Little Theatre Movement

Last updated

As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theater as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. The Little Theatre Movement served to provide experimental centers for the dramatic arts, free from the standard production mechanisms used in prominent commercial theaters. [1] In several large cities, beginning with Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and Detroit, companies formed to produce more intimate, non-commercial, non-profit-centered, [2] and reform-minded entertainments. [3]

Contents

History

Conventional theater in 19th-century America

Sensational melodramas had entertained theatre audiences since the mid-19th century, drawing larger and larger audiences. [4] These types of formulaic works could be produced over and over again in splendid halls in big cities and by touring companies in smaller ones. [4] During the last decades of the century, producers and playwrights began to create narratives dealing with social problems, albeit usually on a sensational level. [3] While not yet totally free of melodramatic elements, plays reflecting a style more associated with realism gradually emerged. [5] During a secret meeting in 1895, the owners of most of the theatres across America organized into a Theatrical Syndicate "to control competition and prices." This group, which included all major producers, "effectively stifled dramatic experimentation for many years" in search of greater profits. [6] Nevertheless, by the second decade of the 20th century, pure melodrama, with its typed characters and exaggerated plots, had become the province of motion pictures.

Little Theaters of Chicago

Chicago's philanthropists and arts patrons Arthur T. and Mary Aldis established an artists' colony called The Compound in Lake Forest, Illinois. In 1910, Mary founded there the Aldis Playhouse, "a predecessor to the 'little theater' movement". [7] The Hull House settlement theatre group, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, was the first to perform several plays by Galsworthy, Ibsen, and Shaw in Chicago. [8] Maurice Browne, director and co-founder of the Chicago Little Theatre with Ellen Van Volkenburg, responding to having often been called the founder of the Little Theatre Movement, instead credited Hull House director Laura Dainty Pelham with being the "true founder of the 'American Little Theatre Movement'". [9] [10] Nevertheless, Browne and Van Volkenburg's company had, as the first little theatre to use the term, provided the movement with its name and inspired the creation in 1914 of Margaret Anderson's influential Chicago periodical The Little Review . [11]

Alice Gerstenberg, an original member of the Chicago Little Theatre, expanded the movement to include children, founding the Chicago Junior League Theatre for Children in 1921. Gerstenberg was also producer and president of The Playwrights' Theatre of Chicago, 1922–1945. She was active in the Alice Gerstenberg Experimental Theatre Workshop in the 1950s and the Alice Gerstenberg Theatre in the 1960s, which helped to cultivate the legacy of the Little Theatre Movement of the early 20th century.

In 1912, two theatre groups were formed, the Toy Theatre in Boston and the Chicago Little Theatre; these events often being cited as the official start of the Little Theatre Movement in the United States. [12] Continuing to react against commercialism, amateur companies began to write and produce their own works as well as new plays from Europe that had been ignored by the syndicates. [3] A wide variety of experimental groups, clubs, and settlement houses undertook to reform the theater, bringing more inwardly directed plays to a wider public audience. [12] [13] New forms of drama, some influenced by or parodying the new science of psychoanalysis, began to be presented in smaller venues, many converted from other uses into makeshift theatres. [14] The new groups began to experiment with new forms of storytelling, acting styles, dialogue, and mise-en-scene . This experimentation, influenced by European models, ranged from an ultra-detailed naturalism to, by the early 1920s, a wildly provocative expressionism, part of a new stagecraft. [15] Women were pervasive throughout these companies, although their efforts were often belittled, dismissed, or undervalued. Several theaters also sprang up during this period. The Wee Playhouse reading theater in Alfred, New York, traces its origin to Fall 1920 and still holds meetings today, making it probably the oldest continuous reading theater in the country. [16]

Pasadena Community Playhouse

The movement achieved high-water marks in artistic significance, community involvement, and international recognition with the Pasadena Community Playhouse. Originally a community theatre, the Playhouse boasted at its peak capacity six stages, each featuring a new production every two weeks, making it, for most of the early 20th century, the world's most prolific theatrical production organization.[ citation needed ] This palatial venue was, at the time of its construction in 1925, the largest theatre complex west of Chicago.[ citation needed ] The organization was able to complete many projects beyond the scope of professional companies, thanks to volunteer labor, widespread community support and the directorship of Gilmor Brown. Notable undertakings of the Pasadena Playhouse include the staging of the entire canon of Shakespeare for the first time on a single stage and a Midsummer Drama Festival showcasing the work of local writers. [17] In 1928, the Playhouse produced the massive theo-philosophical epic Lazarus Laughed by Eugene O'Neill. The first fully realized production of this play, the cast included 250 primarily local amateur actors, often doubling in roles that required more than three hundred masks and costumes. [18]

