THE JouRNAL oF

AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 24, Number 2 Spring2012
Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve
Co-Editors: David Savran and James F. Wilson
Guest Editor: James Fisher
(The University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
with the A IDS Editorial Board:
Nicole Boyar (The Graduate Center/CUNY; graduate student
representative), Jonathan Chambers (Bowling Green State
University), Dorothy Chansky (Texas Tech University),
Anne Fletcher (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale),
Michelle Granshaw (University of Washington),
Amy E. Hughes (Brooklyn College), Kim Marra (University of
Iowa), John O'Connor (Fairmont State University), Ilka Saal
(Ghent University), Judith Sebesta (Lamar University),
Bob Vorlicky (New York University), Barry Witham
(University of Washington)
Managing Editor: Shane Breaux
Editorial Assistant: Jordan Cohen
Circulation Manager: Benjamin Gillespie
Circulation Assistant: Sivan Grunfeld
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
Frank Hentschker, Executive Director
Professor Daniel Gerould (in memoriam), Director of Publications
Jan Stenzel, Director of Administration
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSilY CENTER
OF THE CrTY UNIVERSITY OF NEw YoRK
EDITORIAL BoARD
Philip Auslander
Una Chaudhuri
William Demastes
Harry Elam
Jorge Huerta
Stacy Wolf
Shannon Jackson
Jonathan Kalb
Jill Lane
Thomas Postlewait
Robert Vorlicky
The Journal of American Drama and Theatre welcomes submissions. Our aim is to
promote research on theatre of the Americas and to encourage historical and
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THE JouRNAL oF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE
Volume 24, Number 2
CONTENTS
I "TRODUCTION
TRIBUTE TO D ANIEL GEROULD
SERGIO CosToLA
William Wells Brown's Panoramic Views
LEZLIE CROSS
Making Citizens of Savages: Columbia's Roll Call at
the Hampton Institute
j ENNA L KUBLY
Staging the Great War in the National Red Cross Pageant
ANGELA SWEIGART-GALLAGHER
John Hunter Booth's Created Equal: A Federal Theatre
Model for Patriotism
TIMOTHY YOUKER
"His Own House of Thought": Thornton Wilder's
"American Loneliness" and the Consolation of Theatre
CONTRIBUTORS
Spring 2012
5
7
13
33
49
67
89
109
JOURNAL OF AMERI CAN D R.\MA AND ThEATRE 24, NO.2 (SPRING 2012)
INTRODUCTION
The happy collaboration of the American Theatre and Drama Society
and the Journal of American Drama and Theatre continues with this special
issue edited by members of the ATDS. As its mission statement makes
clear, the ATDS is "dedicated to the study of United States theatre and
drama, its varied histories, traditions, literatures, and performances within
its cultural contexts. The ATDS also encourages the evolving debate
exploring national identities and experiences through research, pedagogy,
and practices. The ATDS recognizes that notions of America and the
U.S. encompasses migrations of peoples and cultures that overlap and
influence one another." The parallel aims of the Journal of American Drama
and Theatre include the goal of promoting "research on theatre of the
Americas and to encourage historical and theoretical approaches to plays,
playwrights, performances, and popular theatre traditions."
For this special issue of JADT, the ATDS editorial panel chose
"Interrogating Patriotism" as its topic, inviting essays exploring the
nature of patriotism as reflected in American theatre and drama across
the centuries. This seemed a particularly pertinent and timely topic for
the long year leading up to a presidential election in challenging times
for Americans. In the aftermath of the greatest economic crisis since the
Great Depression and what, as of the early spring of 2012 is shaping up as
one of the most divisive election seasons in memory, America's citizenry
continues its centuries-long debate over its ideals, especially in regard to
the meanings of equality, liberty, and the individual pursuit of happiness.
Theatre and drama in the Americas has, from its beginnings,
depicted true believers, loyal dissenters, and traitors to the ideals and
realities of national identity in all forms of theatre and drama. How do
the views and prejudices of these varied characters, and those of their
authors, shape ideas about the ever-changing cultural landscape? How
do diverse views and prejudices on the meaning of patriotism impact
individuals, institutions, and the theatre artists exploring them? How do
these plays and playwrights change perceptions about citizenship? How
do performance and social rituals influence myriad views of patriotism
and national myths? The contributors to this special issue of JADT have
approached these and other questions through varied historical, critical,
and performative perspectives to reveal aspects of the realities and
illusions of American patriotism, inviting scholars and artists to continue
to ponder the questions as new works and new forms emerge across the
twenty-first century.
6 FISHER
American drama has been a powerful voice for racial, ethnic, and
gender groups struggling to achieve equality across the centuries and it is
thus not surprising that contributors to this volume should address the
ways in which the disenfranchised found the drama a means through which
to advocate social change. Race figures significantly in Sergio Costola's
"William Wells Brown's Panoramic Views," revealing the "subversive scopic
practices" Brown employed in the mid-nineteenth century to assault the
racial status quo and reveal the multiple sins of American slavery. Moving
into the late nineteenth century, Lezlie Cross examines in fascinating detail
the patriotic pageant, &II Call, a "celebration of the glories of
citizenship through a display of patriotic heroes and a reinforcement of
American ideals" which also stood in "performative opposition" to the
stereotypical depictions of Native Americans as "savages" typical in Wild
West shows and other popular culture entertainments of that time. Jenna
L. Kubly also examines the pageant tradition, particularly the National
Red Cross Pageant, which in the late 191 Os offered images of the Great
War and escaping the escapist entertainments of the time to instead
actively engage "the social and political climate of its era." Moving into
the 1930s, Angela Sweigart-Gallagher turns to the Federal Theatre Project
production of John Hunter Booth's Created Equal.- An American Chronicle
in thirry-one scenes (1938), a vivid manifestation of the FTP's principle of
engaging "national history and founding myths" to "'awaken the nation'
to an American national identity." Also turning to the years just prior
to World War II, Timothy Youker dissects Thornton Wilder's "cosmic,
mythical themes" which "read like attempts at an American Standard
Bible for the stage," in which the playwright projects an "abiding faith" in
the "power of drama to bridge the often yawning gap between individual
minds and pull together disparate collections of individuals into temporary
communities."
Readers of this special issue of ]ADT will invariably applaud
the "interrogation of patriotism" provided by these talented scholars in
these extraordinary times for all Americans. Will the American experiment
succeed? Perhaps these scholars, and the productions and artists they
examine, have provided a hopeful answer: Americans explore their
history, ideals, and varied realities through the means provided by theatre
and drama, indicating that debating its ideals on American stages is an
essential step toward achieving them.
James Fisher
Guest Editor
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
JOURNAL OF A"ffiRICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO. 2 (SPRING 2012)
A Tribute to Daniel Gerould
During preparations for this American Theatre and Drama Society-edited
issue of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, the membership of
ATDS-and the academic field of theatre and drama-lost a major figure:
Daniel Gerould (1928-2012).
Dan was the Lucille Lortel Distinguished Professor of Theatre
and Comparative Literature in the PhD Program at the City University
of New York Graduate Center. He also held the posts of Director of
Academic Affairs and Director of Publications at the CUNY Graduate
Center's Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. As an American scholar
and translator whose work focused on, among other things, American
melodrama, Dan may be especially remembered for his titanic efforts in
directing the attention of American theatre scholars and practitioners
to the astonishing plays and productions emanating from Central and
Eastern European theatres.
Dan had a BA (1946), an MAin English Literature (1949), and a
PhD (1959) in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago, and
a Diplome in French Literature from the Sorbonne (1955). Before joining
the faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center, he taught at the University
of Arkansas (1949-51), the University of Chicago (1955-59), and San
Francisco State University (1959-1968), where he established and headed
the Department of World and Comparative Literature. He visited Poland
in 1965 on a travel grant from the U.S. Office of Education International
Studies Project with California State Colleges, developed an interest in
Polish theatre, and then taught for two years at Warsaw University as a
Fulbright Lecturer (1968-70). He was an exchange scholar in the Faculty
Research Program with the Soviet Union at Moscow State University in
1967.
Dan was the editor of the journal Slavic and East European
Performance from 1981 and of the twelve-volume Routledge/ Harwood
Polish and Eastern European Theatre Archive (1996-2002). He translated
twenty-one plays by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), and wrote
extensively about Witkiewicz and twentieth-century avant-garde drama
and theatre. His play Candaules Commissioner has been performed in France,
Germany, and America. For his translations from Polish he has received
numerous awards, including prizes from the Polish International Theatre
Institute, Los Angeles Drama Critics, Polish Authors Agency,Jurzykowski
Foundation, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East
European Languages, American Council of Polish Cultural Clubs, and
Marian Kister. He was the recipient of the City University of New York
8
Award for Excellence in Teaching (Graduate Center) and was honored
by lWB, Theatre Without Borders, as a Groundbreaker in international
theatre exchanges. Dan was also an avid jazz collector, and was married
to the Polish scholar and translator Jadwiga Kosicka, with whom he
frequently collaborated.
Dan's truest memorial would be the accomplishments of
generations of his students. The following reflections and recollections
from a few of his past and present students offer testimony to his many
legacies:
From Kurt Taroff (Queen's University, Belfast):
I had the very good fortune to be Daniel Gerould's student for seven
years, his Managing Editor at Slavic and East European Performance for four,
and, I would dare say, privileged to be his friend for the last thirteen years.
While Dan was not a young man, he had a youthful bearing and remained
extremely active, cross-country skiing every winter at his second home
in Woodstock, NY On the streets of New York, Dan could lay claim to
having some of the fleetest feet in the city; often when walking with him,
I would have to run to catch up to him. (This may sound like an attempt
at a profound metaphor, but I assure you it is completely true.) So, while
any time would have been too soon, Dan's death may well be called an
untimely one.
As the many gratifying tributes since his passing have noted,
Dan was an exceptional scholar, one of the last of a breed who could
truly claim to be a generalist in the best and most thorough of ways. I
worked with Dan in the early stages of compiling and editing the essays
in the recent partial collection of his work, Quick Change (Martin E. Segal
Theatre Center Publications, 2011) . The breadth of work on display
in the collection offers a small glimpse at the remarkable range of his
expertise-including melodrama, French and Russian symbolism, the
Grand Guignol, and Eastern European theatre, particularly his translations
of and commentaries on Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (whose work Dan
was among the first to bring to the attention of Western scholars). Dan
provided particular inspiration in pursuing his own personal interests,
whatever the area, and in the satisfaction of .his unique curiosities he
greatly expanded and enhanced the body of knowledge from which we
all draw.
As a teacher, in classes such as melodrama, symbolist theatre, and
the European avant-garde, Dan provided a comprehensive multi-media
experience that was not merely an account of the theatre relative to that
topic, but truly a cultural history of an idea. And as was the case for many
of Dan's students who would go on to be his dissertation advisees, an
TRIBL'TE TO D ANIEL G EROULD 9
off-hand comment, delivered in Dan's characteristically playful and yet
somehow cryptic manner, planted a small seed in my mind that developed
into the focus of my work for the next decade. In my case, this seed came
in the form of Nikolai Evreinov's theory of monodrama, leading me to
pursue the history and future applications of the concept; but Dan inspired
students to do work in fields as varied as his interests and knowledge.
And Dan was an incomparable mentor, with a special gift for
transmitting key ideas with a subtlety that made you believe that you had
thought of them yourself. With his seemingly endless and mystifyingly
catalogued index cards, Dan was always ready to provide leads for any path
that a student's research interest might lead them down, often including
the most obscure and fascinating material imaginable. And as I hope I
have learned to continue with my own students, a meeting with Dan was
less a progress report than an opportunity to share discoveries and argue
the intricacies of complex ideas.
In addition to his many virtues as an academic, Dan was a
profoundly good person-gentlemanly, kind, and seemingly innately prone
to brokering good will and placidity amongst colleagues and students. Dan
was, and will continue to be, an enormous influence on my life. I was
recently told that in German, the dissertation supervisor is referred to as
"Doktorvater." Dan certainly was my "Doctor's Father," and I feel a bit
like an academic orphan today. Dan will be sorely missed.
From James M. Cherry (Wabash College):
In the brief biographical note that precedes the selection of Horace's The
Art of Poetry in his theory anthology Theatre/Theory/Theatre, Dan Gerould
describes the poet as "a fat little arriviste" who "was a discriminating
theatregoer of fastidious predilections, [and] who found Plautus crude
and overrated" (68). I have always loved Dan's vivid depiction of a pudgy
Horace sniffing at the occasional crassness of Roman comedy. His writing
helps frame a well-thumbed text, rendering it fresh and intimate. In Dan's
hands, "Horace" becomes human. As a teacher, scholar, and mentor to
so many students for so many years, Dan sought to make the vaunted
approachable, the forgotten seen, and the complex pleasurable. In person,
he was courtly and kind, his reactions to his students' work penetrating
and precise. He wore his accomplishments as lightly as he took his and his
students' scholarship seriously.
Dan's eclecticism is well known; his writings range from Central
and Eastern European performance to American melodrama to French
puppetry to Russian film. But I have always been struck by his attitude
toward his scholarship, by his willingness to seek out and embrace texts
disregarded or discounted by others. He mixed the meticulousness of the
10
professional scholar with the whimsy and elan of the gendeman amateur.
Dan was a thinker who followed his heart.
It's a sad truth that one just doesn't get many true mentors in
life. In the days since his passing, there have been many moments that
would have prompted me to shoot off an email to Dan-a funny student
reaction to the railroad scene in Daly's Under the Gaslight, a question about
a modern adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, or an observation about life
in the academy. In our last email exchange, shortly before his death, we
discussed the joys of fatherhood. His absence catches me up short, and I
suspect it always will.
From Amy E. Hughes (Brooklyn College, CUNY):
Although I began doctoral studies at the CUNY Graduate Center with
hazy hopes of becoming a scholar of medieval theatre, during my first
semester I registered for Daniel Gerould's course on melodrama, one of
several popular seminars that he taught regularly. Looking around the room
on the first day, I noted how crowded it was. I also saw many unfamiliar
faces. I soon learned that I had stumbled upon a community comprising
not only theatre history students but also individuals studying comparative
literature, fi lm, and other subjects. (Dan covered an astonishing array of
material in his seminars, so he attracted such motley crews.)
Many strange and exhilirating adventures were in store. We
discussed "melodramas" performed across the globe and across time,
from Euripides's Medea to Pixerecourt's Le Chien de Montargis to Stephen
Sondheim's Sweenry Todd. We wrestled constantly with the definition
of melodrama itself, reading a plethora of articles and chapters by
scholars endeavoring to explain (and configure) this often-maligned
but nevertheless enduring genre. For my seminar paper, I wrote about
a Boston clergyman's possible co-authorship of The Drunkard (1844),
arguably the most famous American temperance melodrama. With Dan's
encouragement, the following year I revised the paper and it became my
first publication. My first book, which is in large part about melodrama,
will be published by University of Michigan Press this fall.
My story is far from unique; many of Dan's students have similar
ones. We are the fortunate beneficiaries of his indefatigable curiosity,
which compelled him to unearth diamonds in the rough and to share
those treasures with others. He is most celebrated and admired for his
scholarship on Eastern European theatre, which has made a trans formative
impact on the field. But his publications on melodrama- including the
anthology American Melodrama (1982), which sits on the bookself of many
a JADT reader-and his teaching of the subject has also had a significant
(if perhaps less visible) impact on the study of theatre and drama in the
TRIBUTE TO DANIEL GEROULD 11
US during the nineteenth century.
It seems incongruous to write a memorial about someone as
esteemed as Daniel Gerould and to end up writing mostly about yourself.
Yet this, in itself, reflects something vitally important about him, both
as a model and a mentor. My memories of Dan are inseparable from
the knowledge of how he affected and shaped me-how he helped me
choose my specialty as a theatre historian; how his careful questions and
critiques of my writing continue to influence my work; how his rigorous
and interdisciplinary approach to teaching subtly but profoundly informs
what I do in my classroom. For these invaluable gifts, I will be forever
grateful.
From Edmund B. Lingan (The University of Toledo):
Daniel Gerould taught me more than I could ever expect from a teacher,
mentor, or friend-and he did so in an elegant, interesting, and compelling
manner. Dan was the first person to encourage me to pursue my interest
in occultism and theatre as a dissertation project, and this guidance has
led me into the career that I now have. Dan dispelled my fears that my
research interests were too bizarre to build an academic career upon by
pointing to the groundbreaking work that he and others had done before
me. He always encouraged his students to move into the fringes of the
field of theatre and performance studies. Nothing was too far off the
beaten track or too unusual for Dan: on the contrary, he relished art and
topics that were unique, fringe, or, as Dan sometimes said, "freewheeling"
in style.
I am thankful to Dan for showing me that staying true to what
interests you-even if that interest seems to defy the borders of logic-is
the secret to creating compelling work. He lived according to this policy, as
is made apparent by the wide range of fascinating books and articles that
he produced throughout his career and the equally vast range of courses
that he taught. I can only hope to stay as true to my passions as a scholar
and artist as Dan did during his life. Dan provided a joyous approach to
his work as a scholar, teacher, and artist that others can view as a standard
to live up to while treading their own paths.
And, finally, from Nicole Boyar, Sissi Liu, Shari Perkins, Jessica
Silsby Brater, and Christopher Silsby, some of Dan's most recent
students at The Graduate Center/CUNY:
Perhaps the greatest lesson that Dan taught us that it is possible to
be powerful, influential, and charismatic-even a giant in one's field-and
yet retain one's warmth and empathy. Despite his unparalleled contribution
to the study of Polish avant-garde theatre and his important work on
12
melodrama and symbolism, Dan never brought up his own achievements
and always emphasized the work of others. Dan taught us by example to
be rigorous scholars with generous hearts. He also taught us to trust our
scholarly instincts, and encouraged us to engage critically with work that
has been neglected or relegated to provisional positions in the field. From
Dan, we learned that melodramas such as Alice, or the Scottish
Gravediggers, the horror entertainments of the Grand Guignol, and the
forgotten nonsense theatre of Galczynski's The Little Theatre of the Green
Goose are worthy of serious study.
Dan had a profound understanding of humanity and, in the spirit
of Symbolism, embraced the human desire to explore and comprehend
that which defies articulation. In Dan's seminar on the European avant
garde, we learned how individuals, wielding art as a political weapon,
risked their lives for theatrical expression. In his Symbolism class, each
meeting revealed untold wonders of artists who found inspiration in the
psychic realm. We will never forget the yellowing Sx8 index cards that
appeared to hold all the answers to Dan's very specific questions, even
though he barely ever glanced at them. Dan had a brilliant sense of humor,
an appreciation for the odd and kilter, and an impish twinkle in his eye
when talking with students. His sly instructions for our final papers were
that they should be twenty pages long, with the caveat that if we were
inclined to work especially hard, an exceptional paper should be fifteen.
A constant presence at the Graduate Center for forty years, Dan
trained generations of scholars. Without doubt, his influence will be felt
around the world for decades to come and missed daily in the halls of 365
Fifth Avenue.
jOURNAL OF AMERJCAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO.2 (SPRJNG 2012)
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN'S PANORAMIC VIEWS
Sergio Costola
Slavery has never been represented; Slavery can never be
represented .... The slave cannot speak for himself.
-William Wells Brown
1
The concept of progress must be grounded in the
idea of catastrophe. That things are "status quo" is the
catastrophe. It is not an ever-present possibility but what
in each case is given. Thus Strindberg (in To Damascus):
hell is not something that awaits us, but this life here and
now.
-Walter Benjamin
2
Author of poems, novels, autobiographies, travel narratives, historical
studies, and plays, William Wells Brown created an eclectic body of work
that made him, as Saunders Redding argued, "historically more important
in the development of Negro literature than any of his contemporaries."
3
Nonetheless, as John Ernest notes, "it is particularly surprising that
Brown has received little critical attention"
4
and that his Original Panoramic
Views-first performed in 1850 and published more than twenty years
ago in The Black Abolitionist PaperJ- has received virtually none. Following
1
William Wells Brown, ''A Lecture delivered Before the Female Anti-Slavery
Society of Salem At Lyceum Hall, Nov. 14, 1847," in Four Fugitive Slave Na"atives, ed. Larry
Gara (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969), 81-2.
2
Walter Benjamin, Selected Wn'tings 1927-1934, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael
WJennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), Vol. 2: 184-185.
3
I would like to thank Beverly J. Robinson (1946-2002) for her inspired teaching
and guidance. I am also grateful to Michael Saenger, Julia Johnson, Erica Stevens-Abbitt,
and Kathleen Juhl for their advice.
For a detailed account of Brown's life sec William Edward Farrison, William
Wells Brown: Author and Reformer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).
4
John Ernest, "The Reconstruction of Whiteness: William Wells Brown's The
Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom," PMLA, 113.5 (October 1998): 1109.
5
William Wells Brown, A Description of William Wells Browns Original Panoramic
Views of the Scenes in the Lje of an American Slave, from His Birth in Slavery to His Death or His
Escape to His First Home of Freedom on British Soil, in The Black Abolitionist Papers, ed. C. Peter
Ripley (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985-1992),
I:190-224.
14 CosToLA
the lead of Charles Davis and Henry Louis Gates, the main concern of
this essay is to investigate Brown's Original Panoramic Views as a narrative
discourse as important for its structural and formal characteristics as it
is important for the truths it reveals about the "peculiar institution."
6
In his moving panorama, Brown employed some of those distinctive
attributes of black cultural forms whose special power derives, as Paul
Gilroy states, "from a doubleness, their unsteady location simultaneously
inside and outside the conventions, assumptions, and aesthetic values
which distinguish and periodise modernity."
7
By restoring slavery and
the enslaved bodies within the frame, Brown was not only querying
representative modes not traditionally inclined to consider the other(s) of
history, but was also attending to a counter-culture by creating dialectical
images that could bring present and past into collision, thus advocating for
other stories, other modernities and trajectories. With the term dialectical
images I am appropriating a concept developed by Walter Benjamin in the
late 1920s and 30s. My contention is that, as we shall see, William Wells
Brown developed with his panoramic views an approach to history that
presents striking similarities to the one proposed by the German-Jewish
philosopher in his Arcades Project.
The need to re-present what was visible but not seen and uncover
a complexity that rejected the unilateral truth of the traditional picture-
frame- the idea of the "window on the world"
8
-became a necessity for
Brown as soon as he became aware of the impossibility of representing
the real condition of the slave:
I may try to represent to you Slavery as 1t 1s . . . yet
we shall all fail to represent the real condition of the
slave . . .. Slavery has never been represented; Slavery
can never be represented ... . The slave cannot speak for
himself.
9
6
The Slave; Narratives, ed. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), XII.
7
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1993), 73.
8
The "window on the world," as l ain Chambers reminds us, "is of course a
technologically updated version of the perspective that has continually been elaborated by
occidental humanism. The reduction of time and space to the flat surface of a canvas or
digital monitor, despite the five centuries that separate them, is the common child of an
epistemological desire to translate the external world into a unique vision controlled by the
universal subject," a subject "invariably white, male and Western." lain Chambers, "Beyond
the Dream," Third Text, 19.6 (November 2005): respectively 603 and 600.
9
Brown, "Lecture delivered Before the Female Anti-Slavery Society," 81 -2.
WrLUAM WELLS BROWN'S PANORAMIC VrEWS
It can scarcely be expected, however, that those
of us who understand the workings of slavery in the
Southern states will bring before you the wrongs of the
slave as we could wish. Language will not allow us; and
if we had the language, the fastidiousness of the people
would not permit our portraying them.
10
15
Brown, in these two speeches, does not only state, as many other ex-
slaves did, that the horrors of slavery defy expression in language, but
also that, granted an apt language, the resulting depiction of slavery would
clash with the dominant system of representation-"the window on the
world"-which required a unique and unambiguous vision controlled by
a (universal) viewing subject. As Paul Gilmore notes,
in the early 1850s, to depict a black man as a man required
either painting him white-as with mulatto heroes-or
stripping off his blackness to reveal a white interior.
But both solutions replicated the racial distinctions they
attempted to question-whiteness made one a man,
blackness, by itself, left one less than a man.
