would today be called ""alternative spaces,"" and uniting for the cause an eclectic group of professors, social workers, members of women's clubs, bohemians, artists, students, and immigrants. This rebellion, called the Little Theatre movement, also prompted and promoted the college theatre major, the inclusion of theatre pedagogy in K-12 education, prototypes for the nonprofit producing model, and the notion that theatre is a valuable form of self-expression. Composing Ourselves argues that the movement was a national phenomenon, not just the result of aspirants copying the efforts of the much-storied Provincetown Players, Washington Square Players, Neighborhood Playhouse, and Chicago Little Theatre. Going beyond the familiar histories of the best-known groups, Dorothy Chansky traces the origins of both the ideas and the infrastructures for serious theatre that are ordinary parts of the American cultural landscape today; she also investigates the gender discrimination, racism, and class insensitivity that were embedded in reformers' ideas of the ""universal"" and that still trouble the rhetoric of regional, educational, and community theatre. Chansky considers the achievements and failures of the Drama League of America, a network of women's clubs, to point out that theatre history has not fully realized the role of women in the Little Theatre movement. Chansky also considers a blackface production of a play about rural African Americans, which was a step towards sympathetic portrayals of minority characters yet still a reinforcement of a white, upper and middle class perspective.

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Reviews

In Composing Ourselves, Dorothy Chansky weaves a compelling narrative of the emergence of the literary theatre in America. By offering vivid portraits and probing analyses of the people and institutions that were responsible for turning a popular amusement into high art, she uncovers the sometimes troubling assumptions that underlay the elevation of the stage in the early twentieth century. Her attention to the ironies of history illuminates the contradictions that informed not only the Little Theatre movement, but also the theatre of our own time. --David Savran, City University of New York

Author Information

Dorothy Chansky is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre, Speech, and Dance at the College of William and Mary. She wrote the original musical The Brooklyn Bridge, which was performed off-Broadway and published in book form.   

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