Beverly Hills Little Theatre for Professionals

Actor Harold Lloyd and others founded the Beverly Hills Little Theatre for Professionals in 1931. [19] It was originally housed at the Wilkes Vine Street Theatre, and by 1938 had moved to Santa Monica boulevard. [20] This 400-seat theater bore the names of the founder-subscribers on the seat backs. [19] A piece in Variety noted that Lloyd's mother, Sarah Elisabeth Fraser, along with Gladys Lloyd Cassell (wife of Edward G. Robinson), and their friend Sam Hardy raised funds for it. [19] Even before it opened there were rumors in Hollywood that something from the little theatre movement was on its way. [21] Cal York (a Photoplay gossip column pseudonym for an amalgam of California and New York), overheard Franc Dillon ask Kenneth Harlan to be in one of the future plays. They were all at Estelle Taylor's estate when this conversation occurred, and from the beginning it attracted a film industry crowd. [21] It served as a showcase for young talent, as a place for stars of the silent era to demonstrate their voices for talking pictures, and as an elegant way to transition from stage to film by being seen by Hollywood talent scouts. [22] [23] MGM dramatic coach Oliver Hinsdell was a frequent director there in the early years. [24]

Little theaters in the 1920s and 1930s

The Little Theatre Movement began in the early 20th century and was a result of young theatre practitioners, dramaturges, stage technicians, stage designers, and actors, who were influenced by European Theatre. More specifically, they were interested in the ideas of Max Reinhardt, a German director, the designing techniques of Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig, and the staging methods at the Théâtre Libre in Paris, the Freie Bühne in Berlin, and the Moscow Art Theatre. [1]

Seeking larger audiences and with more complicated production ambitions, by the early 1920s, several leading companies of the movement had turned professional. The Provincetown Players, who produced O'Neill's first one-acts, moved to New York in 1916; members of the former Washington Square Players formed the Theatre Guild in 1919; [25] but in its heyday, dozens of Little Theatre groups presented alternatives to mainstream commercial theatre. Numerous small companies had flourished, creating environments for diverse voices and viewpoints.

The Provincetown Players brought the first important playwright, O'Neill, to fruition. The Provincetown Players were founded in 1915, by three people: Neith Boyce, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell, who undertook Realism, an eccentric form of theatre at the time. O'Neill joined the Provincetown Players in 1916; they performed his first play Bound East for Cardiff that year. After moving to New York, they formed the Provincetown Playhouse, which is still in operation. [2]

Other new little theaters started as community theater groups and university drama programs in the United States and Canada. Theatre Arts Monthly magazine dedicated its July issue from 1924 through the 1930s and beyond to "tributary theatres", its name for little theater programs purportedly serving as tributaries for Broadway, London's West End, and other centers of professional theater. [26] In 1924, Browne and Volkenburg started the Summer School of the Art of the Theatre at the Theatre of the Golden Bough in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. [27] In 1932, Burns Mantle of the Chicago Tribune listed the following non-professional and semi-professional theater companies that were interested in staging new plays: Gilmour Brown's Pasadena Playhouse, Garrett Leverton's Northwestern University group, Syracuse University, the Little Theatre of St. Louis, Frederic McConnell's Playhouse in Cleveland, Western Reserve University, Duluth Little Theater, Dartmouth College's Laboratory Theatre, University of Iowa (under the direction of Prof. E. C. Mabie), University of Minnesota, Little Theater of Birmingham, University of Denver (under the direction of Walter Sinclair), Little Theater of Akron, Ohio, Little Theater of El Paso, University of Nebraska, Jasper Deeter's Hedgerow Theater at Moylan Rose Valley in Pennsylvania, the Parrish Players of Stony Creek, Connecticut, and the Little Theater of Dallas, Texas. [28] The Washington, DC-area Little Theatre of Alexandria was founded in 1935 at the height of the movement, and is still active, as is the University of Northern Colorado's Little Theatre of the Rockies, founded by Helen Langworthy in 1934.