11
In fact, Brown's positive traits-gentility, eloquence, oratorical
techniques, etc.-were often justified by critics as coming from his Anglo-
Saxon blood. Since the slave, as Gates observes, "by definition, possessed
at most a liminal status within the human community,"
12
considered as the
lowest of the human races on the Great Chain Of Being, Brown's solution
was then to posit himself at the crossroad, the liminal space where Esu
resides, thus Signifyin(g) upon the figure of the Great Chain Of Being
itself:
Wm. Wells Brown was then introduced to the audience.
10
William Wells Brown, "Speech by William Wells Brown Delivered at the City
Assembly Rooms. New York, New York 8 May 1856," in Ripley, The Black Abolitionist
Papers, IV:339.
11
Paul Gilmore, "De GenewineArtekil: William Wells Brown, Blackface Minstrelsy,
and Abolitionism," American Uterature, 69.4 (December 1997): 764.
12
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signibing Monkey: A Theory of African-American
Uterary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 128. Regarding the Great
Chain of Being, see William Stanton, The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in
America, 1815-1859 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Esu or Eshu is one
of the most important deities of the Yoruba mythology. He is, among other things, the
protector of crossroads and a trickster-god.
16
He commenced by saying that we were here to comment
on the doings of our fathers. If his audience thought he
referred to black fathers they were mistaken-neither did
he refer to white fathers. We were a mixed people.
13
COS TO LA
By presenting himself as a "mixed" person, Brown characterized himself
as a "member of the family of undecidables" and thus resisted and
disorganized simple binary oppositions: he brought the outside into the
inside, and poisoned the comfort of order with suspicion and chaos. "One
cannot knock on a door unless one is outside; and it is the act of knocking
on the door which alerts the residents to the fact that one who knocks is
indeed outside."
14
Instead of knocking and ask for acceptance to the world
that had denied him citizenship since the beginning, Brown opposed all that
the established order strived to be and fashioned himself as simultaneously
neither black nor white, eitherwhite or black. As Zygmunt Bauman points out,
The horror of mixing reflects the obsession with
separating ... The central frame of both modern intellect
and modern practice is opposition-more precisely,
dichotomy ... In dichotomies crucial for the practice and
the vision of social order the differentiating power hides
as a rule behind one of the members of the opposition.
The second member is but the other of the first, the
opposite (degraded, suppressed, exiled) side of the first
and its creation.
15
In addition, by referring to both his white and black ancestors
and thus displacing his audience's assumptions and expectations, Brown
foregrounded the possibility of adopting racial identities while at the same
time called attention to the impossibility of eradicating the racial body:
Why do I stand before you, Mr. Chairman, tonight, not
an African nor an Anglo-Saxon, but of mixed blood? It is
attributable to the infernal system of American slavery.
16
13
William Wells Brown, "Speech by William Wells Brown. Delivered at Cincinnati
Anti-Slavery Convention, Cincinnati, Ohio, 25 April 1855," in Ripley, The Black Abolitionist
Papers, IV:287.
14
I am referring here to Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (lthaca:
Cornell University Press, 1991), 78.
15
Ibid., 14 (italics in original).
16
William Wells Brown, "Speech by William Wells Brown. Delivered at the
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN's PANORAMIC VIEWS 17
Brown was thus anticipating Franz Fanon's claim that "The Negro is not.
Any more than the white man,"
17
suggesting that race is defined more by
economic, moral, social, symbolic, and even linguistic reasons rather than
simply biological ones.
To Signif(y) upon the figure of the Great Chain of Being also
translated, for Brown, into a critique of classical mimesis with its hierarchical
structure, which reinforced all identity claims. In his panorama, as we
shall see, Brown's intent was to show intersections between identity and
identification, as it was in his speeches: "I speak not as an Anglo-Saxon, as
I have a right to speak, but as an African."
18
It is thus possible to investigate
Brown's work from a transnational and intercultural perspective-i.e., in
terms of the modern political and cultural formation that Paul Gilroy
has called the Black Atlantic. The specificity of this formation can be
defined "through the desire to transcend both the structures of the nation
state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity," in order
to embrace the more difficult option arising from the "theorisation of
creolisation, metissage, mestizaje, and hybridity."
17
According to William Farrison, Brown became a lecturing agent
for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society late in the fall of 1843, and
by the summer of 1845 he was already "generally known as a leader among
Negroes in Western New York."
19
The lectures delivered by "this eloquent
advocate of liberty" were often described as "thrilling performances" that
could hold "the large audience in almost breathless silence for nearly two
hours."
20
The idea of creating a more effective performance is one of the
Horticultural Hall, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 23 October 1854," in Ripley, The Black
Abolitionist Papers, IV:247.
17
Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New
York: Grove Press, 1967), 231 .
18
William Wells Brown, "Speech by William Wells Brown. Delivered at the
Horticultural Hall, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 23 October 1854," in Ripley, The Black
Abolitionist Papers, IV:249. As Elin Diamond argues, "identity is imagined to be the truthful
origin or model that grounds the subject, shapes the subject, and endows her with a
continuous sense of self-sameness or being .... Identification, on the other hand, is a
passionate mimesis, a fantasy assimilation not locatable in time or responsive to political
ethics. . . . Drawing another into oneself, projecting oneself onto another, identification
creates sameness not with the self but another: you are (like) me, I am (like.)" See Elin
Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis. Essays on Feminism and Theatre (London and New York:
Roudedge, 1997), 106 (italics in original).
19
Farrison, William We/Lr Brown, 81 and 96.
20
Liberator, 4 September 184 7, quoted in Farrison, William Wells Brou;n, 116.
Instead of relying on techniques that were typical of the embellished rhetorical style
that characterized contemporary speakers, Brown was conforming his speeches to the
model of the black preachers. In fact, as Beverly Robinson has noted, "Many preachers
18 CosToLA
main reasons why Brown, around 1850, at the time of his tour in England,
decided to experiment with the moving panorama. In the "Preface" to
his Original Panoramic Views, Brown states that in 184 7 he had visited an
exhibition of a panorama of the Mississippi River in Boston and that
he had remained "somewhat amazed at the very mild manner in which
the 'Peculiar Institution' of the Southern States was there represented."
21
What William Wells Brown had seen was probably the most famous of
all American moving panoramas of the time, John Banvard's Mississippi
from the Mouth of the Missouri to New Orleans. Inaugurated in Louisville in
1846, this canvas toured Boston and New York before being hung in the
Egyptian Hall in London at the end of 1848.
22
In addition, Brown also
saw the exhibit of the panoramas London by Night and Paris by Night when
they were shown for the reopening of the Colosseum in London in the
late 1840s.
23
Bernard Comment has argued that "the panorama was one of
the most popular and most typical phenomena of the nineteenth century,
of which it is in a way a signature."
24
Many scholars have observed how
the panorama might be considered the first mass medium, in the sense
that while it lured its spectators with the belief in the possibility of both
ordering and controlling the rapidly changing landscape of an industrial
Europe or that of newly discovered and conquered distant, exotic places,
at the same time it was replacing that chaotic and contradictory reality
and forcing people to see it otherwise.
25
As Angela Miller has pointed out,
could not read conventional English, so they developed their sermons orally and delivered
rhem from memory. The pulpit gave rise to many eloquent men, who influenced rheir
congregations through rhe power of rhe voice as well as through invigorating music and
movement." Beverly J. Robinson, "The Sense of Self in Ritualizing New Performance
Space for Survival," in Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diapora (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2002), 338.
21
Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, !:191.
22
Bernard Comment, The Painted Panorama (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
Publishers, 2000), 63-64.
23
See William Wells Brown, American Fugitive in Europe: Sketches of Places and
People Abroad (Bosron: J. P. Jewett, 1855), 255-56, quoted in Daphne A. Brooks, Bodies in
Dissent: Spectacular Peiformances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2006), 77-78.
24
Comment, The Painted Panorama, 7.
25
See, among orhers and more recently, Stephan Oetterman, The Panorama.
History of a Mass Medium (New York: Zone Books, 1997): "I hope to show rhat rhe pictorial
panorama was in one respect an apparatus for teaching and glorifying the bourgeois view
of the world; it served borh as an instrument for liberating human vision and for limiting
and 'imprisoning it anew. As such it represents rhe first true visual 'mass medium"' [!).
WIU.IAM WELLS BROWN'S P ANORAMIC VIEWS 19
"claims to absolute authenticity and truthfulness were likewise a stock-in-
trade of the materials used to promote rival panoramas."
26
In John Banvard's Mississippi from the Mouth of the Missouri to New
Orleans, for example, a speaker would describe and comment on the views
as they were slowly unreeled in front of the audience. The commentator
thus presented an ekphrasis-that is, a verbal representation of visual
representation-of a very particular kind: not as a summary experience
for those in the audience who had never seen-or had seen in the past-
the Mississippi River, but instead as a present experience for the audience
in the auditorium. Traditionally, writers of ekphrasis do not simply
describe the scene but narrate it for an audience, conveying at the same
time the emotions, realities, and objective truths contained within the
sceneY As W J. T. Mitchell reminds us, "a verbal representation cannot
represent-that is, make present-its object, describe it in the same way
a visual representation can" and as a result "words can 'cite,' but never
'sight' their objects."
28
However, in the specific case of moving panoramas
with commentators, the truthfulness of the spectacle-authorized by the
extraordinary illusionism of the views and their "mechanically controlled
narrative"
29
-was coupled with the ekphrastic hope inaugurated by the
commentator, asking the audience to overcome with their imagination
what the visual representation might be lacking. The three elements-
visual representation, verbal representation, and ekphrasis-were thus
authenticating and reinforcing each other in their attempt to substitute
with its simulacrum the real landscape surrounding the Mississippi River.
Both John Banvard and William Wells Brown's panoramas were
"moving panoramas," a development of the original round-panorama.
Although the word panorama results from the combination of two Greek
words, pan- (all) and horama (view, from horan, see,), it is a neologism created
towards the end of the eighteenth century to describe the phenomenon
started by Robert Barker in 1792. When Barker registered his patent in
London, he listed all the characteristics of the new form of entertainment:
a circular building called a "rotunda," housing a painting that would stretch
26
Angela Miller, "The Panorama, the Cinema, and the Emergence of the
Spectacular," Wide Angle, 18.2 (1996): 61. See also Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London
(Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The Belknap Press and Harvard University Press,
1978), 132-33.
v See, for example, Liz James and Ruth Webb, "'To Understand Ultimate Things
and Enter Secret Places': Ekphrasis and Art in Byzantium," Art History, 14 (1991): 12.
28
W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: s s ~ s on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago
and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 152.
29
Miller, "The Panorama," 46.
20 CosToLA
along the circular inside wall, allowing a spectator standing on a platform,
by turning about slowly, to gain a continuous and commanding view of
the scene in every direction. The exhibitions of panoramas were usually
accompanied by lights, music, a commentator, and a detailed program.
In the United States round-panoramas never became particularly
successful, and audiences seemed to prefer the moving panoramas-i.e.,
very long canvases attached to two cylinders that slowly unreeled in order
to simulate a journey. The reasons why the round-panoramas so popular
in Europe never really met with the favor of the American public are
multifarious. Moving panoramas were easier to tour and did not require a
specific building. As Angela Miller has claimed, besides lacking substantial
funds, panoramists were also part of a tradition of peripatetic
showmanship, and quite willing to move their wares from town to town."
30
Stephen Oetterman has also advanced convincing arguments regarding the
success of moving panoramas in the United States: Americans were not
very interested in ruins and famous palaces, but rather in their own country
and the new possibilities offered by the westward expansion. Moving
panoramas, with their long canvases unrolling before mesmerized audience
members, allowed for an experience that would soon become a reality with
the development of the railroad in the United States.
Angela Miller has masterfully summarized how recent studies on
the panoramas, following the theoretical lead of Michel Foucault, have
focused on the ways new technologies of vision do not simply create an
object for the (viewing) subject, but also a subject for the object, thus
creating and reproducing the social structures of power:
In a related sense, the panoramic medium-both
stationary and moving-has been linked to forms of
modern alienation, the first step toward the society of
the spectacle, in which representation replaces reality.
. . . The point remains that mass urban audiences were
exposed to a programmed spectacle that appeared to
need no interpretation, no cultural authority-a form of
entertainment that was, furthermore, market-driven to a
degree unknown in the fine arts, and that had, therefore,
to appeal to some perceived lowest common denominator
of taste and experience.
31
Miller has also warned us, however, that this VIew seems to
JO Ibid., 38.
31
Ibid., 55.
WilliAM W ELLS BROWN'S PANORAMIC VIEWS 21
abandon the possibility of artistic agency and "it neglects the vital issue
of who controls the medium, and to what political and to what ideological
purposes"
32
and aptly asks: "were their ideological functions intrinsic to the
panorama as a medium, or rather were they a matter of who was controlling
the medium and inscribing its particular meanings?"
33
According to William Wells Brown, John Banvard's Panorama
presented slavery in a "very mild manner," and he thus decided to create
and "submit to public inspection" his panoramic views in order "to give a
correct idea of the Peculiar Institution."
34
Slavery was thus not completely
absent from Banvard's Panorama, as is also evident from the description
written by Charles Dickens that appeared in the Examiner on 16 December
and entitled "The American Panorama:"
It is a picture of one of the greatest streams in the
known world, whose course it follows for upwards of
three thousand miles. It is a picture irresistibly impressing
the spectator with a conviction of its plain and simple
truthfulness, even though that [sic] were not granted by
the best testimonials. It is an easy means of traveling,
night and day, without any inconvenience from climate,
steamboat company, or fatigue . . . The picture itself,
as an indisputably true and faithful representation of a
wonderful region ... is replete with interest throughout.
Its incidental revelations of the different state of society,
yet in transition, prevailing at different points of these
three thousand miles-slaves and free republicans,
French and Southerners; immigrants from abroad,
and restless Yankees and Down-Easters ever steaming
somewhere; alligators, store-boats, show-boats, theatre-
boats, Indians, buffaloes, deserted tents of extinct
tribes, and bodies of dead Braves, with their pale faces
turned up to the night sky, lying still and solitary in the
wilderness, nearer and nearer to which the outposts of
civilization are approaching with gigantic strides to treat
their people down, and erase their very track from the
earth's face-teem with suggestive matter.
35
32
Ibid., 58.
33
Ibid., 47.

~ Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, I: 191.

35
Quoted in Oetterman, The Panorama, 328-29.
22 COSTOLA
The "wonderful region" was represented as a unified and
organized spectacle for the viewers, although almost outside of history;
contradictions were not absent but nonetheless inscribed as part of a
narrative of progress, as "incidentals," obstacles about to disappear under
the inevitable expansion of a civilization "approaching with gigantic
strides. Slaves could enter the picture as if on the same plane as free
republicans, or French and Southerners, and Indians could be placed
between theatre-boats and buffaloes. Enslavement and massacres were
thus posited as momentary variables in the construction of the beautiful
American landscape.
It is no wonder that William Wells Brown, after seeing Banvard's
Panorama, felt the need to respond with another that would position slavery
at the center of the frame, as a precondition for a more disquieting critical
space. Brown's Panorama, in fact, can be better understood if considered
within the context of the author's entire corpus, a corpus that included
numerous historical works.
36
Brown's plays, his novel C/otel, his various
lectures, his autobiographies and travel narratives, should be considered as
fragments of a major historical project that, as John Ernest has noted, was
"not simply of historical recovery" but also "of historical intervention":
Above all, as Brown's lecture so ably represents, African
American historical understanding would require
attention not only to its matter-historical evidence-
but also to its mode. It would necessarily be a performance
on the limited stage available to African Americans in the
white American theatre of history.
37
In his Panorama, Brown performed his role as an historian not by
attempting to write a linear and stable history, but instead by interrupting
and challenging the existing narrative and by offering in its place a
constellation made of the detritus, the leftovers of history. Brown, in
few words, "attempted not to write history but rather to make history
possible-helping those, both white and black, who had not yet learned
to help themselves."
38
36
See, for example, besides numerous lectures on historical subjects, The Black
Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (1865); The Negro in the American
Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity (186 7); The Rising 5 on; or, The Antecedents and Advancement
of the Colored Race (187 4).
37
John Ernest, Liberation Historiography: African Amencan Wn'ters and the Challenge
of History, 1794-1861 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press,
2004), 8 and 4.
38
Ibid., 340.
WilliAM WELLS BROWN'S PANORAMJC VIEWS 23
William Wells Brown, thus, created a moving panorama consisting
of twenty-four views. Unfortunately, none of the images have survived-
with the exception of a couple of drawings-and all we are left with is
the pamphlet that used to be distributed to the audience members and
containing Brown's commentary of the views. On the title page of this
pamphlet, between the title, A Description of William Wells r o w n ~ Panoramic
Views of the Scenes in the Lzje of an American S lave
1
from His Birth in Slavery
to His Death or His Escape to His First Home of Freedom on British Soil, and
publication information, Brown placed two quotes:
FICTION
"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men
are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are
LIFE, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS."
-Declaration of American Independence
FACT
"They touch our country, and their shackles fall."
-Cowpe2
9
In addition, Brown's performance was created by mingling
documentary discourse (quotations from newspapers, autobiographical
references, and other kinds of information) with fictive discourse, thus
rendering their distinction problematic, and undermining the relation
that makes documentary discourse the ground for fictive discourse. Thus,
Brown was able to escape the charges of white Garrisonian reviewers who
complained about black lecturers who focused more on their rhetorical
style rather than keeping to a simple narrative.
40
Brown, as a consummate
trickster, with one leg resting in the realm of logical discourse while the
other was still anchored in his own oral tradition, was able to outsmart
The Man by "hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick."
41
39
The quote is from The Task, Book III (1784) by English poet William Cowper
(1731 -1800).
40
William L. Andrews, "The Novelization of Voice in Early Africa.n American
Narrative," PMIA, 105.1 Qanuary 1990): 24 .
., See L4J My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slamy, ed. Benjamin Albert Botkin
(Chicago: Universi ty of Chicago Press, 1945), 2, quoted in Jean Fagan Yellin, The Intricate
Knot: Black Figures in American Literature, 1776- 1863 (New York: New York University
Press, 1972), 160, who places Brown's characterization of folk figures within the trickster
traclition in African American culture. See also, for Brown as trickster, M. Giulia Fabi,
"The 'Unguarded Expressions of the Feelings of the Negroes': Gender, Slave Resistance,
24 CosToLA
In this case, the historical document most centrally used to
celebrate American liber ty is presented as fiction and juxtaposed to a
poem presented as fact. Taking up the challenge and burden of repetition
with this revised panorama, Brown wished "to disseminate truth upon
this subject, and hasten the downfall of the greatest evil that now stains
the character of the American people."
42
Thus, according to Brown,
history had to be both a recovery-the dissemination of truth-and an
intervention-hastening the downfall of slavery. The recovery had to take
into consideration, at the same time, the paradoxical situation of writing
a history either in the absence of sources or in the presence of their
distortion. The result was a historical representation that had to be both
"a reading and an unreading": a reading of sources that were at the time
deemed inappropriate for a historian (poems) and an unreading of those
documents that made it possible, as Ernest argues, to "celebrate liberty in
a nation in which slavery influenced every aspect of social life-economic,
political, legal, and religious."
43
Brown divided the twenty-four views constituting his moving
panorama into two major narrative segments: the second half (Views
Twelfth through Twenty-third) almost completely autobiographical, tells
stories connected to both his unsuccessful and successful attempts to
escape from slavery. The first half (Views First through Eleventh) prepares
the call for this personal and emotional involvement by presenting its
objective correlative: the narrator is almost absent from the text and the
narrator focuses instead on definitions of slavery, examples of its abuses,
references to British involvement in the maintenance of slavery because
of commercial interests, and remarks on the corruption of the democratic
and religious ideals of America. These elements are all introduced through
the plain description and visual representation of specific objects: the US
Capitol, the Calaboose prison, slave ships, a plantation, etc., creating an
equivalent to Brown's conception of the world.
When Brown inaugurates his "series of Views with a plantation
in the State of Virginia; the oldest Slave State in the Union,"
44
he warns
the audience members toward the end of his description that the image
presents slavery "in its mildest form:"
The Slaves in this view now before us are at work in a
and William Wells Brown's Revision of Clote/," African American Review, 27.4 (Winter 1993):
639-54.
42
Brown, A Descnption, 191.
43
Ernest, Liberation Historiograpf?y, 5.
44
Brown, A Description, 192.
WILLIAM WEllS BRoWN's PANORAMIC Vmws
Virginia tobacco-field. The man on horseback is a Slave-
dealer; probably, the agent of one of the wholesale dealers
in Washington. The man standing by him, is the owner of
the farm. Here we see Slavery in its mildest form; there
being no overseer or driver. The master merely gives out
the task to the slaves, and leaves them to do their work,
or goes occasionally into the field and looks after them.
You will observe, by the way in which the Slaves
before you watch the Slave-trader, that they fear he may
succeed in purchasing some of them from their present
owner. Whatever may be said of the good treatment of
Slaves in those States where it exists in its mildest form,
the continual fear of being sold and separated from their
nearest and dearest friends, makes it bad at best.
45
25
Brown's ekphrasis is preceded by references to the beginning of Slavery
(1620), the Fugitive Slave Act (1793), and the responsibility of both the
"nominally free" North States and Great Britain in the "infamous traffic
of human flesh and immortal souls."
46
View Second describes instead "Two Gangs of Slaves Chained and
on Their Way to the Market," the "Cruel Separation of a Mother from her
Child," and the presence of Slaves "as being nearly white." In addition,
this view ends with a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier describing slaves
"chained and driven as the beast to the field:"
What, oh! our countrymen in chains!
The whip on Woman's shrinking flesh!
Our soil yet reddening with the stains
Caught from her scourging, warm and flesh!
What! mothers from their children drive!
What! God's own image bought and sold!
Americans to market driven,
And battered, like the brutes, for gold!
47
45
Ibid., 193.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid., 193-194.John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), a well-known nineteenth-
century American poet and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society,
eventually broke with the Garrisonians in 1840 and joined the American and Foreign Anti-
Slavery Society (see Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, !:217, note 5).
26
CosToLA
View Third closes the triptych: Brown tells the audience that the
image before them represents the Capitol of the United States; on its right,
a group of people is holding a meeting "to sympathise with the French
Revolution of 1848." On its left, however, Brown places the same "gang
of Slaves . . . that we saw in the last view" and comment that "nothing
can more forcibly show the hypocrisy, or the gross inconsistencies, of the
citizens of the United States that their pretended sympathy for people in
foreign countries, while they chain, whip, and sell their own countrymen."
48
The Capitol of the Unites States in View Third; the Declaration of
Independence in View Fourth; the frigate Constitution in View Sixth, which
Brown reminds us "in the last war between Great Britain and the United
States ... was the most distinguished vessel in the United States Navy,"
49
the White House in View Seventh: these are some of the most traditional
signifiers of the myth of America, serving as vehicles for white supremacist
ideology. Brown, with the first three views, throws into juxtaposition these
dream images with the detritus of history, the ob-scene:
50
the objects, events,
and stories that resist assimilation into a triumphal story of America as
land of continual progress.
As previously mentioned, it might be argued that William Wells
Brown's approach to history presents striking similarities to the project
that Walter Benjamin would articulate about a century later in his Arcades
Prqject. Begun in 1927 as a collaboration for a newspaper article, the
project quickly burgeoned into an essay, then a book, and finally into what
Benjamin himself referred to as "the theater of all my struggles and all my
ideas."
51
The project, unfinished, was interrupted in 1940 with the author's
suicide after he failed to escape from the Gestapo. History, according
to Benjamin, "decays into images, not into stories" and must carry "an
immanent critique of the concept of progress."
52
The method of the
Arcades Prqject, which Benjamin borrowed from the French Surrealists,
was that of literary montage: "I needn't sqy anything. Merely show. I shall
purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenuous formulations. But the rags,
the refuse-these will not inventory but allow, in the only possible way,
48
Ibid., 194.
49
Ibid., 197.
50
The etymology of the word obscene is not certain. I use obscene here as
something that is against (ob-) what constitutes the scene (scaena) of the public life, rather
then something that is onto (ob-) filth (caenum.)
