Theatre, Society and the Nation
Staging American Identities

Selects key moments in American history and examines how the theatre responded to these events.

S. E. Wilmer (Author)

9780521802642, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 September 2002

292 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 2.6 cm, 0.648 kg

'… useful and impressive book … both fluent and scholarly … It is a welcome contribution to the study of American theatre … its conclusions are so engaging that its arguments will become well known by a generation or more of Shakespeareans. … Erne's book is marvelously researched, meticulously annotated, sensitively illustrated, and delivered in clear, refulgent prose … every reader will be stimulated and provoked.' New Theatre Quarterly

Theatre has often served as a touchstone for moments of political change or national definition and as a way of exploring cultural and ethnic identity. In this book Steve Wilmer selects key historical moments in American history and examines how the theatre, in formal and informal settings, responded to these events. The book moves from the Colonial fight for independence, through Native American struggles, the Socialist Worker play, the Civil Rights Movement, and up to works of the last decade, including Tony Kushner's Angels in America. In addition to examining theatrical events and play texts, Wilmer also considers audience reception and critical response.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. From British colony to independent nation: refashioning identity
2. Federalist and Democratic Republican theatre: partisan drama in nationalist trappings
3. Independence for whom? American Indians and the Ghost Dance
4. The role of workers in the nation: the Paterson Strike Pageant
5. Staging social rebellion in the 1960s
6. Reconfiguring patriarchy: suffragette and feminist plays
7. Imaging and deconstructing the multicultural nation in the 1990s
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Theatre studies [AN]