Comparable theatres were also established in Canada around the same time: the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (1908), the Hart House Theatre at the University of Toronto (1919), and the Play Workshop (1934) are all notable examples. As in the United States, many of the playwrights who got their start in these theatres—including Herman Voaden, Merrill Denison, and W.A. Tremayne—went on to anchor early professional theatres. [1]

The July 1939 issue of Theatre Arts Monthly listed the following companies in its "National Little Theatre Directory": [29]

State/TerritoryCompanySchoolCityDirector
Alabama The Auburn Players Alabama Polytechnic Institute Telfair B. Peet
The College Theater Alabama College, Montevallo Walter H. Trumbauer
Arizona Dept. of Dramatic Arts University of Arizona Gordon Davis
California Placer Junior College Drama Guild Auburn, California Lillian B. Allen
Padua Hills Theatre Claremont, CA Charles A. Dickinson
University Dramatics Society University of California at Los Angeles Marvin Brody
Department of Drama Mills College Marian Long Stebbins, L. Louise Stephens, and Evaline Uhl Wright
Pacific Little Theatre College of the Pacific DeMarcus Brown
Canal Zone Balboa Little TheatreSubert Turbyfill
Colorado University Civic Theatre University of Denver Walter Sinclair
Perry-Mansfield Steamboat Springs, CO Charlotte Perry
Illinois Goodman Memorial Theater Art Institute of Chicago Maurice Gnesin
Mundelein College for Women Chicago, Illinois Anne Larkin
Northwestern University Theatre Evanston, IL
Drama Department Rosary College River Forest, IL
Indiana The Players Club Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College Charlotte Lee
The Sycamore Players Indiana State Teachers College Terre Haute, IN R. W. Masters
Iowa Department of Drama Grinnell College Grinnell, IA Sara Sherman Pryor
Kansas Fort Hays Kansas State College Little TheatreOrvis Grout
Kentucky Guignol Theatre University of Kentucky Frank Fowler
Louisiana Tulane University Theatre New Orleans, LA Monroe Lippman
Maine The Maine Masque University of Maine Orono, ME Herschel L. Bricker
Massachusetts Theatre Workshop Emerson College Boston, MA Gertrude Binley Kay, Grover Shaw, Allee Hamilton
Erskine Drama Department Boston, MA Phyllis Stohl
Gloucester School of the Theatre Gloucester, MA Florence Cunningham
Theatre Workshop Wellesley College Wellesley, MA Edith Margaret Smaill
Michigan The Michigan Repertory Players University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI Valentine B. Windt
Graveraet Dramatic Club Marquette, MI W. M. Whitman
Minnesota University of Minnesota Theatre Minneapolis, MN C. Lowell Lees
Missouri Missouri Workshop University of Missouri Columbia, MO Donovan Rhynsburger
Stephens College Players Columbia, MO A. Laurence Mortensen
Nebraska Omaha Community Playhouse Gordon Giffen
New Hampshire Dartmouth Players Hanover, NH Warney Bentley
New London Players of New Hampshire New London, NH Josephine E. Holmes, Dorothy A. Claverie
New York Sarah Lawrence College Bronxville, NY Mary Virginia Heinlein
Cornell University Theatre and Summer Theatre Ithaca, NY A. M. Dummond
The Little Theatre of Jamestown Jamestown, NY George & Harriet Warren
The Rochester Community Players Rochester, NY Robert Stevens
Civic University Theatre Dramatic Activities Syracuse University Sawyer Falk
North Carolina The Carolina Playmakers Chapel Hill, NC Frederick H. Koch
The Greensboro College Players Greensboro, NC Elba Henninger
Ohio Cain Park Municipal Theatre Cleveland Heights, OH Dina Rees Evans
Players Club Columbus, OH Stokes McCune
The Wesleyan Players Ohio Wesleyan University Delaware, OH R. C. Hunter, Hortense Moore
Peabody Players Western College Oxford, OH Helen Hasley
University Theatre University of Toledo Morlin Bell
Antioch Players Yellow Springs, OH Paul F. Treichler
The Youngstown Players Youngstown, OH Theodore Viehman
Oregon The University Theatre University of Oregon Eugene, OR Ottilie Turnbull Seybolt
The Portland Civic Theatre Portland, OR Donald Marye
Pennsylvania Department of Dramatic Art Allegheny College Meadville, PA Alice H. Spalding
The Green Room Theater Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster, PA Darrell Larsen
Pittsburgh Playhouse Pittsburgh, PA Frederick Burleigh
The Penn State Players State College, PA Arthur C. Cloetingh
York Little Theatre York, PA
South Carolina The Palmetto Players Converse College Spartanburg, SC Hazel Abbott
Tennessee Classic Players Bob Jones College Cleveland, TN Bob Jones Jr.
Texas The Curtain Club The University of Texas Austin, TX James H. Parke
Houston Little TheaterHouston, TXFrederick Leon Webster
Utah The Playbox Salt Lake City, UT Robert Hyde Wilson
Vermont The Bennington Theatre Studio Bennington, VT Francis Fergusson
Virginia The William and Mary Theatre College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA Althea Hunt
West Virginia West Virginia University Players Morgantown, WV James B. Lowther
Wisconsin Lawrence College Appleton, WI F. Theodore Clark