51
See the "Translators' Foreword" to the English edition of the materials
assembled in Volume V of Walter Benjamin's Gesame/te Schriften, under the title Das Passagen-
Werk and published as The Arcades Project, IX-XlV.
52
Ibid., 476.
WilliAM W Eu.s BRoWN's PANORAMIC V!EWS
27
to come into their own: by making use of them."
53
The Arcades Prqject,
according to Susan Buck-Morss, "is an attempt to construct inner-historical
images that juxtapose the original, utopian potential of the modern ...
and its catastrophic and barbaric present reality. It relies on the shock of
these juxtaposed images to compel revolutionary awakening."
54
Particularly interesting is Benjamin's description of "dialectical
images":
It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present,
or what is present its light on what is past; rather,
image is that wherein what has been comes together in
a flash with the now to form a constellation. In other
words, image is dialectics at a standstill. For while the
relation of the present to the past is a purely temporal,
continuous one, the relation of what-has-been to the
now is dialectical: is not progression but image, suddenly
emergent. Only dialectical images are genuine images
(that is, not archaic); and the place where one encounters
them is language.
55
As Michael Jennings notes, "every such image, in which a moment from
the past collides with a moment in the present historical context of the
reader ... not only does it provide an essential revelation of the true
historical character of the past, but more importantly, it reveals to the
reader the only possible accurate understanding of the present."
56
Or, in
Benjamin's words, "the materialist presentation of history leads the past
53
Ibid., 406.
54
Ibid., 458: "Here the concern is to find the constellation of awakening ... here
it is a question of the dissolution of 'mythology' into the space of history. That, of course,
can happen only through the awakening of a not-yet-conscious knowledge of what has
been." See Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 251.
55
Benjamin, The Arcades, 462.
56
Michael W Jennings, Dialectical Images. Walter Benjamin's Theory of Literary
Criticism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987), 36. Elin Diamond has
applied Benjamin's concept to three contemporary performance artists: Peggy Shaw,
Robbie McCauley, and Deb Margolin. As Diamond claims, it is by means of "dialectical
images" that these artists are able to temporalize perception, and so furnish the performative
"present" with the sense of the historical without summoning teleology: "using dialectical
images to bring past and present into collision, these feminist artists turn performance
time into a now-time of insight and transformation." In particular, Diamond's description
of McCauley's Indian Blood (first performed in 1987) with her full -sized projections of
historical documents, private and public, bears strict similarities with Brown's panoramas.
Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis, 146.
28 COSTOLA
to bring the present into a critical state."
57
In his attempt to shou; the truth about American Slavery, William
Wells Brown understood, like Benjamin, that the historical truth of his
epoch resided in its assembled fragments and that truth would be lost, not
recovered, as Max Pensky has noted, "by the imposition of a theoretical
superstructure upon them."
58
In addition, besides foregrounding those
forgotten moments usually hiding behind the fayade of the harmonious
present, Brown also displaced his audience members' expectations by
showing what constituted a possible obscene-i.e., what could lie outside
the box of representation.
59
In View First, for example, Brown presents us with "Slavery in
its mildest form,"
60
in his attempt to refrain "from representing those
disgusting pictures of vice and cruelty."
61
William Wells Brown was well
aware of the impossibility of representing the real condition of the slave
and the reality of the slave system, a system that, as John Ernest has pointed
out, "both resisted and required representation."
62
Brown therefore
created a constellation of images that would frustrate his audience's
expectations. The scenes of torture in the literature of slavery, in Saidiya
Hartman's words, "rather than inciting indignation, too often [they]
immure us to pain by virtue of their familiarity . .. and especially because
they reinforce the spectacular character of black suffering."
63
Brown, thus,
rather than attending to the voyeuristic attitudes of an audience fascinated
with those "disgusting pictures of vice and cruelty which are inseparable
from slavery,"
64
decided to deal with images that could, as Benjamin
would say, explode "the homogeneity of the epoch" with the "ruins" of
the present.
65
The "homogeneity of the epoch" was constructed through
57
Benjamin, TheArcades, 471.
58
Max Pensky, "Method and time: Benjamin's dialectical images," in The Cambridge
Companion to Walter Benjamin, ed. DavidS. Ferris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 180.
59
Regarding the box if representation I am relying here on Georges Didi-
Huberman, Co'!fronting Images: Questioning the Ends if a Certain History if Art (Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania University Press, 2005), 139.
60
Brown, A Description, 19 3.
61
Ibid., 192.
62
Ernest, Liberation Historiograpf?y, 39-40.
63
Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes if S uijection. Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in
Nineteenth-Century America (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3.
64
Brown, "Preface" to A Description, 192.
65
Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 474: "Historical materialism must renounce the
epic element in history. It blasts the epoch out of the reified 'continuity of history.' But
Wn.l..IAM WEllS BROWN'S PANORAMIC VrE\X'S 29
those phantasmagoric images that became the expression of collective
utopian fantasies and longings: "wish images" in which "the collective
seeks both to overcome and to transfigure the immaturity of the social
product and the inadequacies in the social organization of production."
66
These phantasmagorias-the US Capitol, a plantation in Virginia, the White
House, etc.-were juxtaposed by Brown, within the same view, with some
of the heterotopias typical of the nineteenth-century American landscape-
chain-gangs, slave auctions, slave-ships, white slaves, etc. The difference
between Brown and other panorama artists such as Banvard, lay not in
the specific objects represented in each single view, but in the artist's
goal-i.e., the reproduction of appearances as such rather than their
representation. The goal of panorama artists of the nineteenth century,
as we have previously seen, was to eliminate any difference between the
world represented and its copy. For Brown, on the other hand, the goal was
no longer the maintenance of identity, but the production of difference
achieved through the transformation of familiar objects by means of both
repetition and displacement. As Elin Diamond has noted, the dialectical
image "doesn't stand for an absent real ... nor is it internally harmonious.
A version of the demystifying gestus, the dialectical image is a montage
construction of forgotten objects or pieces of conunodity culture that are
'blasted' out of history's continuum."
67
With View Twe!fth entitled "First view in the Life of William Wells
Brown," the author shifts to stories which are primarily autobiographical
and narrate events concerning both successful and unsuccessful escapes.
As W T. ]. Mitchell has noted, slave narratives are never about slavery,
but about the movement from slavery to freedom: "The slave narrative
is always written by a former slave; there are no slave narratives, only
narratives about slavery written from the standpoint of freedom."
68
The
title alone-A Description . .. rf the Scenes in the Lift rf an Amencan Slave,
from His Birth to His Death to His Escape-forces the narrative and the
audience reading to deal with a clear-cut alternative: freedom or death,
thus obliterating any possibility of an idealized version of slavery.
Curiously, Brown warns his audience that "the view now before
[them] is the first scene in which the writer is presented in this panorama."
69
it also explodes the homogeneity of the epoch, interspersing it with ruins-that is, with
the present."
66
Ibid., 4-5.
67
Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis, 146.
68
Mitchell, Picture Theory, 190.
69
Brown, Description, 201.
30
CosToLA
However, the view is about Brown's disappearance from the premises of
his master due to "severe treatment" and his consequent reappearance
in a wood, on the top of a tree, trying to escape the dogs that were sent
after him. Brown thus portrays himself as a fugitive slave-both object
of the story he tells and object of his master's severe treatment-and,
simultaneously, he reserves a kind of mastery for himself, gaining control
over representation. Brown in the first view concerning his life appears
as both subject and object of the representation and duplicates a strategy
that, as Paul Jefferson noted some time ago, was also at the vary basis
of Brown's Narrative: "In blurring the distinction between Brown as
subject, the teller of a generic 'free story,' and Brown as fugitive slave,
the object of the story he tells, the first-person Narrative increases our
appreciation of the double achievement."
70
In addition, Brown achieves
mastery over representation by "creating" himself as a presence at once
inside and outside the frame of representation: the one inside the frame
characterized by the action of fleeing-as Paul Jefferson argues, in slave
narratives, "the act of fleeing is an existential act of self-creation"
71
-and
the one outside providing a narrative closure through his bodily presence.
While eighteenth-century panoramas' emphasis was on the portrayal of
scenes through the representation of idealized landscapes, Brown's focus
on the escapes of himself and others brought the focus back to the need
for action and intervention.
William Wells Brown's goal, thus, was to present his audience with
the truth about slavery, without having to represent slavery itself. The first
part of his panoramic views seems to present a traditional narrative that
was, at the same time, visibk-through the images-and
the commentary. However, Brown right from its beginning inaugurates a
narrative sequence that invites the audience to place themselves into the
event as a direct and personal experience. In the second view, for example,
Brown comments: "We have now before us a gang of Slaves on their way
to the City of Washington." And at the beginning of the third view he
says: "We have now arrived at the City of Washington. The large building
before us is the Capitol of the United States.'m The picture, thanks to
the designation of the speaker, achieves an authority, as a source of
truth about slavery, which is at least equal to that of a logical discourse.
73
70
The Travels of William Wells Brown, ed. Paul Jefferson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1991), 6.
71
Ibid.
72
Brown, A Desmption, 193 and 194. The emphasis is mine.
73
For the relationship between word and image in African culture-i.e., the
process of the designation of the image-see Janheinz Jahn, Muntu: African Culture and the
WILLIAM WELLS BRO\VN'S PANORAMIC VIEWS 31
The performance that results from this amalgam of image and word
transforms the space of the abolitionist platform into the locale in which
slavery takes place, until the last view, when Brown asks the audience
members, after they have "accompanied the fugitive, amidst perils by land
and perils by water," to imagine themselves "as having crossed that river,
and as standing, with the Slave, upon the soil over which the mild sceptre
of Queen Victoria extends."
74
The spectator is thus asked, not to identify
with the fugitive slave, but to be present in person, as a witness, to the
event: imagine him or herself with the slave, rather than like the slave.
Brown, in few words, by means of his performance, creates a ritual space,
a space which defies fixity and in which time is endless, because the speaker,
the audience, the slave, and the slave-holders are all put together in the
now of an always present time.
75
In addition, with this last view, Brown was
also able to eschew the traps and dangers that are typical of the empathic
process. As Saidiya Hartman has pointed out, "empathy fails to expand
the space of the other" and "places the self in its stead."
76
In this case,
the black body rather than being displaced is instead doubled, forcing the
audience members to acknowledge the mastery of William Wells Brown
as narrator present in the flesh, while at the same time being present as
witness to the very moment of self-creation through his escape.
Brown's panoramic views are thus very far from the traditional
idea of the "window on the world," because its spectators are, literally,
within a performance that activates subversive scopic practices as a way
to destabilize the hegemonic pretenses of both traditional discourse and
vision. The spectators could live in a liminal space-not simply be in
front of an image, but be part of the image and of a suspended time
during which no conclusion could be reached. A space in which the
spectator could be seized by the image, rather than size it up: let go of
one's knowledge-the status quo--and be seized by the catastrophe of the
present-i.e., chattel slavery.
Western World (New York: Grove Press, 1990), 156-57.
74
Brown, A Description, 213.
75
I am referring here to the article "Aesthetics: A Declaration" that appeared in
Black Theatre's Unprecedented Times, eclited by Hely Manuel Perez (Gainesville: Black Theatre
Network, 1999), 117-19.
76
Hartman, Scenes of Suijection, 20.
jOURNAL OF AMERI CAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO. 2 (SPRJNG 2012)
MAKING CITIZENS OF SAVAGES:
COLUMBIA's RoLL CALL AT THE HAMPTON INSTITUTE
Lezlie Cross
I feel that the Indian is to-day wrestling with his own
fate. That he will pass away as an Indian, I don't doubt,
and that very rapidly. It will be into citizenship, and into
a place among the citizens of this land, or it will be into
a vagabond and a tramp.
-Henry L. Dawes, 1887
1
Columbia's &II a l ~ a patr1ot1c pageant that traced the history of the
United States, was first produced on February 8, 1892 at the biracial
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia. Hampton,
dedicated to the education of both black and Native Americans, was
driven by a pedagogical goal of assimilation. Hampton students were
trained to become self-sufficient Christian workers. The pageant was the
centerpiece of the annual commemoration of "Indian Day" at the school.
This particular "Indian day'' also marked the four-hundredth anniversary
of Columbus' "discovery" of America. Compiled by teacher Helen
Ludlow, the pageant was a purposefully-crafted narrative of the past, the
present, and the future of the United States. The actors in the pageant
were all native students, and the chorus and band featured both black and
native students. Audience members included the student body as well as
white teachers, politicians, and patrons of the school. The pageant was
a celebration of the glories of citizenship through a display of patriotic
heroes and a reinforcement of American ideals.
The staff at Hampton used the theatrical form of the pageant to
retrain the voices of the native students to fit these ideals. By prioritizing
the words and sentiments of white authors and historical characters, the
pageant taught the students that a white, Christian lifestyle was correct and
any other was not acceptable. The representation of the "Indian" characters
in Columbia's &II Call stood in performative opposition to those of Wild
West shows where "Indian" characters were a stereotype of the savage
"Indian" of the white irnagination.
2
The "Indians" in Columbia's &II Call,
1
Henry L. Dawes, "Defense of the Dawes Act," in Amencanizing the American
Indians, ed. Francis P. Prucha (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 108.
2
For a thorough investigation of Native American representation in Wild
West shows see L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians 1883 1933
34 CROSS
however, were a projection of the civilized citizen "Indian," hoped for by
the Bureau of Indian affairs. The voice of Hampton students which were
heard-in this pageant, in the school journal The Southern Workman, or in
public talks and lectures-were those that fit the message of assimilation
that was advocated by Hampton and the politicians at the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. This pageant is remarkably well documented, allowing a
unique glimpse into the way in which white educators used performance
to reinforce ideology. However, the experiences of the student actors are
unrecorded. The archive, like Hampton itself, privileged, and continues to
highlight, the narrative of whites.
As indicated by the tide, the pageant focused on Columbia, a female
personification of the United States, who evaluated and welcomed worthy
heroes and patriots to her roll of honor. Like a Master of Ceremonies,
Columbia controlled the action of the pageant, calling forward prominent
white setders, notable "Indian" figures, current Hampton students, and
future citizens of America who each described their contributions to
the formation of the country.
3
Several songs, including all three of the
anthems of the United States, punctuated the action.
4
The text spoken
by the students was largely drawn from the writings of white English
and American poets, novelists, and politicians; however selected students
were allowed to speak their own compositions.
5
With each choice, Ludlow
crafted the pageant to serve as a pedagogical and propaganda tool to speak
to every person involved and in attendance at the pageant.
The turning point of Roll Call was an appeal made to
Columbia by a young "Indian Petitioner" played by Ella Powless of the
Oneida, a Hampton "legacy." Altogether, thirteen members of the Powless
family, of the Oneida tribe, attended Hampton through the years. Ella's
sister Maggie Powless was also in the pageant playing a "Page of History."
Other members of the extended Powless family attended Carlisle Indian
School in Pennsylvania. The records of Hampton note that Ella Powless
went on to become a teacher and school matron. They describe her as
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996); Michelle A. Delaney, Buffalo Bill's
Wild West Warriors: A Photographic History by Gertrude K.iisebier (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian
National Museum of American History, 2007); and Bobby Bridger, Buffalo Bill and Sitting
Bull. Inventing the Wild West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002).
3
Columbia was performed by Juanita Espinoza of the Piegan.
4
The assembly sang "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean," "Hail, Columbia," and
"My Country 'Tis of Thee."
5
However, these contributions from the srudents were not considered important
enough to be included in the print version of the pageant which appeared in The Southern
Workman (March 1892): 43-44.
MAKING CITIZENS OF $ ,\VJ\GES 35
"an excellent woman in every way."
6
This sort of praise indicates that Ella
was a "success" in the eyes of her white teachers; she had adapted to the
white world and became one of Hampton's "cultural missionaries" who
returned to her people with the charge of "uplifting" them from their
lives on the reservation. Her assimilation to the white lifestyle at Hampton
is likely why she was chosen to play the Indian Petitioner. She stood as
a model student, who embodied the spirit of the Hampton educational
system.
The Indian Petitioner's request, the first appearance of a native
character in the pageant, was a poetic plea for inclusion in Columbia's
roll of honor.
7
Prior to the appearance of the Indian Petitioner all of the
figures in Columbia's band of heroes were white; emphasizing a narrative
of conquest. However, the poem did not add an authentic native voice,
but a white woman's interpretation of that voice, written by a northern
Quaker, Edna Dean Proctor. The Indian Petitioner's poem is an entreaty
for assimilation in the face of a destroyed native way of life. The poem
articulated one vision of the cultural crossroads of native peoples in
the late nineteenth century: assimilation or elimination. This viewpoint
permeated the action of Columbia} &II Call.
The pageant was a part of the celebrations of "Indian Day"
at Hampton. On 8 February 1887 the US government passed the
influential Dawes Act, which divided tribal lands into separate allotments
to individual Native Americans. Two years later the Indian Office in
Washington D.C. decreed that 8 February should be set aside as "Indian
day." Programs to commemorate the Dawes Act should be developed at
all Indian schools in order "to impress upon Indian youth the enlarged
scope and opportunity given them by this law and the new obligations
which it irnposes."
8
To memorialize this landmark legislation, General
S.C. Armstrong, the founder of Hampton, proclaimed the day an "Indian
Emancipation Day" to parallel the commemoration of the signing of the
Emancipation Proclamation. For Armstrong, each piece of legislation
gave his students the opportunity to become citizens of the United States,
although neither piece of legislation actually endowed citizenship. "Indian
Day" was described as the "one day in the year when Hampton Institute
6
Jon L. Brudvig, Hampton Normal & AgriCIIItural Institute's American Indian Students,
1878-1923, http:/ /www.twofrog.com/hamptonfeml.txt (accessed 5 March 2012).
7
Edna Dean Proctor, "The Indian's Appeal," The Fnends' Intelligencer and Journal,
49 (1892): 158. The full poem, as it appeared in the pageant, can be found at the end of
the article.
8
David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding
School Experience 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 196.
36 CROSS
gives itself over to the Indian" to commemorate their "emancipation"
from the "slavery" of triballife.
9
However, for many Native Americans,
the Dawes Act was the opposite of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Instead of freeing them from a life of slavery, the act took power from
tribal rulers and gave it to the government.
For many of the students at Hampton, the opportunity to
become educated in an anglo-American model of education was their
chance at a new way of life, as a citizen of the United States. In
Roll Call native student Joseph DuBray made a speech "setting forth that
the Indians have taken chances open to them, of schools and work and
citizenship already offered."
10
Ella Fire-Thunder of the Sioux, who played
the Housekeeper in the pageant, told this story about her desire to become
educated:
I was eight years old when I asked my uncle if I could go
to school but he said I couldn't go as I was too young to
go to school. But I ran away from home and went to a[n]
Agency Government school. ... I was only twelve years
old when I went to Hampton, VA to school and this is
the best school that I ever went to. At first my folks told
me I couldn't go and they told me I might die over there
and never get to see them again. But I ran away again
and went to Hampton with Mr. Freeland who came after
Indian children.
11
The final line of Ella's testimony reveals the tensions between
those students who willingly attended Hampton, as she did, and those
who did not voluntarily attend. Especially in the early years of Hampton,
during the Indian Wars, many native students were forcibly removed
from the reservations and held as "hostages" at Hampton to inspire
tribal elders in their families to cooperate with government agents. By
1892, a few native students attended Hampton despite opposition in their
tribes, but others were sent there with familial support. However, Ella's
family's fears about her dying at school were not unwarranted. In July
9
The Southern Workman 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 41. The Dawes Act is named for
its creator Senator Henry L. Dawes. The full name of rhe act is Act to Provide for the
Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations." The Hampton
newsletter The Southern Workman terms this legislation "The Land in Severalty Bill."
10
Ibid., 44.
11
Qtd. in Jon L. Brudvig, "First Person Accounts as written by American Indian
Students at Hampton Institute, 1878-1923," http:/ /www.twofrog.com/hamptonstories2.
ht.ml (accessed 30 October 2011).
MAKING CTTIZENS OF SAVAGES 37
of 1892, five months after Columbia's Roll Call was performed, two native
Hampton students-Walter Little Eagle and Fannie Frazier--died.
12
Due
to a combination of circumstances, eastern boarding schools were often
places where native children died. However, Ella's desire to go to become
educated overpowered familial objections.
The staff at Hampton believed their education would give students
a unique advantage over others of their race who did not have the benefit
of education, those who had not become "cultured." These other, savage,
"Indians" were on full display for American audiences in Wild West shows.
Hampton was, at its core, an industrial school, where the students learned
a variety of different trades. The skills learned by the native students were
a part of the standard primary and prevocational curriculum as laid out
by the Office of Indian Affairs. Subjects to be taught included "English,
Physiology and hygiene, Geography, United States history, Civics, Manners
and right conduct, Arithmetic, Penmanship, Drawing, Vocal music,
Physical training and Industrial work."
13
In addition to their training, the
students also took part in charitable organizations, team sports, choirs,
bands, and theatricals. Hampton was a self-sufficient school, "an industrial
village."
14
The students grew the food, tended the animals, made their own
clothing, and published their own journal, The Southern Workman, under
the supervision of the teachers and staff. Even the hall where Columbia's
Roll Call was produced was constructed by former Hampton students.
Begun in 1872, the hall was funded by wealthy friends of the school in
the North, but black Hampton students provided the labor. They slept in
tents near the river until the completion of Virginia Hall, their new home.
The Hall was the center of life at Hampton. The building
contained Whitin Chapel, an "industrial room for the manufacture of
clothing ... a dining-room able to accommodate 275 boarders; a large
laundry and kitchen" and quarters for the teachers and students.
15
The
chapel (the stage for many moral, social, and cultural lessons) was also
where Columbia's Roll Call was performed. It had seating for up to four
hundred people and was also used for daily religious services. In 1885
12
See John L. Brudvig, "Hampton Normal & Agricultural Institutes American
Indian Students, 1878-1923" (ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 1996) for a complete
listing of native students who died at Hampton.
13
Laurence F. Schmeckebier, The Office of brdian A.ffoirs: Its History, Activities and
Organization (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1927), 220.
14
J.W. Church, The Cmcible: A Southerner's Impression of Hampton, (Hampton: The
Press of The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, 1911), 6.
15
M. F Armstrong, Helen W. Ludlow, and Thomas P. Fenner, Hampton and Its
Students, (New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1874), 154-5.
38 CROSS
Booker T. Washington, Hampton's most illustrious graduate, spoke there,
which was "the first time [the students] had seen a coloured man on the
speaker's platform."
16
Like many others on that stage, Washington spoke
of the importance of an education for the assembled students. The
podium at Whitin Chapel was always a platform for expressing the ideals
of Hampton. School events such as Commencement and graduation and
national holidays such as Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July were also
celebrated in the Chapel.
This particular "Indian Day" was an especially important
celebration for Hampton. The year 1892 marked the four-hundredth
anniversary of Columbus' arrival in America and the eighth "Indian Day"
at Hampton. In honor of the day, many of the politicians responsible for
managing Indian affairs were in attendance. They were special guests for
the pageant but also participated in the festivities by giving speeches to the
assembled students. The delegation from Washington included General
Thomas Jefferson Morgan the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, "Senators
[Henry] Dawes and [Thomas] Pettigrew of the Indian Committee, with
the Rev. Dr. Dorchester, Superintendent of the Indian Schools, Professor
[Charles] Painter of the Indian Rights Association and several Ladies."
17
With these influential figures in the audience, the staff at
Hampton could speak directly to the men responsible for shaping Indian
policy in the United States. "Indian Day" was a chance for them to
prove to the visitors the continued value of their investment in Indian
education. Following the clash between the Sioux and government forces
at Wounded I<nee in December of 1890, many opponents to Indian
education spoke out against funneling treasury funds into what they saw as
a failed enterprise. Many Americans held the belief that there was no way
that "the Indian could be civilized."
18
This viewpoint was reinforced by
the fact that twenty-three prisoners from Wounded Knee became "show
Indians" for Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, performing the massacre
for national and international audiences. The growing prejudice against
Indian education made it more important than ever for the students and
teachers at Hampton to show the politicians in attendance that there were
"Indians" who deserved citizenship. Reinforcing the importance of the
Hampton style of education through Columbia's &II Call was thus seen as
vital to the survival of both the school and native peoples.
For the pageant, the chapel's small platform was extended to
16
Robert R. Moton, Finding a Wtg Out: An Autobiograpi?J, (Garden City:
Doubleday, Page & Company, 1920), 62.
17
The Southern Workman 21, no 3 (March 1892): 41.
18
The Southern Workman 20, no. 3 (March 1891): 165.
MAKING C!TlZENS OF SAVAGES 39
create a stage large enough to hold at least fifteen students at a time. The
stage was decorated with red, white, and blue bunting; and at the center
of the stage was Columbia's throne, which towered above the rest of the
action, five steps above the stage level. Above the stage the "monogram
of the school in its encircling wreath" was hung.
19
The pageant opened
with the school band, made up of both Indian and black students, who
played "Patriotic Airs" as the audience settled into the Chapel. Before
the main action of the pageant began, the entire assembly, students, staff
and visitors, joined together to sing "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean," one
of the three anthems of the United States. As if called up by the song,
Columbia, played by student Juanita Espinoza from the Piegan tribe,
approached the stage and ascended "her throne, which [was] elevated on
five terraces each bearing a date from 1492 to 1[8]92."
2
Columbia was a
popular personification of the United States that pre-dated Uncle Sam.
In fact, the 1893 World's Fair held in Chicago was known as the ''World's
Columbian Exposition." Like Roll Call, this world's fair was a
commemoration of the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus' arrival
in America and a celebration of the glorious past, present, and hopeful
future of the country.
Beginning the pageant with a glorification of historic heroic
deeds, Columbia issued a patriotic command: "Unloose the shut gates
of the Past, I And call Columbia's heroes forth, I Proclaim them- East,
West, South and North."
21
Juanita Espinoza, who played Columbia, was
one of the star students of Hampton, a model for her fellow students,
both black and native. Born White Buffalo of the Piegan tribe, she was
often chosen to speak to assemblies of both students and visitors.
22
The
previous Thanksgiving she had given a speech with fellow native student
Joseph DuBray as a part of the church service on the same platform
where she performed Columbia.
23
On that occasion, they described why
the native students "should be thankful that they have plenty of food and
clothing [and] of the blessing to them of a school like Hampton."
24
Called up by her declaration, a parade of American heroes, all
19
The Southertl Workman 21, no. 3 (M:arch 1892): 41.
20
Ibid., 42.
21
Ibid.
22
Upon arrival at Hampton all native students were given Anglicized names.
23
Joseph DuBray played the Hampton Indian Student in Columbia's Rn/1 Call.
After Hampton, he fought in the Spanish-American War and went on to seminary and
became a minister.
24
TheSouthern Workman21, no. 1 Qanuary 1892): 9.
40 CROSS
played by native students, ascended the stage. The students represented
Christopher Columbus, Captain John Smith, Miles Standish and Priscilla
Alden, John Eliot, William Penn, and George Washington.
25
When called
upon by Columbia, each historical character stepped forward to express
their essential contribution to the formation of the country. Columbus
described how ''A continent awoke!" when he fired the signal gun of the
Pinta upon sighting land.
26
John Smith illustrated how he "gave Columbia's
boundless empire birth" when he and the other colonists founded
Jamestown.
27
William Penn brought peace through Christianity: "Thus I
founded Pennsylvania's State I On Peace and Truth-these still must make
her great."
28
The procession culminated with "the true patriot" George
Washington, who embodied the apex of American values.
29
Celebrated
as "brave," "daring," "true," and "unshaken" individuals, the historical
figures epitomized the values at the core of American patriotism.
30
In an echo of the procession of white patriots, Columbia asked the
Indian Petitioner for evidence of the worthiness of the "Indian" to match
the "mighty names" of the white settlers.
31
A parade of notable "Indian"
figures from history followed. Through each of the epochs represented in
the pageant, the "Indian" characters clearly desire to be united with white
men. The procession included an unnamed "Indian Maiden," who was a
"Friend of Columbus from San Salvador," Pocahontas, Samoset, "One
of Eliot's Indian converts," Taminend, and ''The White Mingo, a friend
of George Washington."
32
All of these native "heroes" were helpmeets
of the white settlers of America. Their worthy deeds were service and
friendship to the white man. The "Friend of Columbus" described how
the "white men came down from the skies I To my happy island and
25
The students who played these rolls included: James Enouf of the Potrawaromie
as Columbus, Frank Bashaw of the Pottawatomie as John Smith, Addie Stevens of the
Winnebago as Pricilla Alden, David Hill of the Onondaga as Miles Standish, Ebenezer
Kingsley of the Winnebago as John Eliot, Adam Metoxen of the Oneida as William Penn,
and Frank Hubbard of the Penobscot as George Washington.
26
The Southern Workman 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 42.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., 43.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid., 42-43.
31
I bid., 43.
n Ibid., 43-44. The following students performed these roles: Lena Elm of the
Oneida as the Indian Maiden, Laura Face of the Sioux as Pocahontas, Thomas Last of the
Sioux as Samoset, Felix Boneclub of the Sioux as Eliot's Indian Convert, Joseph Redhorse
of the Sioux as Taminend, Harry Kingman of the Sioux as The White Mingo.
MAKJNG CITIZENS OF SAVAGES 41
me.'m In the pageant, the white race is portrayed as more powerful, nearer
to gods than men. According to the pageant, the "Indian" characters can
aspire to be the "friends and brothers linked together" with the white
man, but will only achieve that status with hard work.
34
The language surrounding the "Indian" characters in the pageant
indicates a strong influence of the cult of the "noble savage," epitomized
by John Augustus Stone's highly popular play Metamora, which was
performed by Edwin Forrest from its premiere in 1828 through his death
in 1872. The fictionalized "noble savage" depicted in Metamora stood in
opposition to the representations of violent "Indians" in the Wild West
shows. A review of the student's performance in Columbia's &II Call by
one of the teachers is an indication of the vision of the native Hampton
students: "So noble was the port of these wild warriors, so graceful the
mein of these dusky maidens, that the remark of one observer only voiced
the feeling of many when he said that it was a great pity they could not
always wear their native costumes."
35
A photograph of the student actors in costume for the pageant
displays the unequal representation of the "Indian" characters and the
white characters, who are dressed in historical costumes. However, the
"Indian" characters shown: Samoset, Pocahontas, Tamined, and "the
White Mingo" appear in the dress of the nineteenth-century Sioux
people, not in the appropriate tribal clothing for each of their characters
or historical time periods.
36
As many of the "show I ndians" in Wild West
shows were also Sioux, their native dress became synonymous with the
look of an "Indian" regardless of tribe. In Columbia's &II a l ~ the students
who played the "Indian" characters were all Sioux and were perhaps
wearing their own clothes for the first time since arriving at Hampton.
When native students arrived at Hampton, their tribal dress was quickly
exchanged for suits and shirtwaist dresses. Male students' long hair was cut
short. Their clothing was taken by the administrators to become exhibits
in the school museum-to further learning. Their garments became a
curiosity, something to be displayed and wondered at rather than worn.
Tribal garments were brought out of the museum for history lessons and
for pageants like Columbia's &II CalL
Hampton taught the native students to embrace a white lifestyle.
They were discouraged from going "back to the blanket," returning to
33
Ibid., 44.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., 41.
36
Thomas Grayson, e-mail message to the author, 15 September 2011.
42 CROSS
tribal ways of communal living, emblemized by clothing. The address that
General Morgan gave to the students following Roll Call was in
fact entitled "Going Back to the Blanket." In it, he aired the "common
objection raised against Indian education" that the students leave school,
return to their reservation and "go back to the blanket, or in other words,
lapse into barbarism.'m The semiotic code of clothing connoted moral and
intellectual value. Any return to tribal dress and long hair was considered
a descent into the savagery of the tribes. In this instance, the choice of
clothing was a symbolic indication of the choice between the life of a
Christian citizen of the United States and the life of a savage.
The adoption of the white men's clothing was another way in
which the voice of native students was silenced. Dress was regularized
for the students at Hampton and other Indian schools across the country.
Booker T. Washington, while at Hampton, was a "house father" for the
male students brought from the Dakota Territory in 1879. He recalled that
"the things they disliked most ... were to have their long hair cut, to give
up wearing their blankets, and to cease smoking; but no white American
ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white
man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language,
and professes the white man's religion."
38
Washington, a product of the
Hampton educational system, was in a unique position to observe how the
young native men adapted to their new surroundings in the white world.
In this statement he revealed that students' goals were not to become
white Americans, but to conform to white ideals of civilization, including
dress and comportment. Their own, tribal, expressions of individuality-
expressed through clothing- were erased.
Luther Standing Bear recalls that in his education at the Carlisle
Indian School, "small ways and observances sometimes have connection[s]
with larger and more profound ideas."
39
For Standing Bear, the forced use
of handkerchiefs was a small way in which students' tribal heritage was
erased. Similarly, the use of the Sioux students' tribal dress to represent
historical characters from a variety of tribes in Roll Call was
yet another way in which the teachers at Hampton subconsciously erased
the tribal identity of the students. The lack of thought that went into to
37
The Southern Workman 21, no. 5 (May 1892): 75.
38
Mary L. Hultgren, Paulette F. Molin, and Rayna Green, To Lead and to
Serve: American Indian Education at Hampton Institute, 1878-1923 (Charlottesville: Virginia
Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy in cooperation with HamptOn University,
1989), 19.
39
Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1978), 190. One of the first graduates of CarsWe, Standing Bear was also a translator
for Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show beginning in 1902.
MAKING CITIZENS OF SAVAGES 43
costuming the "Indian" characters sent the message that all "Indians"-
regardless of tribe-were all the same.
The use of language in the pageant also condensed all of the
various tribes represented by the student performers in to one "Indian
race." The only time during the pageant that a Native American language
is heard is when .it is speaking a line from the Bible. "One of Eliot's Indian
Converts" read a verse from the Bible ".in the Indian It is
not clear .in the script, as printed .in The Southern Workman, if the actor
Felix Boneclub, a Sioux, spoke in his own language, or if he read the
verse .in the Massachusett language, which was not spoken by any students
at Hampton. The lack of specificity in the script shows a disregard for
the variation .in language, culture and history of the tribes. However,
the teachers had learned the danger of allowing the students to speak .in
their own language in pageants. During a performance of Longfellow's
Hiawatha a student told a story .in his native Sioux language. One of the
teachers, who understood some of the language, heard him say "I can
call you 'witkokoka' (fools) if I want and you will only sit there and smile
and smile and smile."
41
This anecdote illustrates how some students used
these pageants to subvert assimilationist policies, even while they were
"performing" whiteness.
The fact that the only portion of the pageant to be spoken .in an
"Indian language" is a selection from the Bible is not surprising. Protestant
missionaries, like the staff at Hampton, were the major force behind the
effort to educate, civilize, and assimilate native peoples to the white world.
42
As a result, Protestant Christian values were threaded through Columbia's
Roll CalL John Eliot, for example, was announced as the ''Apostle of the
Indians."
43
In a pedagogic monologue, ''A Page of History" described
how Eliot became a missionary to the people of the Massachussett tribe
and translated the Bible for them and founded one of the first "Indian"
schools in 1676.
44
Eliot was a valued ancestor of the staff at Hampton,
who shared his vision of education through Christianization. In the
pageant, the Pilgrims also celebrated their "Freedom to Worship God"
40
The Southern Workman 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 44.
41
Qed in Hultgren, et al, To Lead and to Serve, 36.
42
For a nuanced discussion of the effects of Protestantism on Native and
African Americans in the nineteenth century see Carolyn A. Haynes, Divine Deslii!J: Gender
and Race in Nineteenth-Century Protestantism Qackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998).
43
The Southern Workman 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 42-43.
44
Massachussett is a member of the Algonquian family of languages. It is also
known as Wampanoag, Natick, and/ or Pokanoket. Many of the students at Hampton were
from tribes in the Algonquian linguistic family, but did not speak this language.
44
(ROSS
upon arrival to America, and William Penn was praised by Columbia for
exhibiting "How Christian love was mightier than the sword."
45
Following
the hostility at Wounded Knee in December of 1890, reinforcing a
message of Christian peace was important to the Hampton staff. Many
of the native students were Sioux and had family who were involved
in or affected by the massacre. The "Indian Day" celebration following
Wounded Knee was a somber affair. The Southern Workman records that
"this year our Indian students felt they could not join in festivities when
their own people were bleeding."
46
Instead of the full pageantry of earlier
years, there was merely a prayer meeting for the school which included
songs and speeches.
The tensions of marrying Christian and native religions were
demonstrated by the Ghost Dance religion, which was popular among
many of the Sioux involved in the massacre at Wounded Knee. During
the summer of 1890, a Paiute named Wovoka (or Jack Wilson) had a
vision foretelling the coming of a Christ for the "Indian," who would
drive away the whites from the country and restore the buffalo. This
religious movement was a blending of the native traditions of the tribes
and Christianity; however this kind of religious combination was not a
part of the Hampton mission. Many Sioux involved in the Ghost Dance
were imprisoned by the government and then were contracted to Buffalo
Bill Cody for his 1891 London tour. Commissioner Morgan believed
that these irreligious "savages," unlike the students at Hampton, "were
incapable of civilization [and] belonged in Cody's Wild West show.
47
The
religious elements of Columbia's Roll Call were another way of affirming,
for the student actors and the audience, that a true Christian church,
untainted by native religion, was an essential civilizing element.
Columbia's Rolf Call was designed to reaffirm Christian values
in accord with the educational aims of the school and the mission of
the Office of Indian Affairs. The pageant displayed the students' skills
in speaking English, demonstrated their commitment to the patriotic
ideals of the country, and placed the students within the history of
white America, not within their own cultures and traditions. A Hampton
education trained students for careers considered by the white staff to be
"appropriate" to their racial status and perceived abilities. In Columbia's
Roll Call a series of students represented the future "Indian" workers
of America. The occupations represented included a farmer, doctor,
45
The Southern Workman 21, no. 3 (March 1892): 43.
46
The Southern Workman 20, no. 3 (March 1891): 163.
47
L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians 1883-1933
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 111.
MAKING CITIZENS OF SAVAGES 45
housekeeper, printer, teacher, nurse, soldier and a mechanic.
48
Each student
briefly spoke about their profession and how they would contribute to the
workforce.
49
Many of the students in the pageant went on to have careers
in the professions represented, both off and on the reservation. Juanita
Espinoza, who played Columbia, became a housekeeper for government
Indian schools. Several of the female students in the pageant trained and
worked as nurses. Chapman Skenadore, who played the mechanic, actually
became a machinist for the Navy and fought in the Spanish-American
war along with fellow Hampton student Joseph DuBray. With the advent
of World War I, many more Hampton students became soldiers, fighting
and dying for the United States. At the time, military service was one of
the only ways in which Native Americans could attain citizenship status. 5
Hampton's native students were taught, both through this pageant
and in school, that their race had not yet lived up to the gift of citizenship.
Before they could be citizens they needed to become independent,
industrious, Christian workers. R!Jll Call used performance to
reinforce this message. At the end of the nineteenth century historical
pageantry was becoming more popular as a tool to illustrate shared values
and instruct an increasingly racially diverse population. With a rise in
immigration, there was a flood of new cultural influences in the country.s'
History was used by communities in these pageants "as a medium through
which to communicate their concerns about the present state of morality
and politics, as well as their prescriptions for how local residents should
behave in the future."
52
The teachers at Hampton, who composed the
pageant to speak to both their students and the visiting dignitaries,
clearly communicated their "prescriptions" for the future of the country.
Pageantry offered the opportunity to celebrate and reinforce American
ideals, especially Anglo-Saxon Protestant values. The anniversary of
Columbus' arrival in the new world also provided an occasion to reflect
on the progress of the last four hundred years and project a hopeful, if
unattainably utopian, future.
48
TheSouthern Workman 21, no. 3 (M:arch 1892): 44.
49
Again, the student's words were not recorded in the printed script in The
Southern Workman.
50
Citizenship could also be attained by marrying a citizen, giving up tribal
affiliations, or through a special treaty or statute from the government.
51
For a study of how the rise of immigration contributed to the popularity
of patriotic values and activities, see Lucy Maddox "Politics, Performance and Indian
Identity," American Studies Internationa4 40.2 (June 2002).
52
David Glass burg, Amencan Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Earfy
Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 12.
46
CROSS
At the end of the pageant, Columbia had to provide a verdict:
would the "Indian" be admitted to her realm? She weighed the evidence
given by the "Indian Petitioner," the "Indian" heroes, "The Hampton
Student," the assembled future "Indian" workers, and the message of
Christianity in the song "Spirit of Peace." She finally accepted the Indian
Petitioner, and the entire "Indian race" with the words "You have gained
your cause . . . Take my banner, and your place as my citizens."
53
With this
pronouncement, the native students were granted a symbolic citizenship
which they were unable to attain in reality. The Indian Petitioner, with
Columbia's banner in hand, victoriously raised its protective colors over
the assembled "Indian" characters.
Through the ritual of patriotism, the native students were
symbolically admitted to the union, deemed worthy of the privileges and
responsibilities of citizenship. The Southern Workman recorded that "The
earnestness and sincerity of the actors [in Columbia's Roll a l ~ was evident
and impressive," that "there was a reality in the voice and acting," and
that the Indian characters "bore witness to the native nobility and loyal
truth of their race toward those who kept faith with them and made one
wish that their white brothers had proved more worthy of their trust."
54
All in all, the pageant was reported to have "struck enthusiasm into
every heart and made all present feel that education must and shall be
given to the Indian."
55
With the tense politics surrounding the future of
Indian education, this crucial message was crafted to speak directly to
the politicians in the audience, who were making daily decisions about
the fate of native peoples. The Hampton community clearly viewed the
pageant as an unparalleled success which not only bolstered the student
community, but also inspired the visiting dignitaries with the importance
of the Hampton mission.
Columbia's Roll Call spoke of a mythic future where "the Indian,"
"the Afro-American," and the white man were all citizens, united as
brothers. However, true equality was (and still is) more complicated. As
historian Donal F. Lindsey commented, "Putting an Indian into an eastern
boarding school and making hair, dress and deportment conform to that
of other students could create the illusion that Indian culture had been
erased."
56
This erasure was precisely the goal of the Hampton education,
where not only "everything had to be learned that contributed to civilized
53
The Southern Workman 21, no. 3 (M:arch 1892): 44.
54
Ibid., 41.
55
Ibid.
56
Lindsey, Indians at Hampton Institute, 217.
MAKING C iTI ZENS OF SAVAGES
47
life, but all the past had to be unlearned; all the instincts of savage life, all
the tastes and superstitions with which that life has been enveloped; all
these have to be had to be stripped from the people before the foundation
stone of civilization could be laid."
57
However, as Lindsey states, this
erasure was an illusion. The poem spoken by the Indian Petitioner argues
for "a life larger, better to win" through assimilation. But was such a life
actually larger and better? Was it even possible?
The Hampton narrative, which was at the core of Roll
Call, focused on the students who were assimilated, who were "successes"
in the eyes of their teachers. Emphasizing the triumphs of assimilationist
education was essential to the continued success of the school. Armstrong
had to prove that he was making a positive change in his students' lives in
order to guarantee his government funding. All governmental assistance
for the school was provided in support of the native students, not the
black students. Armstrong had to ensure that he received enough from
the government to cover both programs. As such, stories about the
native students who ran away from Hampton, who contracted diseases
and died, who returned to their reservations as outcasts, or who died of
alcoholism are buried to privilege the master narrative of cultural success
through assimilation and acceptance of Christian values. The voices of
those students are silenced, disappeared, lost in history. The story of Lucy
Trudell, who played the Quakeress in the pageant and who was expelled
from Hampton "for bad conduct," will never be heard.
58
Nor will that
of brothers Adam and Nelson Metoxen, who respectively played William
Penn and the Page of History, who were both deemed "unpromising" by
their teachers.
59
Not able to assimilate, these student's stories are omitted
from the record.
For the staff at Hampton and the visiting politicians,
Roll Call confirmed that an assimilated life was attainable and essential
for the students of both races. On the surface, the pageant showed that
by simply demonstrating their worthiness, the native students could be
accepted into Columbia's band of mainstream America. This message
was in direct opposition to that of the Wild West shows, which depicted
native peoples as warlike "savages," bent on destruction. However, within
each of these stereotyped representations there are deep contradictions.
None of the "Indian" characters in Roll Call were depicted as
autonomous citizens who were equal with whites, but as servants and
helpmeets to the white man. The "show Indians" in the Wild West shows
57
The Southern Workman 20, no. 3 (March 1891): 41.
58
Brudvig, Hampton NormaL
59
Ibid.
48
CROSS
presented the fight for native independence, but in a sensationalized,
violent fashion. Although most native Hampton students returned to the
reservation following their education, at no point in the pageant is tribal
life depicted or even mentioned. While Columbia, representing the United
States, easily gives the "Indians" citizenship, the US and individual state
governments were not as easily persuaded that they should be admitted as
citizens. Before citizenship was granted, native peoples as a whole had to
prove that they had "learned the ways of civilization."
60
However, many
Native Americans did not desire citizenship, preferring to live the life of
their families, communally on their land. For many, peacefully preserving
Native American identity was more important than joining the United
States. This viewpoint is entirely excluded from both the pageant and Wild
West shows.
Both forms of "Indian" representation were constructed and
designed to be consumed by whites. In Columbia's &II Call the "voice"
of native peoples is heard through the Indian Petitioner's poem, which
was penned by a white woman. The poem emphasized the governmental
viewpoint that the choice for the "Indian" was assimilation or elimination.
For the white politicians in the audience, they no longer needed to ask, "Can
the Indian be civilized?" because the Hampton education, as emblemized
in Columbia's Roll Call, presented them with assimilated native youth. Yet,
this message was uncomplicated by the authentic views and voices of the
student performers. The pageant presented historical, patriotic fictions
which were held to be truths by the white audience. The truth held by the
native students in the pageant became, and remains, silenced.
60
Hiram Price, ''Allotment of Land in Severalty and a Permanent Land Title,"
in Americanizing the Amencan Indians, ed. Francis P. Prucha (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1973), 93.
J OURNAL OF AM:ERJCAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO.2 (SP.RJNG 2012)
STAGING THE GREAT WAR IN THE NATIONAL RED CROSS PAGEANT
Jenna L. Kubly
When the European hostilities broke out unexpectedly in 1914, the
United States initially stood aloof, its citizens largely relieved that an
ocean separated them from the madness that engulfed Europe. .As
recent scholarship has suggested .American theatre from 1914 to 1918
was not wholly escapist, retreating to musical comedies that were set
in exotic locales, but instead actively engaged in the social and political
climate of its era.
1
.Although such engagement was never the dominating
mode in the theatrical scene, it was ever present, and would have been
difficult to ignore. While some dramas only took on a wartime setting to
lend interest to a romantic melodrama that could take place in any era,
other productions warrant reconsideration as they reflect contemporary
.American attitudes and understandings of the war. One such production
was the National Red Cross Pageant of 1917.
2
This pageant, which
has never before been studied in detail, is noteworthy for its all-star
production cast and crew, which included John and Ethel Barrymore,
and its subsequent media coverage. Placing this pageant within the larger
context of the .American experience of the war will show how it relates
1
The film industry, as overseen by George Creel and the Committee on Public
Information (CPI), has been the focus of much research in investigating how the United
States government justified involvement in the European conflict and the entertainment
industry's engagement with wartime drama. Major studies include: Leslie Midkiff
DeBauche, Reel Patriotism: The Movies and World War I (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1997); Michael T. Isenberg, War on Film: The American Cinema and World War I, 1914-
1941 (Toronto: Associated University Press, 1981); Andrew Kelly, Cinema and the Great War
(London: Routledge, 1997); Michael Paris, ed., The First World War and Popular Cinema: 1914
to the Present (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999); Peter C. Rollins and John E.