Contemporary effect of the Little Theatre Movement

Little Theatre can be seen as a precursor to the Off-Broadway movement of the 1950s as well as to other smaller, non-commercial ventures thereafter. [30] Today's community theater may be also seen as an outgrowth of the Little Theatre Movement.

Playwrights

By encouraging freedom of expression, staging the works of talented young writers, and choosing plays solely on the basis of artistic merit, the little theatres provided a valuable early opportunity for such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, George S. Kaufman, Elmer Rice, Maxwell Anderson and Robert E. Sherwood. [1]

Film

The 1920s was one of the most critical periods in the United States for the showing of foreign films. Films from several European countries were exhibited throughout the U.S. It is important to note that prior to World War I, many European films were shown in the United States. However, the 1920s was crucial because European films laid down the foundation for the American independent film culture, also known as the Little Theatre Movement. [31]

Several people disliked the American film industry for moral or social dilemmas. The Little Theatre Movement served to oppose Hollywood and the film industry; they dismissed Hollywood's mass production and creation of films to appeal to the largest possible audience. [31]

The Little Theatre Movement's focus was on creating fine art, focused not on commercial purposes, but rather, on artistic, historical, or political content. European films were screened often since there were not a lot of alternatives to major Hollywood productions. These theaters appealed to the upper class and radicals who were isolated from Hollywood. Audience members were encouraged to discuss the films after they were shown. [31]

There was an outstanding increase in Little Theatres that specifically screened European films from 1926 to 1929. The films were believed to be of "perceived artistic superiority to Hollywood Films," [31] which coined the concept of the European Art Film. Eventually, the term "art film" became very loose and society started seeing any film not produced in Hollywood as "art". [31]

The way the term "art film" was used in the United States lead to more critical thinking on film. The Little Theatre Movement gave birth to the Golden Age of the International Art Film (1950–1960s), when directors like Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michelangelo Antonioni became popular in the United States. [31]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Little theatre | American theatrical movement". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
  2. 1 2 "University of Delaware Library: Playwrights, Production, and Performance: American Theater in the 20th Century > Section 10". www.lib.udel.edu. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 Bryer 1982, p. 9.
  4. 1 2 Watt & Richardson 2003, pp. 147–150.
  5. ↑ Watt & Richardson 2003, pp. 150–151.
  6. ↑ Watt & Richardson 2003, p. 152.
  7. ↑ Martinez, Andrew (1993). "A Mixed Reception for Modernism: The 1913 Armory Show at the Art Institute of Chicago". Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. 19 (1): 31–105. doi:10.2307/4108763. JSTOR   4108763.
  8. ↑ Addams, Jane (1912). Twenty years at Hull-House: with autobiographical notes. New York: Macmillan. OCLC   974456511.[ page needed ]
  9. ↑ Glowacki, Peggy; Hendry, Julia (2004). Hull-House. 34: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN   978-0-7385-3351-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  10. ↑ Browne, Maurice (1955). Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. Gollancz. p. 128. OCLC   1394136809.
  11. ↑ Lock, Charles (1988). "Maurice Browne and the Chicago Little Theatre". Modern Drama. 31 (1): 106–116. doi:10.3138/md.31.1.106. Project MUSE   498387.
  12. 1 2 Noe, Marcia (Winter 2005). "Dorothy Chansky's Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience (Book Review)". American Drama. 14 (1): 115. ProQuest   1437903725.
  13. ↑ Watt & Richardson 2003, pp. 339–344.
  14. ↑ Watt & Richardson 2003, pp. 339, 352.
  15. ↑ Watt & Richardson 2003, pp. 340–341.
  16. ↑ Chansky, Dorothy. Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004, ISBN   978-0-8093-2574-0.[ page needed ]
  17. ↑ Pasadena Playhouse United States History.
  18. ↑ Bogard, Travis (1972). Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill. Oxford University Press. p. 289. ISBN   978-0-19-501573-7.
  19. 1 2 3 "Bronze Monikers: Harold Lloyd No. 1 on Seatbacks of Bevhills Midge". Variety. 30 October 1934. p. 3. Retrieved 23 March 2024.
  20. ↑ "Film Training School (con't from page 1)". Variety. 8 December 1931. p. 21.
  21. 1 2 York, Cal (September 1928). "Gossip of All the Studios". Photoplay. 34 (4): 50 – via The Internet Archive.
  22. ↑ Meehan, Leo (9 January 1932). "From Hollywood". Motion Picture Herald. p. 28. Retrieved 24 March 2024.
  23. ↑ "Film Training School (con't from page 1)". Variety. 8 December 1931. p. 21.
  24. ↑ Hayes, Jeanne (March 1934). "Little Girl, Don't Cry! Hollywood deals harshly with wild-eyed youngsters who want to be slinky heroines". Photoplay. 45 (4): 108 – via The Internet Archive.
  25. ↑ Bryer 1982, p. 5.
  26. ↑ See, for example, "Sixteenth Tributary Theatre Issue", Theatre Arts Monthly, July 1939.
  27. ↑ "Southern California Architectural History", Socalarch History, Southern California, July 31, 2012
  28. ↑ The Literary Digest Magazine, August 13, 1932, p. n 14: "Must Broadway Take a Back Seat?"
  29. ↑ Theatre Arts Monthly, July 1939, Sixteenth Tributary Theatre Issue.
  30. ↑ Watt & Richardson 2003, pp. 338–341.
  31. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Guzman, Tony (2005). "The Little Theatre Movement: The Institutionalization of the European Art Film in America". Film History: An International Journal. 17 (2): 261–284. doi:10.1353/fih.2005.0020. Project MUSE   186868.