O'Connor, eds., Hoi!Jwood's World War I: Motion Picture Images (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling
Green State University Popular Press, 1997); Larry Wayne Ward, The Motion Picture Goes
to War: The U. S. Government Film Effort in World War I (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,
1985). Studies on posters include: Pearl James, ed., Pictures This! Reading World War I Posters
(University of Nebraska Press, 2007) and Walton Rawls, Wake Up, Amenta! World War I
and the American Poster (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers [sic), 1988). Glassberg notes
that movies were less costly and that it was easier to distribute multiple prints of film to
be seen by thousands of viewers, which was one of the major reasons the CPI chose to
focus primarily on film in its propaganda. David Glassberg, American Historical Pageanfr):
The Uses of Tradition in the Ear!J Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1990), 215.
2
Thomas Wood Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword: Together with the Text of the
National Red Cross Pageant (Boston: C. C. Birchard & Co., 1917).
50
KuBLY
to a larger body of contemporary war-related pageantry scripts, and more
importantly, how this specific pageant incorporated rhetoric and imagery
that validated America's decision to go to war. This essay will examine the
significance of the National fud Cross Pageant within its historical context,
first by placing the pageant within the context of the rise of pageants,
then specifically wartime pageants. Second is an attempted recovery of
the various intentions behind the creation of this pageant, examining how
the war was represented and interpreted for a specific American audience.
Finally, the pageant will be described in detail, episode by episode, with
analysis of specific choices made that were intended to advance notions
of American national identity in wartime.
In 1913, the American Pageant Association (APA) was founded.
The creation of a specific organization dedicated to pageantry is evidence
of the immense interest Americans had in this form, which had peaked
the year before the Great War (1914-1918) began.
3
Pageantry has its
roots in medieval mystery plays and Renaissance civic displays, but
it had been transformed into a peculiarly American form by the late
nineteenth century.
4
Vana Pietroniro summarizes this movement and its
unique qualities as a "pageantry epidemic [that] swept into America's
small towns and cities" that was "largely the product of an increase
in the establishment of historical societies" and a "growing interest in
the celebration of American history."
5
It may also have been attractive
as an "alternative to corrupt commercialism" as it was a form largely
produced by local amateurs (such as members of newly formed historical
societies) rather than paid professionals.
6
Local societies, writes Pietroniro,
promoted a "civic ideal" by "re-enacting their common history" so that
the community (participants and observers) would "gain a positive sense
of self that would drive them on to a sense of national pride and future
success."
7
David Glassberg traces the developments of pageants in the
3
Trudy Baltz, "Pageantry and Mural Pai n6ng: Community Rituals in Allegorical
Form," Winterthur Portfolio, 15, no. 3 (1980): 211.
4
Ibid.; Van a Pietroniro, "Propaganda and Misrepresenta6on in Early Twentieth
Century American Historical and Civic Pageantry" (master's thesis, Tufts University, 1998),
2; Lotta A. Clark, "Pageantry in America," English Journal, no. 3 (1914): 153.
5
Pietron.iro, "Propaganda and Misrepresentation," 1-2.
6
Baltz, "Pageantry and Mural Painting," 211-12. In 1914 Lotta A. Clark, the
secretary of the APA wrote, "the association will use its influence to prevent the pageant
from becoming commercialized." Clark, "Pageantry in America," 152.
7
Pietroniro, "Propaganda and Misrepresentation," 13.
STAGING THE G REAT WAR IN THE NATIONAL R ED CROSS P AGEANT 51
United States in his foundational study, American Historical Pageantry.
8
He
notes that in the early years of the war, the public emphasis was on peace,
as evidenced by A Pageant of Peace (1915), written by Beulah Marie Dix.
9
As the national mood shifted from peace to preparedness and finally to
full-scale mobilization, pageants followed suit. Pageants produced from
1915-1918 were often stripped of "local color" and made to focus on
national history so that residents would develop a "sense of identification
with the nation."
10
Glassberg's work on pageantry catalogues many of the
major war-related pageants that were presented in the United States, but as
he is more concerned with tracing these pageants within a comprehensive
history of the form, he does not fully excavate any individual pageant.
Looking more closely at the text, photographs, and drawings of the
National Red Cross Pageant as well as comparing it to other wartime pageants
will reveal how it both existed within and subverted the prescribed mold
of American historical pageantry.
One of the goals of the pageant was to educate the viewers on
their local and national history. Traditionally, pageants were organized
in episodes chronologically, moving from Colonial Days (or earlier), to
the Civil War, to the present day. Indeed, pageants often "presented the
nation's history in a kind of shorthand, where brief extracts of familiar
speeches, songs and symbols replaced the more elaborate reenactment of
local historical incidents."
11
Many propagandistic and patriotic theatrical
pieces adopted this "shorthand" of historical events or highlights from
American history. For instance, the vaudeville sketch "Liberty Aflame"
starred Julia Arthur who, as the Statue of Liberty, saluted Presidents
Washington, Lincoln, and Wilson and pointed to the War for Independence,
the Civil War, and the sinking of the Lusitania as moments of crisis in the
history of the United StatesY In a similar vein, several other produced
dramatic playlets used excerpts from speeches by Washington or Lincoln;
a sketch called ''According to Washington" was set during the Civil War
and emphasized both presidents' praise of those who made the highest
sacrifice for their country.
13
sDavid Glassberg, American I-Iistoncal Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Earfy
Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
9
Ibid. , 203. Dix also wrote several anti-war plays for the legitimate stage such as
Moloch and Across the Border.
10
Ibid., 206.
11
Ibid., 218.
12
"New Acts This Week," Vanery 18 May 1917.
13
"New Acts This Week," Vanery 12 May 1916.
52
KUBLY
In contrast to earlier pageantry models, many wartime pageants
conspicuously chose to avoid moments from American national history
as well as quotations from famous speeches in their texts. Instead many
pageants were written almost entirely in an allegorical mode, with the main
characters personifying countries and ideas. A Pageant of the League of Free
Nations (1919), written by Esther Williard Bates, a recognized authority
on pageantry in these years,
14
featured Truth, Justice, Democracy, and the
major countries involved in the conflict.
15
Similarly, The Spirit of Democracy
(1917) featured the Allied countries freeing oppressed nations such as
Poland, Belgium, and Serbia from Autocracy.
16
The Vision of a New World
(1919) and To Arms for Liberty (1918) featured comparable episodes.
17
A Pageant of Peace (1915) is somewhat unique in representing types of
citizens (such as the Scientist or the Farmer) instead of entire countries.
18
This pro-peace pageant does not stack up the countries involved in War
against Peace personified, but instead shows the benefits "the People"
(such as the Girl or the Woman with a Baby) gain by seeking Peace, versus
the horrors (such as Pestilence and Crime) that follow War.
Whether a pageant was pro-peace, anti-war, advocated
preparedness, or celebrated America's entry into the Great War, the
language or ideas used often differed little. It is interesting to see how the
same ideas need only be presented in a slightly different context, and the
emphasis could shift from a plea for peace to a patriotic celebration of
expected victory. Throughout all of these pageants, emphasis was placed
on the United States as the last but greatest nation; others looked to the
United States for guidance, not least because of its democracy. In the anti-
war A Pageant of Peace, America is held up as an example of the realization
of the statesman's dream where all nations live at peace. The (then) 48
states of the United States are likened to forty-eight countries that have an
international court and have lived together harmoniously for fifty years. The
suggestion is that Europe, though never directly mentioned, could learn
something about international relations from America. The preeminence
14
Pietroniro, "Propaganda and Misrepresentation," 31.
15
Esther Willard Bates, A Pageant of the League of Free Nations (Boston:
Massachusetts Joint Committee for a League of Free Nations, 1919).
16
Merab Eberle, The Spirit of Democracy: An Allegoncal Pageant (Franklin, OH:
Eldridge Entertainment House, 1917).
17
Rose I. Patry, The Vision of a New World: A Short Peace Pageant (New York:
Samuel French, 1918); Catherine T. Bryce, To Arms for Liberty: A Pageant of the War for Schools
and Societies (New York: C. C. Birchard & Company, 1918).
18
Beulah Marie Dix, A Pageant of Peace: Written for the American School Peace League
(Boston: American School Peace League, 1915).
STAGING THE GREKr WAR IN THE NKnONJ\L RED CROSS PAGEANT 53
of the United States in world politics is featured in similar contexts in
pro-war pageants such as The Spirit if Democrary, in which America hails
Democracy as the "Spirit that bred me first."
19
This European reliance
on America is especially clear in To Arms for Liberty. Britannia and France
both wonder, ''America, the great, the strong, the free-is she coming?"
but at the same time reassure themselves that ''America is generous" and
will come to their aid.
20
Unlike these aforementioned wartime pageants, the National Red
Cross Pageant was not set entirely in the present. Although the National Red
Cross Pageant is similar to other wartime pageants in featuring personified
ideas and countries, it is also different in that it contains both historical
episodes and allegorical episodes. In the historical portion, however, no
local or even national American historical figures appear; ironically, all the
historical figures are from European history. Both the National Red Cross
Pageant and other wartime pageants mark a departure from previously
accepted pageant formulas, in which significant emphasis is placed
on American history. Important events from American history are not
added up as if to lead to a cumulative sense of nationhood. Rather this
nationhood is, one might suggest, assumed as already existing. Moreover,
the audience should already be familiar with that history. Instead, other
nations are collectively held up in contrast to the United States and shown
as wanting. Even the Allies of the United States-such as France and
Britain-are often portrayed, at least by implication, as lesser. In the end,
they too must turn to Columbia or Democracy (which is synonymous with
the United States, such as in one pageant when "Democracy is modeled
after the Statue of Liberty"
21
) in order to achieve a final victory over the
enemy, whether it is represented as Germany, Tyranny, or Autocracy.
Hence, a sense of American national identity is fostered, not by "re-
enacting common history" but rather by juxtaposing it with the history
or identity of the other. This technique has already been seen in earlier
wartime pageants, and is found again in the National Red Cross Pageant.
Pageant writers and producers employed many techniques
to convey their messages. Typically, they paid a significant amount of
attention to a production's music, costuming, and movement.
22
Each was
19
Eberle, The Spirit o/ Democrary, 8. A similar example is from A Pageant if the
League if Fee Nations, when Democracy asks what the motto should be for all free nations,
all turn to the United States, saying "Our motto, America! Give us our motto!" Bates, A
Pageant o/ the League, 26.
20
Bryce, ToArms.forUberty, 19.
21
Bates, A Pageant if the League, 30.
22
Movement will not be a large focus of this paper, though what can be
54
KuBLY
viewed as a key component to the success of a pageant; for some, they
were valued above the text. Given that pageants were usually presented
on a large scale, pageant masters probably assumed that not everyone
would be able to hear every word spoken, and hence all other aspects
of the pageant not only had to support the text, but also had to give the
same message visually. For the music in these wartime pageants, rather
predictably, the national hymn or a famous song of that nation was chosen
to accompany the personified nation upon its entrance.
23
The centrality of
the United States on the world stage is especially apparent in the National
Red Cross Pageant.
Due to the prominence of the people who contributed to the
creation of the National Red Cross Pageant, its origins are easier to trace
than those of pageants written for a local society or elementary school.
The main author was Thomas Wood Stevens, who was also a poet and
the president of the American Pageant Association.
24
The pageant was
comprised of two parts. The first half was the Red Cross Pageant written
by Stevens and Joseph Lindon Smith and included a significant amount
of movement.
25
Following the first part was a speech in support of the
Liberty Loan, asking the audience to invest in bonds. The second part
was Stevens' The Drawing of the Sword, which was written in a much more
traditional pageant form, with personified countries asking the United
States for aid.
26
reasonably assumed from pictures and the texts will be discussed. However, most pageant
scripts did not include detailed instructions on the dance or movement segments. In the
production for the National Red Cross Pageant, the authors noted, "transcriptions of the
intricate pantomimes ... have not been included ... because of their length and technical
character .... Better results could probably be obtained by taking the motifs suggested and
building anew." Stevens, The of the Sword, 39.
23
Bates,A Pageant of the League, 28; Patry, Vision of a New World, 3. Bates suggests
referring to Characteristic Songs and Dances of All Nations for the music in her pageant.
24
"The American Stage Pays Its Tribute to the American Red Cross," Vogue, 15
November 1917, 128.
25
Ibid.; Joseph Lindon Smith and Thomas Wood Stevens, "The National Red
Cross Pageant," Ne1v Country Lzje, April 1918, 27.
26
The Drawing of the Sword had been submitted to the War Camp Community
Service (WC.C.S.) branch to be distributed, but was not accepted (only the Patriotic Christmas
Pageant by Constance D'Arcy Mackay, who also headed the Division of Community
Drama, was accepted by the WC.C.S.). Prior to being incorporated into the National Red
Cross Pageant, The Drawing of the Sword had hundreds of performances elsewhere, including
its premiere at the Carnegie Institute of Technology to celebrate registration day in 1917.
Registration day was when American male citizens of a certain age had to register for
the draft. As Glassberg notes, the soldiers largely wanted popular entertainment, musical
comedies, and vaudeville, not the "highbrow" abstract allegory that pageants.
STAGING THE GREAT WAR IN THE NATIONAL RED CROSS P AGEANT 55
The National Red Cross Pageant had many similarities to the other
wartime pageants. The discussion of this pageant will attempt to recover
how American citizens of the era likely would have understood the pageant.
Given that the main goals of the pageant were to support American
intervention in the First World War (a change in policy following years
of isolation) and to raise money for the Red Cross, both patriotic rhetoric
to elicit an emotional response and dazzling spectacle were considered
necessary elements.
The National Red Cross Pageant was, like many pageants, a limited
production. It was produced once at the outdoor Rosemary Theatre
in Huntington on Long Island, and then repeated at the Metropolitan
Opera in New York City a few weeks later.
27
However unlike many other
pageants which were produced by local amateurs, members of the local
historical society, or amateur clubs in school, the National Red Cross Pageant
was produced, directed, and performed by professional members of
the theatrical profession.
28
The cast lists of both productions read like a
veritable "who's who" of American actors of the day.
29
Secondly, because
of who was involved in the production, the inherent sense of local community
often considered a defining characteristic of the pageant was lost. In its
place perhaps stood a larger community of theatrical professionals and
wealthy socialites. Thirdly, the National Red Cross Pageant, though not-for-
profit, was also not precisely free to the public. The goal was not merely
to stir up patriotic fervor but also to raise money for the American Red
Cross. Hence, while it was hardly "corrupt commercialism," its intended
audience included wealthy, sophisticated New Yorkers and others lured by
the attraction of stage luminaries and mass spectacle.
As its title indicates, the pageant was staged by members of the
theatrical community to benefit the (American) Red Cross. Before the
However, a production of The Drawing of the Sword was done at the Liberty Theatre at
Camp Sherman. Glassberg, American Hisloncai Pageantry, 214-15; Stevens, The Drawing of
the Sword, 5.
27
The producers considered the National Red Crou Pageant important enough to
have it filmed for subsequent distribution. See "National Red Cross Pageant," American Film
Institute, http:// www.afi.com/ members/ catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie= 14 755
(accessed 30 December 2011).
28
Although research suggests that most pageants were performed by amateurs
and not professionals there are other examples of pageants that included professionals,
such as Percy Mackaye's Caliban the Yellow Sands (1916). Baltz, "Pageantry and Mural
Painting," 213.
29
Th.is production had something in common with the Liberty Bond Rallies
where the CPI was assisted by film celebrities such as Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks,
and Charlie Chaplin.
56
K UBLY
war, the American Red Cross was a small organization with a surprisingly
low membership, despite the fame of nurses such as Clara Barton and
Florence Nightingale.
30
Upon entry into the war, the American Red Cross,
like the United States government, positioned itself as a savior of Europe
and "devotion to the nation" quickly became "conflated with devotion
to the Red Cross."
31
Recently appointed spokesman for the Red Cross
Henry P. Davidson said, "We are late, but we are coming ... We are today
the richest people in the world, and the richest people in character and
resources."
32
Millions of dollars needed to be raised to finance the full-
scale operations of the Red Cross, which include everything from building
hospitals overseas, stocking canteens for soldiers, aiding displaced civilians,
and transporting both the wounded as well as necessary supplies.
33
In
order to raise awareness in the its organization, encourage donations,
and increase membership, the Red Cross undertook an intense publicity
campaign, which included everything from magazines to public events
such as this pageant. The iconic imagery of the nurse was solidified during
the Great War, particularly in her guise of what Michael Zwerdling calls
the "Nurse Guardian" who is a defender and a warrior whose primary
emblems are the shield and the cross.
34
It is clearly this image that is most
employed throughout the National Red Cross Pageant, from the image of
Spirit of the Red Cross that appears in the pageant itself, to the pretty,
fresh-faced nurse with an American flag flying behind her on the cover of
the souvenir program.
It is perhaps impossible to accurately recover all the reasons
why so many of the wealthy elite and stars of the legitimate and musical
stage came together to produce this pageant. Many of them likely had
genuine patriotic sentiments, or at the very least were caught up in
the fervor of the moment. Actors who may have privately opposed
American intervention were mostly silent, afraid of reprisals from the
government and hypervigilant citizens. As it was, actors during the war
years were consistently at pains to prove their patriotism to the ordinary
30
Lettie Gavin, Amencan Women in World War I: Thry Also Served (Niwot: University
Press of Colorado, 1997), 180; Caroline Moorehead, Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland, and
the History of the Red Cross (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1998), 242; Charles D. Norton, The
American Red Cross in this War (New York: New York Life Underwriters, 1918), 5.
31
John Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross
(\1V'estview Press, 1997), chap. five, e-book edition.
32
Moorehead, Dunant 's Dream, 242.
33
Gavin, American Women, 180-82; Moorehead, Dunant's Dream, 248-49.
34
Michael Zwerdling, Postcards of Nursing: A Worldwide Tribute (Philadelphia:
Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, 2004), 6.
STAGING TilE GREAT WAR IN TilE NATIONAL RED CROSS P AGEAJ'IT 57
American citizen and the government; they did so by selling Liberty
Bonds, volunteering to entertain soldiers, and especially by performing in
productions where proceeds went to benefit a war-related organization.
35
The pageant's prestige grew as more and more noteworthy people
committed themselves to the project. An actor who participated in such a
widely publicized event would have benefited both by working alongside
other stars and by contributing to a patriotic fundraiser. (Furthermore,
the National Red Cross Pageant only had a few performances, and hence
participating actors did not have to take long breaks from productions
where they could expect to earn a salary.)
As Marvin Carlson argues, the theatre performance is only a
part of the "audience experience of the theatrical event" with "countless
other parts of the event as a whole" also contributing to the formation
of meaning.
36
Considering the other "elements of the event structure"
of the first performance of the National Red Cross Pageant further reveals
the "specific and unique community assembled for [this] particular
performance."
37
The first performance was at the outdoor amphitheatre
at the Rosemary Farm in Huntington, Long Island. This performance had
an exclusive audience; the next day, the New York Times article opened its
reports on the pageant with ' 'All social roads led yesterday to the National
Red Cross Pageant."
38
Special trains were chartered to run from Penn
Station in New York City to Long Island just to transport the cast and
audience. These specially chartered trains are potentially an example of
an interesting, albeit temporary, "node." Carlson describes these "nodes"
as paths that connect the audience to the theatre. In this case the site
of performance-a theatre on a private estate outside Manhattan-was
likely "consciously" chosen "to share the connotations of the district;"
the wealthy elite are clearly favored.
39
Approximately 5,000 spectators saw
the performance on Long Island. The proceeds were reported as having
been in the amount of $50,000; the price of box seats (their existence
another articulation of "economic signification" calling attention to the
presence of the "privileged

was $250, easily a half-year's income

35
Jenna L. Kubly, "Vaudeville and the American Experience of the First World
War As Seen by Variety'' (PhD diss., Tufts University, 2010), 201-44.
36
Marvin Carlson, Theatre Semiotics: Signs of Life (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990), xiii.
37
Ibid., 18, 13.
38
"Red Cross Pageant Glitters for 5,000," Ne1v York Times, 6 October 1917
(accessed 17 September 2009).
39
Carlson, Theatre Semiotics, 48.
40
Ibid., 45.
58
K UBLY
for an unskilled laborer around that time.
41
Before the show began, Lt.
John Philips Sousa conducted the Great Lakes Naval Training Station
Band, which was comprised of 250 men. Costumed as Red Cross nurses,
society ladies and famous actresses sold souvenir programs, and Boy
Scouts gallantly escorted ladies to their seats.
42
From setting out to get
to the theatre to sitting down to watch the performance proper, audience
members were made constantly aware of the importance of the theatrical
event supporting the American Red Cross.
The introduction to the pageant was framed allegorically. The
figure of the Genius of Enlightenment watches as "centuries and people
pass in festival to lay upon my shrine the richest offerings [ ... ] ."
43
"Classical
groups" made up of "priests with thyrses, young athletes, priestesses and
maidens, philosophers and artists, matrons with distaffs and urns" are the
first to approach to dedicate the altar of peace.
44
After these "souls of the
ancient world" have finished, the first episode begins.
45
Whereas in other
pageants each episode was often a different era of American history, in
the National Red Cross Pageant, each episode takes place within a different
country.
In the Flemish Episode, that country's Herald announces that
the Sovereign Lady of the Lowlands will present the Golden Fleece.
46
Ethel Barrymore appeared as this lady-that is, Flanders-in what Vogue
described as a "gorgeous raiment of the Old Flemish Days" which was
"familiar in Flemish painting."
47
Flanders is accompanied by her four great
41
"Red Cross Pageant Glitters for 5,000," New York Times, 6 October 1917;
Louise B. More, Wage-Earners Budgets: A Stuc!J of Standards and Cost of Living in New York
City (New York: Henry Holt, 1907), 134, 152-60; Scott Nearing, Financing the Wage-Earners
Famil; (New York: B.W Huebsch, 1914), 102-04.
42
See: Frances Starr and Bijou Fernandez counting money collected
at the National Red Cross Pageant, Huntington, Long Island, Oct. 5, 1917," Library of
Congress, http:/ /www.loc.gov/picrures/resource/cph.3c36039/ (accessed 30 December
2011). These souvenir programs included plot summaries of each episode, which left
little room for the pageant to be misunderstood by the audience. Carlson comments on
how such specificity in a program "provides a certain orientation for the audience and
unquestionably affects its reading . . . "Carlson, Theatre Semiotics, 18. (accessed 17 September
2009).
43
Stevens, The Drmving of the Sword, 27-28.
44
Ibid., 27.
45
Ibid., 28.
46
The Golden Fleece was the symbol chosen by Philip III, the Duke of Burgundy
when he founded the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430 to celebrate the prosperity of
his realm.
47
Stage," Vogue, 51, 128.
STAGING THE GREAT WAR IN THE N ATIONAL RED CROSS PAGEANT 59
cities: Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, and Louvain. While the former two were
known from the medieval ages as great trade cities, Ypres and Louvain had
certainly taken on a more contemporary significance.
Louvain was one of the towns known to be the site of some of
the German army's greatest atrocities as they marched through Belgium,
disregarding that country's proclaimed neutrality. The cathedral and
university had been reduced to rubble and other stories of raped women
and brutalized children only served to underscore the inhumanity of the
Hun.
48
Olive Tell, who portrayed Louvain, was dressed in a simple high-
waisted medieval outfit with a white veil. She held a book, representing that
city's university, which had existed since medieval times.
49
The destruction
of the university and its ten thousand books had been seen as especially
heinous, as if German Kultur insisted on destroying all else as it sought
power outside the borders of her own empire.
Ypres was the site of two great battles of the war, in which the
British and French stopped the Germans in the "race to the sea." (At
the time of the pageant's performance, the town was also the location
of a third battle, usually referred to as Passchendaele, which had begun
in June 1917 and would not end until that winter.) Adelaide Prince, who
could also be seen in the comedy a r y ~ Ankle, represented Ypres.
50
Her
medievalesque costume was made of rich and textured fabrics, to visually
underscore the importance the Flemish Herald placed on the "looms that
weave for all the world the richest merchandise."
51
The rich costuming
of the Flemish ladies, together with the Golden Fleece, made visible the
prosperity and culture of a country overtaken by German soldiers.
The Flemish Episode was followed by one focusing on Italy. In
this historic episode, Italy (Clara Joel) was garbed in a golden dress of
the Renaissance, accompanied by two children who represented Athens
and Rome. These two ancient cities and their art and philosophy were
presented as blooming again in Italy. While Flanders was accompanied
by her four great cities, Italy was further represented by her great men:
Giotto, Dante, Lorenzo di Medici, and Michelangelo. A fifth is added to
their number: Columbus, the "Genoese who found the marge beyond
the ocean's mystery."
52
F. Kitson Cowley's impressionistic lithographs of
48
John Keegan, The First World War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 82.
49
''American Stage," Vogue, 51.
S<l "Ibid; ''Adelaide Prince," Internet Broadway Database, http://wwwibdb.
com/ person.php?id=56597 (accessed 30 December 2011).
51
Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword, 29.
52
Ibid., 30.
60
K UBLY
the pageant show Columbus holding what surely is a globe in his right
hand. 5
3
Given that Spain was officially neutral, slipping the discoverer of
America into the Italian episode was another way of reaffirming the ties
between Europe and America, placing the United States as cultural heir
to the Italian Renaissance and confirming the legitimacy of the United
States to have a voice in the world war. Italy's five great men, along with
their various attendants, were revealed from behind a banner, posed "like
an early fresco;" this momentary tableau vivant visually referenced the
paintings of the Italian Renaissance, which were influential to the murals
and frescoes found in many public buildings of this time.
54
Each of
these men laid an offering at the altar. Their gifts were symbolic of their
individual genius; for example, Giotto (one of the earliest painters of the
Italian Renaissance) offers a triptych.
In the following English episode, Britain is not represented
allegorically as Britannia (as happened in most other pageants) joined
by great monarchs of the past, but instead is presented entirely in a
historical episode. Although another age from English history, such as the
Elizabethan age, might have seemed more golden, the signing of the Magna
Carta was of historical and psychological importance and underscored the
overall message of the pageant. The Magna Carta was announced as that
which "framed the charter of our liberties."
55
In the actual performance
space, a small stream separated the audience from the theatre, and this in
turn added to the semblance of that "reedy island, Runnymede, where
once the powers of England met."
56
I<ing John arrived in a barge, which
sailed in the lagoon between the stage and amphitheatre. The king was
depicted as sullenly defiant, believing himself to be above the law, and
only the Archbishop of Canterbury and Baron Fitzwalter stopped him
from tearing up the charter.
The choice of this historical episode is interesting as it does not
show the English monarch in the most favorable light; I<ing John is said
to have repudiated the charter as soon as the barons had departed. This
approach frames King John as a parallel to Kaiser Wilhelm II who ignored
51
Ibid.; Smith and Stevens, "National Red Cross Pageant," 28.
54
Ibid. Stevens may have also chosen the Italian Renaissance to present
Italy because he had written an earlier successful pageant, "The Pageant of the Italian
Renaissance" which had been presented by the Art Institute in Chicago around 1909. WR.,
"The Book of the Pageant," Bulletin of the An Institute of Chicago 2, no. 4 (1909): SO.
55
Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword, 31.
56
Ibid. The use of the stream to represent Runnymede seems an example of
what Carlson, in his discussion of the "Iconic Stage," terms "iconic identity (an actual tree
appearing in a signifying context)." Carlson, Theatre Semiotics, 84.
STAGING THE GREAT WAR IN THE NATIONAL RED CROSS PAGEANT 61
Belgium's neutrality and sovereignty as a "scrap of paper." Similarly, King
John ignored the Magna Carta Liberatatum (Great Charter of Freedoms),
that laid out certain laws that guaranteed the rights of freemen and bound
even a king by law. Thus, Britain's offering to the world is this defining
document, this "Memorial of Freedom."
57
The staging of this episode
also suggests that the charter, which as a "Memorial of Freedom" is
understood in this context to be synonymous with democracy, is also a
religious right, superseding any earlier divine right of kings, given that
it is presented to John by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope's
prelate. The English religious leaders place this memorial on the Altar of
Peace, visually reinforcing the rhetoric that the Great War, and especially
the participation of the United States, was a new type of holy crusade
for God-given freedom and democracy that would be withheld from the
people by autocrats such as King John and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The subsequent Russian episode reflects the United States'
troubled relationship with that country. The two distinct segments to this
episode highlight the instability of the Russian political climate. Americans
were unsure how to place Russia ideologically, but were also desirous to
acknowledge Russia as an important ally. Throughout the entire episode, it
is the common people of Russia-not the "sharp glitter of Roman [sic]
state nor the resounding tread of numberless and undefiant armies"-that
are emphasized as being the true representation, the "pulse" of Russia.
58
In the first part, Russian peasants are seen at a village fair, enjoying the
give and take of bargaining, when a fugitive runs into their midst. He
is concealed by the peasants who have formed a religious procession to
deposit an Ikon on the central altar. The second part of this episode is
signaled by a change in the music, which also points to the abrupt end of
the festivities and the entrance of a tyrant Oohn Barrymore) in pursuit of
the fugitive. The Tyrant is borne on a dais by his serfs, who were dressed in
tatters and strained under his weight, as an illustration of the problems of
the Russian serf system. The Russian tyrant was not portrayed as Nicholas
II who, though the autocrat of the Russian Empire, seems to have been
viewed at least somewhat sympathetically, particularly after his abdication
and death earlier in 1917. Rather, Barrymore's tyrant was dressed in a long
robe and sash with a towering hat in a "Cossack" style.
59
The fugitive is
captured, punished, and taken away again by the Tyrant.
60
The creation of
57
Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword, 31.
58
Ibid., 31-32.
59
Smith and Stevens, "National Red Cross Pageant," 35.
60
Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword, 32. In subsequent productions, the fugitive
is rescued by a peasant (made to look like Tolstoy); this peasant later places a book on rhe
62 K uBLY
the Provisional Government in Russia which, it was hoped, would be a
step towards "burn[ing] the chains asunder" of tyranny, happened at the
best moment possible, so that the United States could truly represent the
Great War as a struggle between democracy and the autocracy of empires.
61
The tyrant hunting down an escaped serf reminded the audience of how
recently Russia had become a democracy. Russia still knows too well the
old ways of empire and has much to learn before it will be a fully realized
democracy, but the desire is there. Similar to the preceding English
episode, the offering of an Ikon in the Russian episode underscores the
implied connection among Christianity, democracy, and freedom.
The penultimate episode of the first half of the pageant focused
on France and was the most spectacular episode of all. In pantomime,
three moments are shown in the life of Jeanne d'Arc, played by Ina Claire.
First, the maid is shown as a "simple shepherd girl" in Domremy; actors
singing offstage represented the voices of the saints and angels who speak
to her.
62
Following their guidance, Jeanne departs to seek out the King of
France. The scene changes to the luxurious court of France. More than
thirty other stage and screen stars appeared in the court scene. Although
the published script only lists the major characters (i.e. Jeanne d'Arc,
the Russian tyrant, Flanders) and who originated each role, the souvenir
program gives a more complete idea of the splendor of this scene.
63
A
few photographs in the Vogue article also show the rich costumes given
to the members of the court of the French King Charles VII. Helen
Roche (also known as Bonnie Glass), a Broadway actress, appeared as the
Duchess d'Alenc;:on. She was the second wife of the millionaire theatrical
producer, director, producer, and well-known painter James Ben Ali
Haggin III. (Her husband, who also directed the French episode, would
be responsible for staging several tableaux in the Ziegfeld Follies of the
early 1920s.
64
) Clifton Webb, Frances White, William Rock, Jeanne de
Clairmont, and Aimee Dalmores all appeared as members of the court,
arrayed in sumptuous medieval court dress with rich and textured fabrics,
ermine-trimmed robes, and elaborate hats. Into the midst of the gaiety
strides Jeanne, demanding to lead an army so that Charles can be crowned
altar.
61
Stevens, The Drawing if the Sword, 32.
62
Ibid., 33.
63
National Red Cross Pageant souvenir program, http:/ /www.lloydharbor.org/
village/ AlbumRedCrossP01.htm (accessed 24 September 2009).
64
''American Stage," Vogue, 51; Stevens, The Drawing if the Sword, 26; "Ben Ali
Hagan," Internet Broadway Database, http:/ /www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=14996
(accessed 30 December 2011).
STAGING THE GREAT WAR IN THE NATIONAL REo CROSS PAGEANT
63
in Rheims. Charles gives her his sword. In what was called the "most
dramatic of the events of this first part," Jeanne appeared dressed as a
soldier with a sword and riding her iconic white steed, to lead the soldiers
off to battle, similar in appearance to how Ingrid Bergman would appear
thirty-one years later in Victor Fleming's film.
65
Following the successful
coronation of her king, Jeanne places her sword and helmet on the altar.
After having viewed all these historical episodes of peace and
prosperity, the Genius of Enlightenment celebrates the harvest and
gifts piled upon the altar. Classical dancers engage in a festive harvest
dance, bedecked with garlands and carrying heaping trays of fruits and
vegetables. Their celebration is interrupted by War and his minions, in
appearance rather like warrior Vikings bearing torches and spears, who
drive away all those representing Enlightenment and peace. War holds
up the Magna Carta and tears i t up, clearly symbolic of how war regards
the inherent right of men to Freedom. The other offerings made at the
Altar of Peace are trampled underfoot. When the smoke has cleared, the
Spirit of the Red Cross appears, garbed in "trailing draperies of white."
66
The Spirit grieves for the fallen armies but reveals the Red Cross on her
breast and reminds the viewer that she flies above all nations, even as she
encourages "soldiers of the world's defense."
67
The second part of the pageant, The Drawing of the Sword, has the
familiar feature of personified countries. A photograph from this segment
suggests that the costuming was very much in the Classical mode, inspired
by Grecian tunics and robes.
68
A herald invites America to go to "that
high court" where the three "mighty spirits" of Justice, Liberty, and Truth
have gathered to judge the cause of the nations of the earth involved
65
''American Stage," Vogue, 128.
66
Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword, 36.
67
Ibid.
68
There also seems to be similarities between the costuming of women in war-
related pageants and earlier suffragist pageants, particularly with the influence of Ancient
Greek fashion and allegorical paintings of the day. A photo from A Pageant of the League of
Free Nations show four women dressed in long, flowing garments inspired by the ancient
world. The directions specify the color of the "tunics" for each of the characters, some
wear headdresses of "circular Greek bands," and specific details such as "stenciled in gold
in a Roman border" and gold armlets are given for Truth's costume. Similar instructions
are given in the other pageants mentioned: for The Vision of a New World, Victory is clothed
in a "white dress of some soft material made in the Greek style." See Baltz's article for a
more in-depth discussion of the relation between paintings and pageants. "Rehearsal for
the National Red Cross Pageant held at the Rosemary Open-Air Theatre, Huntington,
Long Island, Oct. 5, 1917 ," Library of Congress, http:/ /www.loc.gov /pictures/ resource/
cph.3c36037 /(accessed 30 December 2011 ); Bates, A Pageant of the League, 31; Patry, Vision
of a New World, 1.
64 KuBLY
in the war.
69
These three spirits sit on thrones center stage, their poses
reminiscent of murals of the Graces and other allegorical subjects painted
by Frances W Benson (for the Library of Congress mural) or Edward
Simmons (mural for the Appellate Courts).
7
From the very beginning of
the second half of the pageant, the United States is figuratively placed as
above all nations, even if not actually sitting in judgment hersel Each of
the countries involved in the conflict enter to state their case in regards to
how they became involved. Serbia (Tyrone Power), Belgium, and Italy are
portrayed as having been drawn unwillingly into the war. Other nations,
such as Russia, Italy, and Poland, seek to throw off the bonds that tie
them to the Axis powers. England (E.H. Sothern) and her Dominions-
this time portrayed as a man from the Elizabethan era-stand strong and
proud to hold back the "black eagles" and France, though ravished and
ruined, promises to stand and fight until the end.
71
As in the first part of the pageant, the problematic role of Russia
is dramatized. At first, Russia was represented as a "figure of gorgeous
pride, in the hierarchical robes of the Romanoff [sic] dynasty"; this time
the connection to the recently departed Romanov emperor is much
clearer.
72
The older Russia claims that he "knows not Liberty" and has
initially joined the war because of the "blood call ... of Servia [sic]" and
not for any cause of freedom.
73
Russia saw itself as a traditional defender
of the Serbs, and hence declared war on Austria-Hungary in 1914. After
the smaller countries such as Poland, Armenia (Helen Ware), Portugal,
and Romania cry out to the three spirits and state their desire for liberty,
the old figure of Russia falls, and is replaced by the New Russia (Eva Le
Gallienne), portrayed as a young, wild girl who is confused by the "strange
sound of freedom," and looks to the Spirit of Liberty to guide her.
74
Her
confusion and newness to democracy is a burden to the other nations who
"moan beneath it," but ultimately the arrival of the United States lifts the
burden when she promises to guide the way.
75
The presentation of Belgium provided an even more dramatic
change. Some of the most horrendous battles of the Great War, such
as Ypres, occurred there. Ethel Barrymore, who earlier portrayed proud
69
Stevens, The Drawing if the Su;ord, 9.
70
Baltz, "Pageantry and Mural Painting," 223-24.
71
Stevens, The Drawing if the Sword, 13-15.
72
Ibid., 15.
73
Ibid., 15-16.
74
Ibid., 24.
75
Ibid., 7.
STAGLNG THE GREAT WAR IN THE NATIONAL RED (ROSS PAGEANT 65
Flanders, returned to play defeated Belgium. This casting choice was
important; while technically Flanders encompassed parts of both Belgium
and France, in this pageant, Belgium and Flanders were represented as
being synonymous. Belgium is portrayed as wearing a "great cloak of
black and gold- now tattered to shreds."
76
Photos and sketches from
the production also show a long black veil that trailed on the ground, a
vivid contrast to the white headdress worn by Barrymore when she had
represented wealthy Flanders. Mourning Belgium is surrounded by her
exiled sons and daughters, who wear the simple clothes of honest working
class and country dwellers, much of it now tattered. They carry their
belongings in makeshift bags made up of sheets; some require bandages
and lean on sticks. The "rape of Belgium" had been vividly portrayed in
1915 by the Bryce report, which had detailed atrocities perpetrated by the
brutal Huns such as raped and mutilated women and children, cut-off
hands, and smashed babies' heads.
77
Belgium only refers to these horrors
succinctly when she mentions that "my daughters [have been] given to the
lust of the black eagles."
78
(Other theatrical works, such as vaudeville one-
acts and patriotic films, would portray these atrocities in more vivid detail.)
More detail than this would probably have not fit the style of this pageant,
which focused on allegory and sumptuous spectacle. Furthermore, the
writers and directors knew that their audience members would already be
familiar with the reports, which had been published (as fact) in newspapers
such as the New York Times and the American Red Cross Magazine.
19
Yet even with these nations fighting to stop the Axis powers, Truth
admonishes Liberty (Gladys Hanson) and Justice that they are too sure of
victory. Reminding them of the sinking of the Lusitania and that such
a "foul murder" has gone unpunished, Justice calls to America (Majorie
Rambeau) to "come forth and strike and save for the world crumbles
in its bitter need."
80
America answers the call, followed by her soldiers,
promising to "draw for justice an unvenomed sword" which she shall not
76
I bid., 11.
n Edward Robb Ellis, Echoes of a Distant Thunder: I..tfi in the United States, 1914
1918 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975), 228-30; Nicolleta F. Gullace, The
Blood of Our Sons: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 99-101.
78
Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword, 12.
79
See Rozario's article for an interesting interpretation of this style of story
and humanitarian causes. Kevin Rozario, '"Delicious Horrors' : Mass Culrure, The Red
Cross, and the Appeal of Modern American Humanitarianism," A merican Quarter!J, 55, no.
3 (2003): 417-55.
00
Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword, 22-23.
66 KUBLY
sheath until lasting peace and freedom are attained for all nations.
81
The
second part of the pageant reaffirms Wilson's rhetoric in justifying the
war and moving away from the United States' long-standing international
policy of isolationism. America's reasons for becoming involved in a
European conflict are first because her Allies have called her, but more
importandy, that higher ideals beckoned. These ideals are summed up in
Wilson's phrase "The world must be made safe for democracy" (in the
pageant text, democracy was clearly synonymous with freedom and the
United States). With the flag waving behind her, her young soldiers at her
feet, ready as if to "go over the top," and all nations looking towards her,
the pageant ends with America front and center, arms outstretched and
sword drawn.
Before the war, the United States had often looked towards
European sophistication and culture with envy or even a sense of
inadequacy; in 1917 these sentiments were reframed as condemnations
of a decadent European society that led itself to its own destruction. The
purity of America and her sense of democracy are vital to peace and
victory. Furthermore, in portraying the participation of the United States
in the Great War as a nation involved in a just war to free all nations, a
humanitarian and supposedly neutral institution such as the Red Cross can
sponsor a pageant that is blatant in its patriotism. As America has touted
the Great War as a "War to End All Wars" as part of the justification
of American intervention, the Red Cross, though it appears they might
be partial towards the United States and her goals, could claim that
the goals are synonymous: American victory in Europe should lead to
everlasting peace. Ideologically, the United States has positioned itself as
the world's savior. In this, the National Red Cross Pageant fit in especially
well with how the pageant itself was defined a few years earlier as "a
festival of thanksgiving to almighty God for the blessings of the past, the
opportunities of the present, and the hopes of the future."
82
As the Spirit
of the Red Cross explained at the end of the first half of the pageant, the
Red Cross is red from the "dear blood of those who give freely their lives
that the ... new peace, in the new dawn" might come.
83
American victory
is equivalent to humanitarianism.
81
Ibid., 25.
82
Clark, "Pageantry in America," 148.
83
This linking of peace and American victory is also seen in the Peddler of
Destinies who speaks in support of the Liberty Loan. The Peddler says, "I bring the future
years fulfilled of peace . . . Your gold .. . will relume the torch of Liberty, it shall make sure
the road of corning peace." Stevens, The Drawing of the Sword, 36, 38.
jOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO. 2 (SPRJNG 2012)
JoHN HuNTER BooTH's CREATED EQuAL: A FEDERAL THEATRE
MODEL FOR PATRIOTISM
Angela Sweigart-Gallagher
During its brief existence (1935-1939), the Federal Theatre functioned
as a national theatre, not only in the sense that for the first (and in some
ways only) time in history the United States government directly financed
and created art, but more importantly, it functioned as a national theatre
in the sense that it served as a means to dispense culture, educate the
citizenry, reproduce the nation's past and present on stage, and at times
directly distribute government propaganda.
1
Central to these efforts was
the production of historical plays such as John Hunter Booth's Created
Equal. An American Chronicle in thirty-one scenes (1938). Booth's play serves
as an American jeremiad and illustrates the Federal Theatre's attempts
to create (and control) a national theatre through its regionally-specific
historical productions.
In her book Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal
Theatre Prqject Elizabeth A. Osborne analyzes Created Equal within the
context of working-class Boston and its importance to the Boston Federal
Theatre Project.
2
While Booth and Federal Theatre administrators clearly
saw Boston and the Northeastern region as its target audience for Created
Equal, I believe the play, with its numerous interventions on the part of
Federal Theatre officials and revisions on the part of Booth, has even
more to say about the Federal Theatre operating as a national theatre and
1
This "propaganda" included promotion of New Deal initiatives, as in the
promotion of blood tests in Spirochete (1938), a living newspaper about the ravages of
syphilis. It also included the kind of loosely articulated propaganda for democracy present
in It Can't Happen Here (1936). Democracy as an idea, particularly the sense that the common
citizen constitutes the major source of political power, carried a great deal of weight within
the plays, productions, and organization of the Federal Theatre Project. "Democracy''
provided a convincing rallying point around which writers, directors, and administrators
of varying political and social interests could come together and create a national theatre.
2
Elizabeth A. Osborne, Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal
Theatre Project (New York: Palgrave, 2011). Osborne's book is a revision of her 2007
dissertation with a similar title. Her analysis in her dissertation differs sharply in scope and
focus from her book. In the dissertation she performs a lengthy and detailed historical
analysis of the way the play fits into the framework of Boston politics and the city's class
dynamics. In her book she strays somewhat from this class-based narrative to include more
material on the racial dynamics of the play. Both, the dissertation and the book, however,
place the play firmly within the context of Boston politics and culture and the Boston
Federal Theatre Project.
68 SWEIGART-GALLAGHER
the way in which many of its plays engaged with national history and
founding myths in an attempt to "awaken the nation" to an American
national identity.
In presenting Created Equal, the Federal Theatre served a function
similar to that of the national theatres of 19th century Europe, as
articulated by S.E. Wilmer in his essays "Herder and European Theatre"
and "National Theatres in an Era of Transnationalism." Like its European
counterparts, the Federal Theatre canon includes plays "about the historical
or legendary figures engaged in the nation-building or national liberation
process or in some way representing certain nationalistic ideals."
3
Booth's
Created Equal not only presents the "historical or legendary figures"
engaged in the act(s) of "nation-building and liberation," but it also
presents and encourages its audience(s) to respond to the "nationalistic
ideal" of American democracy by encouraging its audience to ensure that
the country lives up to its founding principles.
4
Created Equal premiered in the late spring of 1938 in Salem,
Massachusetts. It later toured Springfield and Boston and was remounted
in New Jersey in 1939.
5
The play focuses on the development and
subsequent amendments to the Constitution, and traces the development
of American democracy from the Declaration of Independence to the
introduction of the New Deal in response to the stock market crash of
1929. American democracy, as articulated in Created Equal, hinges on the
belief that all men are created equal. From the beginning of the play,
Booth makes equality the central idea around which American democracy,
and therefore American national identity, is formed. In doing so, Booth
reminds the audience that the disproportionate effect of the depression
3
S. E. Wilmer, "National Theatres in an Era of Trans nationalism," Theatre and
Society: Problems and Perspectives, 2 (2006): 46.
4
Created Equal is not the only example of this presentation of historical or
legendary figures from U.S. history. Plays such as The Lost Colorry, Battle Hymn, Prologue to
Glory, and many of the living newspapers also feature, to a lesser or greater degree, figures
from U.S. history engaged in the process of building the nation. The difference between
these depictions and those of historical figures within the national theatres of Europe
is the degree to which Federal Theatre playwrights and artists used historical figures as
a means to critique the current status of the nation as opposed to the founding of the
nation.
5
As Osborne righdy points out in chapter two of her book (55-56), the Federal
Theatre's production of Created Equal was a major turning point for the Boston Federal
Theatre Project. Prior to Created Equal the Boston unit had experienced a dismal and
embarrassing failure with its first large scale production-Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge
in 1936-and by the time Created Equal premiered, the Boston FrP had all but shut down.
Hallie Flanagan had even gone so far as to request that funds and personnel be reallocated
elsewhere.
JoHN HuNTER BooTH's Cll.EATED EQUAL 69
on working-class people is a betrayal of the founding principles. In letters
to Federal Theatre administrators, Booth described his "line of attack,
stated as a proposition" as follows:
1. The Declaration of Independence promised equality.
2. The Constitution established a propertied class.
3. Amendments to the Constitution are slowly fulfilling
the promise of the Declaration.
6
In other words, Booth represents the idea of equality as the idea around
which the nation was conceived, and presents the Declaration of
Independence, rather than the Constitution, as the nation's founding
document. In fact, through much of the first act, Booth presents a series
of episodes that demonstrate the way in which the Constitution actually
cut off access to equality for most Americans because it was conceived
of, by, and for the benefit of its most wealthy citizens. It is only through
subsequent Constitutional amendments, and ultimately with the creation
of the Works Progress Administration that the United States government
addresses the needs of its working-class citizens.
7
Patriotism, as imagined
by Booth and the play, is based on upholding the principles of the
Declaration, challenging the denigration of these principles by the original
Constitution, and championing the amendments to the Constitution that
reinstate the principles of equality of the Declaration.
8
6
John Hunter Booth, Letter to Jon B. Mack, 21 January 1938. National Office
General Correspondence, 1936-1939, Records of the Federal Theatre Project, Works
Project Administration, Record Group 69, National Archives at College Park, College
Park, :MD.