Sources

Related Research Articles

Lanford Wilson was an American playwright. His work, as described by The New York Times, was "earthy, realist, greatly admired [and] widely performed". Wilson helped to advance the off-off-Broadway theater movement with his earliest plays, which were first produced at the Caffe Cino beginning in 1964. He was one of the first playwrights to move from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway, then Broadway and beyond.

<i>The Emperor Jones</i> 1920 play by Eugene ONeill

The Emperor Jones is a 1920 tragic play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill that tells the tale of Brutus Jones, a resourceful, self-assured African American and a former Pullman porter, who kills another black man in a dice game, is jailed, and later escapes to a small, backward Caribbean island where he sets himself up as emperor. The play recounts his story in flashbacks as Brutus makes his way through the jungle in an attempt to escape former subjects who have rebelled against him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornish College of the Arts</span> Art school in Seattle, Washington

Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art college in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1914.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theater in the United States</span> Theatrical performance and history in the United States

Theater in the United States is part of the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater. The central hub of the American theater scene is Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway. Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York, many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons, with some works being produced regionally with hopes of eventually moving to New York. U.S. theater also has an active community theater culture, which relies mainly on local volunteers who may not be actively pursuing a theatrical career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Glaspell</span> American dramatist

Susan Keating Glaspell was an American playwright, novelist, journalist and actress. With her husband George Cram Cook, she founded the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Provincetown Players</span>

The Provincetown Players was a collective of artists, people and writers, intellectuals, and amateur theater enthusiasts. Under the leadership of the husband and wife team of George Cram “Jig” Cook and Susan Glaspell from Iowa, the Players produced two seasons in Provincetown, Massachusetts and six seasons in New York City, between 1916 and 1922. The company's founding has been called "the most important innovative moment in American theatre." Its productions helped launch the careers of Eugene O'Neill and Susan Glaspell, and ushered American theatre into the Modern era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theater in Chicago</span> Theater performed in Chicago, Illinois

Theater in Chicago describes not only theater performed in Chicago, Illinois, but also to the movement in Chicago that saw a number of small, meagerly funded companies grow to institutions of national and international significance. Chicago had long been a popular destination for touring productions, as well as original productions that transfer to Broadway and other cities. According to Variety editor Gordon Cox, beside New York City, Chicago has one of the most lively theater scenes in the United States. As many as 100 shows could be seen any given night from 200 companies as of 2018, some with national reputations and many in creative "storefront" theaters, demonstrating a vibrant theater scene "from the ground up". According to American Theatre magazine, Chicago's theater is "justly legendary".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regina Taylor</span> American actress (born 1960)

Regina Taylor is an American actress and playwright. She has won several awards throughout her career, including a Golden Globe Award and NAACP Image Award. In July 2017, Taylor was announced as the new Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theater at Fordham University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pasadena Playhouse</span> Theater in Pasadena, California, U.S.

Pasadena Playhouse is a Tony Award-winning historic performing arts venue located 39 S. El Molino Avenue in Pasadena, California. The 686-seat auditorium produces a variety of cultural and artistic events, professional shows, and community engagements each year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">José Quintero</span> Panamanian theatre director and producer

José Benjamín Quintero was a Panamanian theatre director, producer and pedagogue best known for his interpretations of the works of Eugene O'Neill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fine Arts Building (Chicago)</span> United States historic place

The ten-story Fine Arts Building, formerly known as the Studebaker Building, is located at 410 S Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park in Chicago in the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District. It was built for the Studebaker company in 1884–1885 by Solon Spencer Beman, and extensively remodeled in 1898, when Beman removed the building's eighth (top) story and added three new stories. Studebaker constructed the building as a carriage sales and service operation with manufacturing on upper floors. The two granite columns at the main entrance, 3 feet 8 inches (1.12 m) in diameter and 12 feet 10 inches (3.91 m) high, were said to be the largest polished monolithic shafts in the country. The interior features Art Nouveau motifs and murals by artists such as Martha Susan Baker, Frederic Clay Bartlett, Oliver Dennett Grover, Frank Xavier Leyendecker, and Bertha Sophia Menzler-Peyton dating from the 1898 renovation. In the early 20th century, the Kalo Shop and Wilro Shop, firms owned by women and specializing in Arts and Crafts items, were established in the renamed Fine Arts Building.

The Ethiopian Art Theatre — originally called the Chicago Folk Theatre, later the Colored Folk Theatre, also referred to as The Ethiopian Art Players — was an African American theatre company based out of Chicago, Illinois. The company was an influential albeit short-lived (1922/1923–1925) group founded during the Harlem Renaissance. There are differing views over the precise year that the company was founded, 1922 or 1923. The founder was Raymond O'Neil, a white theatre director, and its principal sponsor was Mrs. Sherwood Anderson, also white; though all its performers were African American. The organization was unique and controversial during its era, primarily for being one of the few African American Theatre Companies to perform European theatrical works, but also, among other things, for producing theatrical works of African American playwrights for both African American and Non-African American audiences.

James Still is an American writer and playwright. Still grew up in a small town in Kansas, and graduated from the University of Kansas. His award-winning plays have been produced throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, China, Australia and South Africa. He is a two-time TCG-Pew Charitable Trusts' National Theatre Artist with the Indiana Repertory Theatre where he is the IRT's first-ever playwright in residence (1998–present). He currently lives in Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre in Pittsburgh</span>

Theater in Pittsburgh has existed professionally since the early 1800s and has continued to expand, having emerged as an important cultural force in the city over the past several decades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Provincetown Playhouse</span> Theater in Manhattan, New York

The Provincetown Playhouse is a historic theatre at 133 MacDougal Street between West 3rd and 4th streets in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is named for the Provincetown Players, who converted the former stable and wine-bottling plant into a theater in 1918.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Gerstenberg</span> American dramatist

Alice Erya Gerstenberg was an American playwright, actress, and activist best known for her experimental, feminist drama and her involvement with the Little Theatre Movement in Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicago Little Theatre</span>

A theater company formed in 1912, the Chicago Little Theatre spearheaded and lent its name to a historic, popular wave in American Theater, the Little Theatre Movement. Founded in its namesake city by Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne, the company was an art theater formed in opposition to the commercial values which held sway at the time. The company performed work by contemporary writers and Greek classics, as well as pioneering puppetry and puppet plays. Poetic dramas, restrained acting and new concepts in scenography were hallmarks of the Chicago Little Theatre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maurice Browne</span> American poet

Maurice Browne was a man of the theatre in the United States and the United Kingdom. A poet, actor and theatre director, he has been credited, along with his then-wife Ellen Van Volkenburg, as the founder of the Little Theatre Movement in America through his work with the Chicago Little Theatre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virgil Geddes</span> American dramatist

Virgil Geddes (1897–1989) was an American playwright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellen Van Volkenburg</span> American actress

Ellen Van Volkenburg, born Nellie Van Volkenburg in Battle Creek, Michigan, was a leading actress, director, puppeteer and theater educator in the United States and the UK.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.