7
Created Equal also takes a relatively progressive view towards race, with
its representation of the Thirteenth Amendment as a positive step toward fulfilling
the promise of equality proposed in the Declaration of Independence. The fact that
Booth represents the end of slavery as a positive step towards the equality outlined in
the Declaration of Independence is ironic given that, at the insistence of Northern and
Southern slave holding states alike, Thomas Jefferson removed references to slavery from
the final document. The ambiguous statement: "He has excited domestic Insurrections
among us" is the only reference to slavery that made it into Jefferson's final draft, and it is
buried among the list of grievances against King George III.
8
The archival record contains several versions of Created Equal, making a
discussion of the play text in performance an exercise in best guesses. Between the scripts
contained in the Library of Congress, National Archives, and George Mason University's
Federal Theatre collections, there are two scripts I would consider possible performance
texts, as well as one or two others that appear to be early drafts of the play. The first,
dated 17 June 1938 is marked "Final Version." The second is catalogued in the Library
of Congress as the "New Jersey" script. The "New Jersey" script significantly revised
some scenes present in the "Final Version," while omitting and merging others. Most
70 S\X'EIGART- GAIJJ,GHER
In the second scene of Created Equal, the audience sees Thomas
Jefferson in the process of writing the Declaration of Independence. As
he writes he hits upon the phrase "that all men are created equal," and
is so taken with it that he repeats it. In fact, the stage directions read
that Jefferson should read his work aloud, but "Quietly-as if uttering
a prayer."
9
This "prayer" is repeated throughout the play by various
characters. One of the play's heroes, Phillip Schuyler, as well as his son
and grandson (also named Phillip), become champions of this idea. Phillip
Schuyler I describes America to his love interest Anne in the following
from act 1, scene 5: "Here a man's a man-created the equal of any
man."
10
The repetition of the phrase "created equal" and religious-like
reverence for the idea contained therein establishes the idea of equality as
a cornerstone of American democracy, something that true patriots view
as being worth protecting and as a promise worth fulfilling.
11
In many ways Booth served as an American Jeremiah, and Created
Equal served as a jeremiad, exhorting the nation to live up to its founding
principles and the national value of democracy.
12
In his seminal work The
American JeremiadSacvan Bercovitch traces the historical transformation of
American political rhetoric from its roots in eighteenth-century sermons
designed to chastise the Puritan community for failing to live up to their
divinely inspired mission, to its modern incarnation in political speeches.
He suggests that the sermons delivered by Puritan ministers portrayed the
Puritan community as "a people of God in terms of election, the body
significantly, the "New Jersey" text revised most of the inter-scenes designed to be read
aloud over a loudspeaker. There is also a third script available, noted in the record as the
"Short Cast" version. An analysis of these three different versions of the script shows that
the play's thematic focus on the necessity of fulfilling the promise of democracy remains
within all three, and most of the differences between scripts involve the merging and/or
omissions of scenes. The possible exception to this point might be the omission of some
scenes in the "Short Cast'' version that specifically addresses the inequitable treatment of
African Americans and the necessity of extending equality to all races. As the text most
likely to have been performed at the premiere and/ or reflecting any changes made to the
play's text as a result of the rehearsal process in Massachusetts, I have chosen the 1938
"Pinal Version" as my primary text, and I take all subsequent quotations from this version
of the play unless otherwise noted.
9
John Hunter Booth, Created Equal. "Final Version," Federal Theatre Project
Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1.2.1.
10
l bid., 1.5.3.
11
This merging of the sacred and the national is also evident in Paul Green's
The Lost Colony.
12
Created Equal is not unique in this regard. A number of other Federal Theatre
plays might also be described as jeremiads. Mike Gold and Michael Blankfort's play Battle
Hymn, which focuses on the life and death of John Brown, is another example.
JoHN HuNTER BooTH's CREATED EQUAL
71
politic, and the advancing army of Christ."
13
They repeatedly extolled the
need to reject vice and return to virtue in order to live up to their covenant
with God and their preordained destiny. Over time, Bercovitch argues, the
jeremiad became more than religiously based. As the Church/State gave
way to the Church and State, with political leaders no longer necessarily
religious leaders, the scriptural grounding of the Protestant/Puritan
jeremiad gave way to a more secular "belief in human progress" and to a
place where historical forces influenced by the sacred led the Americans
to firmly believe in their national greatness.
14
According to Bercovitch,
revolutionary leaders at the time of Independence turned the "jeremiad
into a lesson in national genealogy," which:
led to the familiar figural imperative: what the fathers
began, the sons were bound to complete. Revolution
meant improvement not hiatus; obedience, not riot; not
a breach of social order, but the fulfillment of God's
plan.
15
In this figuration, the "passage into national maturity" placed the Puritan's
mission, belief in the nation, and its principles metaphorically on par with
a belief in God.
16
Revolution became the only means to bring the nation
into its rightful place in history. In this way the jeremiad controlled the
revolutionary impulse and reinforced the mythology and authority of the
nation.
Like the Revolutionary period's jeremiads that came before,
Booth's Created Equal reinforced the authority of the nation, and in turn its
leaders, by staging the problems, enacting the dysfunctions, and presenting
the nation's original ideals as true principles that had been neglected as
a result of the failure and/ or unwillingness of those elected to fight
for the rights or needs of the common man. In a letter to Jon B. Mack,
Massachusetts State Director, Booth describes the play as the dramatic
representation of "the perpetual struggle of Man against a tyranny of his
own creation" and his groping "towards the ideal of equality for all."
17
Booth's Created Equal presents this neglect as the cause of the economic
13
Sacvan Bercovitch, The Amen'can Jeremiad (Madison: University of Madison
Press, 1978), 46.
14
Ibid., 93.
15
Ibid., 123.
16
Ibid., 123.
17
Booth, Letter to Jon B. Mack, 21 January 1938.
72 SWEIGART- GALLAGHER
and social problems then facing the American national community, and he
traces the impact of these problems on the nation at large and on a single
family. In other words, Booth does not suggest that democracy as an
institution or an idea is the problem; rather the play reads as a prolonged
lamentation that the nation had somehow failed to live up to its promise
of democracy. Booth frames many of the scenes in the play as arguments
between true patriots who would move the United States toward the
founding promise of democracy as articulated in the Declaration of
Independence and the Articles of Confederation, and traitors to the cause
would manipulate the Constitution, deny equality, and reject democracy
as a viable and desirable principle in favor of establishing a plutocracy. In
act 1, scene 1, a Voice emanating from the empty throne articulates this
conflict: "I reflect but the secret hope of each who would be King above
his fellows, deeming himself of better clay than they."
18
The rest of the
play stages this struggle.
Booth depicts historical figures and events such as Jefferson
writing the Declaration of Independence, the development of the
Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, and the end of slavery in
order to trace the development of the Constitution and its implications
on the development of America and American democracy. These scenes
are often abstracted, with famous speeches and lines interspersed with
choral dialogue. Although important historical figures emerge in the early
scenes, most characters are unnamed and represent broad categories of
people. A review of the character list demonstrates this point. The vast
majority of characters are listed only by their occupation or some other
generic identifier such as Villager, Citizen, Plutocrat, Reporter, etc. The
simplification of characterization in these scenes, as well as the inclusion
of the disembodied voice as a means to transition between scenes, reflect a
clear influence of the Living Newspapers on Booth and his writing.
19
The
Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers frequently referred to this
disembodied voice as the ''Voice of the Living News." Booth does not
use this term, however, the voice serves similar functions. It comments
on the action of scenes and helps guide the audience toward a particular
18
Booth, Created Equal (final Version), 1.1.2.
19
An undated manuscript contained within the George Mason University
collection does nor contain any loudspeaker commentary. However, Converse Tyler, who
worked in the Play Reader Department and reviewed the play for production, categorized
the script as a "living newspaper." Booth's choice to revise the script to include the
Loudspeaker demonstrates the extent to which the Federal Theatre was able to disseminate
desired theatrical techniques and create an aesthetic for its national theatre. The loudspeaker
commentary is quite different between the "Final Version" and "New Jersey" scripts,
illustrating the revisions book made to the text following the play's Massachusetts debut.
joHN HuNTER Boom's CREATED EQUAL 73
interpretation of historical and present events much like the "Voice" in
living newspapers such as Triple-A Plowed Under and One Third of a Nation.
The family scenes stand in stark contrast to the broad, historical
scenes. Booth presents them as a domestic drama, with the focus on
the impact of historical events on the life of Phillip Schuyler and his
descendants. Booth alters the identity of the historical Philip Schuyler
(1733-1804) (note the slight spelling change in the first name) from a
gentleman and soldier from a prominent family in Albany, NY to the
rugged pioneer and small-scale farmer depicted in the play.
20
Schuyler
played a significant role in the early years of the United States; he was
elected to the Continental Congress, and after the Revolutionary War
broke out, he served as a Major General in the Continental Army. The
historical Schuyler remained active in politics until his death in 1804, and
his daughter Elizabeth married Alexander Hamilton, in what appears to
be a very successful marriage in terms of both love and money.
21
Booth's
Phillip Schuyler is a gentleman, but he is a gentleman turned pioneer
farmer, who abandons his gentleman's status in favor of a rough life out
in the frontier. While this (re)imagining of Phillip Schuyler is historically
inaccurate, it may have helped Federal Theatre audiences identify with
Schuyler. While the Federal Theatre's largely working class audience had
little in common with a gentleman farmer from the Revolutionary War
era, they could certainly identify with a young husband contemplating a
fresh start away from a difficult urban environment where little of the
work Phillip longs for could be found.
22
20
In her dissertation Osborne also notes the fact that Booth alters the historical
Schuyler. This notation does not appear in her book.
21
Elizabeth A. Osborne, "Staging the People: Revising and Reenvisioning
Community in the Federal Theatre Project," (PhD diss. University of Maryland, College
Park. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2007), 164.
22
The distinction between the life of the historical Philip Schuyler and Booth's
fictional Phillip Schuyler becomes most profound in act 1, scene 15 of the "Final Version"
script. The scene is described as taking place in New York City, June 1794, a date by
which the historical Philip Schuyler had already welcomed Hamilton as a son in law. Booth
paints Hamilton as unsympathetic and aggressive. Hamilton rejects Phillip's very rational
explanation of the tax's injurious effects on small time farmers and threatens Phillip with
violence if the farmers refuse the tax. A similar scene attached to a letter dated 26 May
1938 from Blanding Sloan to Emmett Lavery suggests that this scene may have been
added between the Springfield and Boston productions. The scene attached to the letter is
described as taking place in New York 1789. The revised scene contained within the "Final
Version" script and attached to the letter replaced a scene in which an unnamed Colonel
and General debate the use of force when dealing with the Whiskey Boys. The New
Jersey script appears to have returned to the original scene but alters the speakers from
an unnamed General and an unnamed Colonel to Alexander Hamilton and an unnamed
General. It is not clear who authorized the revision, why the New Jersey script returned to
74
SWEIGART-GALLAGHER
As evidenced by his directives to Mack, Booth intentionally
separates the family narrative from the historical narrative in tone and
structure, and he saw them being played differently. For the Massachusetts
productions, Booth provides Mack with the following directions:
In staging the play, these family scenes should be given
the utmost realism, while the scenes dealing with the
general mass must be handled in a stylised [sic] manner
to give them a broader implication.
23
At the beginning of the play the family scenes feature a familiar
love story between Phillip and Anne Hammersley, complete with a
standard comic device of a ridiculous, overbearing, and disapproving father
Upton Hammersley, who also stands in as a representative plutocrat. The
Schuyler family scenes drive home Booth's image of the model patriot
and the role of the individual in the defense of the ideals of equality and
democracy. He makes it very clear that these ideals are those established
by the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution. In fact,
in the play's early scenes, Booth depicts the Constitutional Convention
as a contest between those who would limit the rights of the people
and the patriots who would hold up the ideal of "created equal." For
example, the Convention considers the question of direct election of
senators versus the election of senators by the State Legislature. They
ultimately adopt the latter. At one point, a member calls out, "Rescue us!
No democracy! No democracy!" while another member declares, "We'll
have nothing else. That's what we fought for. Long live democracy!"
24
Although the Constitution lays out particular rights afforded to citizens
of the United States and the Declaration merely sets forth a set of guiding
principles, Booth depicts the Constitution as an imperfect document,
created by conniving, greedy plutocrats such as Upton Hammersley, which
essentially limits the rights of the people and rejects the principles of
the Declaration. In so doing, Booth asks the audience to consider the
importance of returning to the founding promise.
Phillip is the model patriot-enthusiastic and youthful. He
has whole-heartedly embraced his identity as an American. Phillip even
suggests that revolution is a consequence of simply inhabiting the natural
the original scene, and why the original scene was altered to include Hamilton. However,
what is clear is that the New Jersey script retains the unflattering depiction of Hamilton.
He appears aggressive and eager to use force to express the government's power.
23
Booth, Letter to Mack, 21 January 1938.
24
Booth, Created Equal (Final Version), 1.1 0.6.
JoHN HuNTER Boom's C REATED EQUAL 75
environment of America, describing the air as "heady stuff to breathe,
pungent with freedom,- [sic] the freedom of a vast, new land far removed
from old world class tyranny."
25
For Phillip, the desire for freedom,
equality, and democracy and the willingness to fight for these ideals are
natural elements of America, but he acknowledges that "Mr. Jefferson
happened to put it into words."
26
Phillip and Anne's courtship as a side-plot allows Booth to further
articulate the qualities the audience should admire about Phillip. During
their courtship, Phillip shares his hopes and dreams about his farm and life
in the frontier. In act 1, scene 13 Anne expresses surprise at Phillip's choice
to become a farmer in part because Phillip is a "gentleman." Phillip tells
Anne that he feels well suited to farming because "tis man's work," and
he explains his choice to move to the outer colonies as having to do with
his lack of patience with "old world snobbery," his desire to live where
"property is evenly distributed," and his laziness "about accumulating
things."27
Arguably, the United States' act of declaring independence from
England had much to do with issues of property, taxes, and the entire
capitalist enterprise. Likewise, Westward expansion served to open not
only new land for American settlements but also new markets for tradeable
goods. Phillip's speech, however, creates an alternate "historical" narrative
and creates a positive value system that encompasses a manly willingness
to work hard and eschew "things." Booth's depiction of a belief system
that gave the lack of money, comfort, and material things a positive value
would likely appeal to the depression era audience for whom money,
comfort, and material things were unattainable.
28
Phillip is a critical participant in the new nation, both in the sense
that he is an important figure in the new nation and that he thinks about
his responsibilities as an American citizen. In act 1, scene 11 the people
are asked to ratify the new Constitution and Phillip resists, asking Upton
"This proposed Constitution,- [sic] is it the creation of the whole people?
Or is it the work of a small group of men?"
29
His searching questions
illustrate his understanding that for the government to truly represent the
people, it must be created by the people.
25
Ibid., 1.5.3.
26
lbid.
27
Ibid., 1.13.9- 10.
28
Barbara Melosh identifies a focus on representing the importance of "manly"
work as a feature of New Deal art and theatre in her book Engendering Culture: Manhood and
Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater.
29
Booth, Creattd Equal (Final Version), 1.11.3.
76 SWEIGART-GAllAGHER
After Anne and Phillip are married, Booth uses their relationship
as another means by which to cast Phillip as a hero and as an ideal
American. In act 1, scene 15, Phillip and his new wife Anne are settling
in at their new farm. Anne asks Phillip earnestly, ''Am I making you a
proper wife, dearest?" This scene reinforces Barbara Melosh's contentions
about representations of gender in the Federal Theatre Project in her
book Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art in
Theater. Here Anne aspires to what Melosh articulates as the "comradely
ideal," wherein she will be a strong companion to Phillip, but one which
occupies a distinct and notably lower sphere in the hierarchical family.
30
Although this representation is clearly problematic in terms of a modern
notion of gender equality, the domestic scene between Anne and Phillip
functions to make Phillip a more likeable and heroic character. Anne
works hard on the farm, but she is clearly reliant on Phillip, reinforcing
his status as breadwinner and protector. In the play Phillip becomes a
model patriarch and an alternative Founding Father, particularly because
his descendants are featured in subsequent scenes, which gives his critique
in this scene weight.
While the scene begins with a focus on the domestic priorities
of a young marriage, it ends with Phillip's violent arrest and is followed
by his humiliating execution. Booth's choice to stage this unjustified force
makes Phillip a martyr to the cause of equality, and reinforces his notion
that the United States has not fulfilled the promise of the Declaration.
In fact, it supports his argument that a government guided solely by the
original Constitution harms American citizens, an argument that Booth
elaborates on in the scenes that address the inequitable treatment of
African-Americans.
The slave auction scene (act 1, scene 13), the disturbing interlude
set in 1820 in which two columns of slaves are whipped and demanded
to sing (act 2, scene 3), and the scene regarding the Dred Scott decision
(act 2, scene 4) point out the contradictions and hypocrisy of the
reverence for the idea of equality in light of the facts of slavery.
31
Booth
uses announcements by the loudspeaker between scenes to suggest that
amendments to the Constitution, such as the thirtheenth, have brought
African-Americans closer to the ideal of equality, and thus have helped
bring all Americans closer to the ideals set forth in the Declaration of
Independence.
30
Barbara Melosh, Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public
Art and Theater (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).
31
These scenes are present in the "New Jersey" script, but due to the merging of
scenes their scene numbers do not correspond to those listed above.
JoHN HUNTER BooTH's CREATED EQUAL 77
The slave auction appears early in the play (act 1, scene 12).
32
Both the "Final Version" and the "New Jersey" script use a Loud Speaker
announcement to make the transition between the prior scene and the
slave auction, but the "New Jersey" script's Loud Speaker frames the scene
specifically as a moment of hypocrisy. The "Final Version" transitions
through a description of what happened in time:
At the first session of the first Congress twelve
amendments to the Constitution were proposed, ten of
which constituting a Bill of Rights, were in the course of
time ratified by the required number of States and made
law.
33
The "New Jersey" script, however, goes much further. In it Booth
describes the ten amendments that made up the Bill of Rights as the
"guarantees of the people's freedom."
34
The Loudspeaker continues:
But throughout the nation the people's freedom was
being betrayed.
New York-the capital city-1789.
Precisely to whom did the self-evident truths apply?
And how sure is freedom for white skin when black is
held slave?
35
This announcement very pointedly questions the reality of the freedoms
promised in the Constitution. More importantly it clearly connects black
and white freedom, making the lack of freedom for blacks both a slippery
slope for the infringement on the rights of whites, as well as an example
of the way in which freedoms were denied "throughout the nation."
36
Booth's critique that the nation has failed to live up to the
principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence becomes most
severe as the chronicle approaches the 1920s and what would have
been present day (1938). In these scenes the refrain of "created equal"
32
In the "New Jersey" script, the slave auction scene is actually act 1, scene 11.
33
Booth, Created Equal (Final Version), 1.12.62
34
Booth, Created Equal (New Jersey Script), n.pag.
35
Jbid.
36
ln my 2008 dissertation, "Performing the Promise of Democracy: The Federal
Theatre Project's (Re)I maginings of American National Community," I discuss this scene
and the role of Amanda, the only slave character given a name or a moment of resistance
in greater detail. Elizabeth A. Osborne also addresses this scene in detail in her 2011 book.
78
SWEIGART- G .\il.AGHER
is replaced with a denouncement of money-changers and those who act
purely in self-interest.
37
This point is particularly true of act 2, scene 9 in
which several characters known only as Plutocrats 1, 2, etc. and ominous
voices from offstage are seen buying and selling stocks amid headlines
announced onstage by reporters and newspaper boys about breadlines
and World War L Prior to this scene the Loud Speaker comments on the
action to follow, suggesting that the United States had fallen prey to the
tyranny of a plutocracy:
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the
power of the industrial overlords ... increased with giant
strides. The government (was) practically impotent. The
country knew "the vulgar tyranny of mere wealth .. _ the
tyranny of plutocracy.
38
These tyrannical Plutocrats and their offstage counterparts, who are
named by the offstage voices as Standard Oil, Amalgamated Copper,
United States Steel, Rockefeller, Morgan, Hariman, Spreckels, Swift,
Armour, Astor, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt focus solely on money. Their only
reactions to the alarming headlines announced onstage are to change their
investment strategies. Booth depicts these plutocrats as being in collusion
with political bosses, thus denying the people true democracy. Together
they complain about the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, which
provided for the direct election of senators by the people rather than the
state legislature. The Boss says, "From now on the people elect their own
senators-the people! What's America coming to anyhow?"
39
Booth would seem to be asking the same question as he stages the
stock market crash of 1929, and the breadlines which follow (see Figures
1 and 2). However, in the final scene of the play Booth brings some hope
back to the proceedings, suggesting as he does so that it is still possible
to fulfill the promise of government by and, perhaps more importantly,
for the people that Booth argues was set forth in the Declaration of
Independence. In the final scene various workmen gather on stage. Stage
directions suggest that "carpenters are erecting a cottage" on the spot
37
Itis tempting to imagine if Booth's arguments about the role of the Constitution
in the creating and maintaining a plutocracy, as well as the danger of such a plutocracy,
would hold sway for a contemporary audience. The play seems to have regained some of
its initial resonance given the financial meltdown of 2008 and subsequent recession, as well
as the Supreme Court's recent, and somewhat controversial, ruling in the Citizen's United
case, which has released a torrent of money into the American political system.
38
Booth, Created Equal (Final Version) Interscene, n.pag.
39
lbid., 2.7.5.
jOHN H uNTER BooTH's CREATED E QUAL
79
Figw:e 1. "Stock Market Crash," Boston Production of Created Equal, Copely Theatre.
Original contained within Bound Production Bulletin at National Archives.
Figw:e 2. "Breadlines," Boston Production of Created Equal, Copely Theatre.
Original contained within Bound Production Bulletin at National Archives.
where the Throne of the first scene stood.
40
Near this cottage male laborers
are building a roadway with picks and shovels, and women sit "about on
the steps ... busily engaged in sewing shirts, overalls, etc."
41
At times they
speak in choral groups, advancing the sense that they are unified in their
40
lbid., 2.10.1.
41
Ibid., The inclusion of women in this scene appears to be a revision. Other
versions of the script do not explicitly detail women engaged in labor on stage. The
"New Jersey" script also fails to note the role of women in its stage directions. The "Final
Version" assigns lines specifically to groups of women, but the "New Jersey" script does
not. Images from the Boston production show women on stage.
80
SWEIGART- GALLAGHER
action. As individuals they hold their various tools and announce their
professions and/ or socioeconomic status prior to the depression:
1ST LABORER: (with a shovel) Rich man!
2ND LABORER: (with a pick) Poor man!
3RD LABORER: (with a shovel) Beggar man!
4TH LABORER: (with a pick) Thief!
1 ST CARPENTER (with a saw) Doctor!
2No CARPENTER (with a adze) Lawyer!
3RD CARPENTER (a negro preferably, with a hatchet)
Indian Chie!
42
This section of dialogue is based on the children's nursery rhyme, "Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier, Spy," which has British origins and American versions. It
is counting game used to select someone or something, similar to the
children's rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe." In this scene no individual is
singled out or selected, however. The 1 sr Laborer's next line, "Such we used
to be - now with millions more. We are depression's rank and file" breaks
the rhyme, and this conclusion suggests the impact of the depression
has brought them all low, and has, ironically, brought them equality.
43
Booth suggests that there is opportunity in this shared experience of the
depression, but he is not content to suggest that equality is only possible
when everyone is destitute.
The play's ending suggests a hope that the nation is still capable
of returning to its original ideal that all men are created equal. It does so
by reflecting New Deal rhetoric about the importance of solidarity and the
strength of a government responsive to the needs of "the people." In the
final scene, workmen gather onstage and begin to shovel, saw, and build.
They announce to the audience all of the factors standing in their way
towards equality and overcoming the hardships of the Depression, but they
do so in a way that suggests they are willing to fight together to overcome
these issues. This sense of fighting together for the common good is in
line with the Roosevelt administration's solution to the depression. In fact,
the play suggests that Roosevelt's work programs would bring about the
democracy promised by the Declaration of Independence:
42
Ibid., The stage direction about the "negro" actor reveals some of the
problematic racial depictions staged by the Federal Theatre. That said, the production of
Created Equal was lauded by Flanagan as an example of collaboration between different
Federal Theatre units. Both the Italian and the Negro Unit in Boston participated in this
production.
43
Booth, Created Equal (Final Version), 2.1 0.2.
joHN H UN'IER BoOTH's CREATED EQuAL
2ND MAN GROUP: With hammer, with saw, Huh!
HALF OF 1ST MAN GROUP: We'll build a
Commonwealth-
2ND HALF OF 1 STMAN GROUP: of true Democracy.
44
81
The use of choral groups literally and figuratively brought the individual
laborers together. Photographs from the Boston production also suggest
that these sentiments were also realized in the staging of the piece.
45
In the
Boston production the cast stood in a choral arrangement on the risers of
the set, literally bringing the workmen together in unified groups.
The final message of the play from the unified laborers is one
of defiance and hope for the future. The 1" Carpenter announces to the
audience that the "spirit that inspired our Declaration is still on the job"
and that the laborers, carpenters, and workmen will not give up on the
ideals of equality and democracy.
46
He appeals to the entire group and to
the audience at the end of the show, and engages with a call and response
with the rest of the characters. He asks them, "Does the vision of equality
still persist?" Everyone on stage answers ''Yes!"
47
After the call and
response the 1" Workman urges the other characters and the audience:
Then prove it! Now before it is too late! Let us reaffirm to
a world turning back to tyranny: "--that government
of the people,
(Both groups join their voices to his)
by the people,
(Loud Speaker in back of theatre auditorium takes up
the chant)
And for the people,
Shall not perish from the earth."
48
This type of choral staging, call and response, and appeal directly to the
audience is a common feature in Federal Theatre productions, particularly
the Living Newspapers. Photographs from the Boston production show
44
Ibid., 2.1 0.5.
45
Given that the Boston production was a restaging of an earlier production in
Springfield, Massachusetts and that the technical drawings of the set used in the Boston
production are similar (if not the same) to those of the original production in Springfield,
it seems likely that the staging of the actors was similar as well.
46
Booth, Created Equal (Final Version), 2.1 0.5.
47
Ibid., 2.1 0.5- 6.
48
Ibid.
82 SWEIGART- G AU.AGHER
the chorus of workmen posed with arms raised, some carrying their tools
(see Figure 3). In fact, the final pose is very similar to the photographs
of other Federal Theatre productions, in which the entire cast fills the
stage and creates a pose or final image (see Figures 4 and 5). For Booth,
patriotism is marked by collective action against efforts to derail the
promise of American democracy contained within the Declaration of
Independence.
Figure 3. "Final Pose," Boston Production of Created Equal, Copely Theatre.
Original contained within Bound Production Bulletin at National Archives.
Used with permission of the National Archives and Records Administration.
Whose message is it?: Federal Theatre Attempts to Control
the Message of Created Equal
The play's ending was a source of considerable discussion and
consternation between Federal Theatre administrators and Booth, and
reflects some of the measures taken to control the message set forth
in Federal Theatre productions through a vetting process that included
regional and national staff. Jon B. Mack, the Federal Theatre's Massachusetts
director, proposed the play for production. George Gerwig, assistant
director of the Eastern region approved the script, prior to it being
forwarded on to John McGee, in the national office. In addition to these
individuals, Booth had to submit his script to the National Service Bureau
(NSB) for review, approval, and revision.
49
Mack and others routinely sent
49
The NSB was also called the Play Bureau and Play Policy Board. The NSB
JoHN H uNTER BooTH's CREATED EQUAL
83
Figure 4. "Finale" of 1935. New York, NY, 1935.
Figure 5. "Finale" of Power, New York, NY, 1937.
Booth requests and suggestions for revisions, and are largely responsible
for the various incarnations of the script. Suggestions continued to pour
in as the play entered rehearsal, with administrators sending official memos
with rehearsal notes about everything from line readings to costumes. 5
provided Federal Theatre staff with scripts and technical service. It also organized the
lending of equipment and personnel between different Federal Theatre projects, as well as
between the Federal Theatre and community and educational groups.
50
Without access to all drafts of the play and all letters and memos, it is impossible
to fully delineate Booth's original ideas and those of the Federal Theatre administrators and
artists who provided him with feedback. However, the letters, memos, and scripts available
84
S\\:'EIGART-G.\LLAGHER
In a memorandum to Mack dated November of 1937, Robert
Russell, director of the Service Bureau for the East, suggested that Booth
make revisions to the last few scenes. Russell put forth the following
suggestions:
Scene 8-eliminate references to RFC plan, eliminate
use [of] "Herbie" and other truculent comments on the
former administration. The press reaction to this is a
forgone conclusion.
51
As evidenced by the production copies of the script, Booth addressed
Russell's concern about the press reaction and about his "truculent
comments." In the same memorandum, Russell suggested completely
removing a scene about the Bonus Marchers and eliminating all "references
to the [Roosevelt] administration" in the final two scenes.
52
Despite
Russell's concern and Mack's obvious criticism, Booth did not remove
explicit references to the administration, but he did remove the offending
references to Hoover, the RFC, and the Bonus Marchers.
53
Converse
Tyler, supervisor of the Federal Theatre's Playreader Department, also
suggested major revisions to the ending. 5
4
in the Federal Theatre records at the Library of Congress and National Archives suggest
that Booth appears to have accommodated and/ or addressed many of the complaints and
concerns raised by Federal Theatre administrators, although not necessarily to his critics'
satisfaction.
51
Robert Russell Memorandum Re: Created Equal to Jon B. Mack, 10 November
1937. National Office General Correspondence, 1936-1939, Records of the Federal
Theatre Project, Works Project Administration, Record Group 69, National Archives at
College Park, College Park, MD.
52
Ibid., 1.
sJ As Osborne astutely observes in chapter two of her book, early versions of
the script, which contain descriptions of the federal work programs as "sop to millions"
and as "a compromise," align the work programs with previous failures on the part of
our Founding Fathers (67). These versions of the script, however, do not feature any of
the offending references to Hoover, the RFC, or the Bonus Marchers. In fact, none of
the scripts I .reviewed from the Library of Congress or George Mason contain any direct
references to Hoover, the RFC, or the Bonus Marchers, making it likely that Russell's
comments are based on a version now lost.
54
In his "Playreader Report for Created Equal," dated 14 January 1938, Tyler
recommended replacing the final scene, a now lost scene in which the Schuyler family was
interviewed, with a final scene (much like the one present in the versions reviewed here) in
which the crowd reappears, giving the audience an opportunity to "see them [the crowd]
straining onward toward the goal of greater democracy, so that the play would end on
a tremendous crescendo of mass movement and emotion." Although Booth responded
point by point to Tyler's criticisms in a separate memorandum to Jon B. Mack, Booth
JoHN H u NTER BooTH's CREATED EQUAL 85
While Russell and Mack hoped to avoid conflict by limiting the
play's references to the administration, the most likely performance texts
support Booth's assertion that he supported the President's policies and
wanted to suggest their promise. In fact, at times the dialogue of Created
Equal appears almost lifted from some of FDR's speeches. The "Final
Version" contains the following announcement prior to the final scene:
"In the national election of 1932 history repeated itself. Again the party of
the people was swept into office."
55
This reference to the Administration
affirms the play's support of New Deal programs, as well as the extent to
which the Federal Theatre productions were and could be used in ways
similar to legitimate the New Deal and Roosevelt's approach to the various
crises of the Great Depression. 56
A month prior to the play's opening in Springfield and six weeks
after the exchange of letters and memorandum between Mack, Tyler, and
Booth, Flanagan also suggested a revision to the ending. In a memorandum
to Robert Russell dated 23 March 1938, Flanagan writes:
I found the first part of it absorbing but I felt from the
time the author plunged into the modern scene the play
fell completely to pieces. I should emphatically protest
the scenes having to do with the Government work
program since I think it casts a decided slur on all of
our projects ... I do not suggest that you cancel the
production of the play but I should like to think that Mr.
Booth will rewrite the last part.
In a subsequent letter to Mack, Booth dismissed Flanagan's request,
suggesting that she must not have read the most recent version of the
script.
57
Flanagan's request for a change in the ending, and the subsequent
cancellation of region-wide performances demonstrates an expectation
of institutional control over the play's outlook, and the willingness to alter
production plans when such control was subverted. The cancellation and
requests for changes also reveal the political savvy of Flanagan and her
staff. Given the scrutiny under which the Federal Theatre operated, they
clearly seems to have taken Tyler's suggestions.
55
Booth, Created Equal (Final Version), n.pag.
56
The New Jersey Version of the script goes even further by referencing specific
executive orders put forward by the administration.
57
Booth, Letter to Jon B. Mack, 26 March 1938, National Office General
Correspondence, 1936-1939, Records of the Federal Theatre Project, Works Project
Administration, Record Group 69, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
86
SWEIGART-GAll.AGHER
attempted to shape the play's ending to be less overt in its condemnation
of earlier administrations and in its praise of the Roosevelt administration's
work programs.
Regardless of initial doubts and the squabbles over the
ending, after the play went into production, Federal Theatre staff and
administrators supported, defended, and extensively promoted the play
as "a dramatization of the Birth and Growth of the American Spirit."
58
Robert Johnston headed up the publicity efforts for the Massachusetts
productions. He and other staff heavily promoted the play on radio, in
print, and even in a series of filmed advertisements at Paramount and
Plaza owned movie theatres. All of these efforts focused on the fact that
the play celebrated American history and American democracy. Johnston
and his staff used this same rhetoric to seek endorsements of the play
from prominent political and social figures and community organizations
in order to connect the play to American cultural institutions. Congressman
Charles Clason described the play as a "valuable contribution to the civic
and cultural life of our community," which served to "stimulate the
appreciations of the glorious history of our nation."
59
All of Johnston's
promotional efforts indicate a desire to connect the play to national ideals
as well as legitimate and promote the Federal Theatre's production of the
play (as well as seeing it) as a patriotic act.
In a similar move to underscore the play's patriotic message,
Johnston wrote a dedication that appeared in the playbills for all of the
Massachusetts productions. It read:
To those keen students of American History, who re-
live in their thoughts the trails and vicissitudes of their
forefathers-to the boys and girls on whose minds are
now impressed the deeds of our most illustrious great-
to the patriotic American whose most glorious inheritance
is the noble thought and daily prayer that America will
always be supreme-to that solid great majority of our
citizenry from which emanates the continual flow of
ideals that still allows for a spirit of fair play- and lastly,
in respectful reverence to those most worthy souls and
spirits, whose very deeds and acts we are dramatizing
58
Created Equal Promotional Poster, n.d. , Boston Production, Federal Theatre
Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
59
Charles Clason, Letter to Willard Dashell, 6 May 1938, Bound Summary of
Press Efforts. Vassar Collection of Programs and Promotional Materials, 1935-1937,
Records of the Federal Theatre Project, Works Project Administration, Record Group 69,
National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
joHN HuNTER Boarn's CREATED EQUAL
tonight, does the FEDERAL THEATRE dedicate this
world premiere of "CREATED EQUAL."
60
87
This dedication clearly seeks to stress the patriotism of the play and the
ideas contained therein.
61
Despite attempts to stress the historic aspect and patriotic message
of the play in Massachusetts, when a Federal Theatre unit in New Jersey
began rehearsals for Created Equal, the play suddenly became the source of
controversy. Notably, this controversy began within the Federal Theatre.
In Arena Flanagan describes "rumblings, rebellions, [and] secret meetings,"
which resulted in about half the cast signing a petition "declaring that
the play was 'un-American'."
62
The actors proceeded to send their report
to New Jersey Republican Representative Thomas Starnes, a member of
the Dies Committee who denounced Created Equal as "the most obvious,
unmistakable, blatant piece of New Deal propaganda anyone could
conceive" in a radio address on 12 September 1938.
63
That Created Equal fit New Deal rhetoric and promoted its ideals
so effectively was its strength as a piece of "national theatre" and, in some
ways, its downfall. Like Representative Starnes, a reporter for the Boston
Christian Science Monitor drew a connection directly between Roosevelt's
New Deal and the final scene:
Mr Booth insists on the American ideal, and he has
written many eloquent lines in its defense. He has
weakened his argument somewhat by giving it a political
twist toward the end. President Roosevelt and the WPA
are held out as a long step toward the realization of the
Jeffersonian aims.
64
60
Bound Summary of Press Efforts for Created Equal, Vassar Collection of
Programs and Promotional Materials, 1935-193 7, Records of the Federal Theatre Project,
Works Project Administration, Record Group 69, National Archives at College Park,
College Park, MD.
61
The dedication's reverent tone is also reminiscent of the early scenes of the
play in which "created egual" becomes the prayer on everyone's lips.
62
Hallie Flanagan, Arena (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940), 255.
63
Transcript of Radio Address, 12 September 1938. Records of the Federal
Theatre Project, Works Project Administration, Record Group 69, National Archives
at College Park, College Park, MD. Starnes role on the Dies Committee likely played a
decisive role in Created Equal being one of the few plays criticized by name during the
Committee's investigation into the Federal Theatre.
64
L.A.S., "History Dramatized," Boston Christian Science Monitor, 14 June 1938.
Boston Production Bulletin, Bound Federal Theatre Project Production Bulletins, 1936-
88 S\VEIGARTGALLAGHER
It seems likely that a politically savvy player such as Flanagan foresaw the
reaction of critics such as Starnes and the reporter for the Chnstian Science
Monitor to Booth's exuberant endorsement of the federal work programs,
hence the cancellation of the region-wide performances. However,
she did not cancel the production entirely. Instead, Federal Theatre
officials espoused their desire to produce the play due to its promotion
of democracy and its historical content, even while they argued with
Booth over the extent to which the play should praise the administration,
promote its policies, and criticize the previous administration. Federal
Theatre officials interfered throughout the writing process to help shape
the image of America and democracy being espoused by the play, but
they also suggested through their promotional efforts that the script's
Jeremiah-like appeal for the nation to fulfill the promise of democracy
was pure patriotism.
Flanagan's efforts, as well as those by regional administrators,
indicate an organized attempt on the part of Federal Theatre administrators
to use the bureaucracy of play approval boards to assert control over the
artistic output of Federal Theatre playwrights and employees, as well
as the limits of the approval boards' power or willingness to insist on
absolute control. Thus, Created Equal demonstrates the ongoing battles
between individual artists and the national office as it attempted to assert
a certain measure of control over its regionally dispersed national theatre,
and to shape its national theatre into its desired image.
Booth's Created Equal also illustrates the Federal Theatre's
attempts to create a national theatre that would educate its audience about
American history and mythology. Perhaps more importantly, the play
serves as a Jeremiad for democracy, calling for a return to the promise
of democracy present at the time of America's founding. Unfortunately,
the Federal Theatre's efforts to promote Created Equal as such were not
successful in the long term. Ultimately, the play was a calculated risk that
backfired, resulting in further controversy when the Federal Theatre tried
to expand the play's reach by moving it to New Jersey.
1939, Records of the Federal Theatre Project, Works Project Administration, Record
Group 69, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
JoURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 24, NO.2 (SPRING 2012)
"His OWN HousE OF THOUGHT": THORNTON WILDER's
"AMERICAN LONELINESS" AND THE CONSOLATION OF THEATRE
Timothy Youker
Although he never said as much himself, it seems clear that theatre was a
religion unto itself for Thornton Wilder. His earliest dramatic experiments
have the stringent intensity of a monk's devotionals; his mature plays,
with their cosmic, mythical themes, read like attempts at an American
Standard Bible for the stage. While the exact nature of Wilder's religious
beliefs at any given point in his life can prove difficult to ascertain, he
always seemed to possess an abiding faith in the power of drama to
bridge the often yawning gap between individual minds and pull together
disparate collections of individuals into temporary communities. Both
methodologically and thematically, Wilder's plays reflect a deep desire
to use the cooperative work of representation and performance to cure
the existential loneliness that was fundamental to his own exceptionalist
definition of American character.
The most central features of Wilder's dramaturgy- the eschewal
of representative scenery, the use of the Stage Manager, the emphasis
on liveness-are already widely discussed in existing critical literature, as
are the essential aspects of Wilder's cultural and historical philosophy.
However, very few studies have attempted to lay out a satisfying argument
that integrates the philosophy and the dramaturgy into a unified explication
of Wilder's creative sensibility.
1
For the most part, studies of Wilder make
a point of noting the supposed incongruity of Wilder's ideology and
staging preferences. The general tendency is to view his dramatic oeuvre
as an idiosyncratic hodgepodge assembled by a literary magpie. In fact,
reading Wilder's plays alongside his essays and lectures, paying particular
attention to the early, experimental one-acts, clarifies how Wilder's vision
of the communal, historical, and national self informed his dramaturgical
choices. What emerges is that Wilder's frequent praise of individualism
and of a participatory model of theatrical hermeneutics stands in tension
with a seeming tendency of his plays to communicate a longing for de-
1
Christopher Wheatley, in his work on Wilder and American Realism, has
performed some work toward constructing such an argument, and Lincoln Konkle's recent
monograph on Wilder tries to present a latent inheritance of a "Puritan narrative tradition"
as the unifying element. See Christopher ]. Wheatley, "Thornton Wilder, the Real, and
Theatrical Realism," in &a/ism and the American Dramatic Tradition, ed. William W Demastes
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999), 139-55; Lincoln Konkle, Thornton Wilder
and the Puritan Narrative Tradition (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006).
90
YouKER
individuating assimilation into collective bodies. His ambivalent grappling
with the problem of self-reliance-that is, with the plight of a subject
who desires independence from norms and traditions yet is shadowed
by a feeling that such independence is socially isolating and spiritually
unsatisfying-provides the intellectual motor for many of his plays.
If one were to define the American character in the way that
Wilder's friend Gertrude Stein did-as living in "a space that is filled with
moving,"
2
occupied with "disconnecting some thing from anything"
3
-
then Wilder was certainly hard to outpace in his unflagging American-
ness. He spent his childhood and youth migrating from Wisconsin to
Hong Kong to Berkeley to Shanghai to Ojai to Berkeley again, and his
undergraduate education was interrupted by a junior-year transfer from
Oberlin to Yale. He spent his adult life shuttling between coasts and
continents, and while he claimed never to have "gone to Paris" in the
same sense that Hemingway or Fitzgerald did, he nonetheless participated
in the same paradox as his expatriate contemporaries, writing most of
his quintessentially ''American" works during months-long stays in hotel
rooms overlooking foreign metropolises. It should be no wonder, then,
that Wilder, who never had time to settle or connect with any place
or person or group, would devote so much of his artistic energies to
determining how to reconcile a fundamentally peregrine lifestyle with the
need to develop a sense of belonging.
Indeed, that issue was among Wilder's favorite lecture topics, as
demonstrated by the series of lectures published in the collection American
Characteristics. The American Characteristics lectures were delivered at Harvard
in 1950 when Wilder held the Norton Chair in Poetry, but many of the ideas
can be dated to at least as far back as 1937 when Wilder gave an address in
defense of American English to the Institut de Cooperation Intellectual of the
League of Nations. Wilder's stated objective in the lectures is to explain
how early American literature produced a new language suited to a people
who were "[nomads] in relation to space, disattached in relation to time,
lonely in relation to society, [and] insubmissive in relation to circumstance,
destiny, or God"
4
In the first lecture, "Toward an American Language,"
Wilder opens with some very telling remarks about the convention of the
lecture and how it relates to American attitudes toward authority:
When in impatience we hear ourselves saying "please
2
Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 49.
3
lbid., 53.
4
Thornton Wilder, American Characteristic and Other Ess'!)IS, ed. Donald Gallup
(New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 12. Hereafter cited in the text as Ess'!)ls.
"HIS OWN HOUSE OF THOUGHT"
don't lecture me!" what is meant is: "Kindly remember
that I am a free agent. Everything you say must be
passed upon by the only authority I recognize-my
own judgment" ... This does not mean Americans are
skeptical. Every American has a large predisposition to
believe that there is a truth for him and that he is in the
process of laying hold of it. He is building his own house
of thought. (Essays 5)
91
In large part, there is nothing terribly novel about Wilder's thinking here;
the exceptionalist myth of America as a land of dissenters and loners is as
old as the country itself. However, the image of the American "building
his own house of thought," surrounding himself with conceptions and
principles of his own devising, has significant implications. It suggests
that thought bas the power to separate at the same time that it shelters and
to enclose at the same time that it liberates. In other words, someone who
holds this '1\merican" attitude toward authority runs the risk of becoming
an interpretive community of one, denied the possibility of connecting to
others through a shared worldview. Wilder further addresses the issue of
isolation and belonging by differentiating an American's sense of place
from that of a European:
A European's environment is so pervasive, so dense, so
habitual, that it whispers to him that he is all right where
he is, he is at home and irreplaceable. His at-homeness is
related to the concrete things around him ... . Americans
are disconnected. They are exposed to all space and all
time. No place nor group nor moment can say to them:
we were waiting for you; it is right for you to be here.
Place and time, for them, are negative until they act upon
them, until they bring them into being. (Essays 14)
Wilder believes that while European identity is tied to the specificity of
a pre-existing setting, a locale in which one is simply a compositional
element whose function is predetermined by material circumstances,
American identity involves the active demarcation of unmarked space-
shaping one's setting rather than being shaped by it. Or, as Wilder put
it in his preliminary lecture notes: '1\n American does not feel that the
world was made for him," but rather assumes that meaning and order
must be constructed rather than inherited.
5
This construction takes place
5
Wilder, The Journals of Thornton Wilder, 1939-1961, ed. Donald Gallup, (New
92 YouKER
in an ahistorical landscape in which only one's own present actions bear
any importance. This is not to say that Wilder believes all Americans
are incurably lonely or that American communities cannot exist. Rather,
Wilder suggests that Americans cannot comfortably exist in communities
that in any fundamental, formal way pre-exist themselves or that derive
their legitimacy from an external authority.
6
This conception of the ''American" is, needless to say, a bit of
a simplification. Wilder does not take into account all of the different
forms of mobility (both voluntary and involuntary) that shaped the
United States, nor does he consider the possibility that some Americans,
particularly immigrant populations in urban centers, might occupy spaces
that are simultaneously fixed by economic forces beyond their control and
haunted by traces of ancestral homelands (i.e., the experience of space
and place that characterizes the American "apartment drama" from the
Yiddish Theatre to Lorraine Hansberry).
7
At several points in his plays-
particularly in Our Town-Wilder shows evidence of a more complex
understanding of how American communities inhabit places with far-
reaching histories, but the basic assertions about American character
that he presents in the Norton Lectures-that most Americans are
intellectually independent to the point of isolation, view space and place
as imminently plastic, and are uncommonly (and often painfully) aware of
the vastness of space and time-still substantially apply throughout his
dramatic works.
It has become a commonplace among Wilder scholars to point
to Gertrude Stein's intellectual influence as the source of these ideas
about American character. Certainly, Wilder and Stein were intimate
friends during the last decade of Stein's life, and one can very easily line
up excerpts from Stein's Lectures in America, Narration, or The Geographical
History o/ America with passages from Wilder's essays to pick out parallels.
8
Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 116. Hereafter cited in the text as journals.
6
Wilder himself considers in his journals a possible objection to this thesis:
"Am I, however, thinking only of the 'sensitive' American? These others-Westchester
County- are certainly frantically engaged in justifying themselves to themselves
through their belonging to the right crowd, and through their showing their money: a
dependence indeed. Which brings us back to the view I have so often taken, that the
American gregariousness is a real (but unrewarded, frustrated, and vain) attempt to create
a belonging" (journals 156).
7
One might also note the oversimplification in Wilder's statements about
European "rootedness," given the prominent role of displacement, diasporization, and
shifting national borders in the histories of many European peoples.
8
For examples of this, see Donald Haberman, The Plqys of Thornton Wilder: A
Cn"tical Study (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), or Paul Lifton, 'Vast
"H1s OWN HousE OF TJIOUGHT" 93
However, Stein's influence on Wilder has been widely overestimated.
While Stein clearly helped clarify Wilder's existing ideas and furnished
him with elements of a new vocabulary with which to describe those
ideas, Wilder always had a deep interest in the relationship between space,
thought, and authority in the (Anglo-)American experience, as he made
abundantly clear in early dramatic works such as Pullman Car Hiawatha.
Furthermore, many of the ideas that Stein posits in Lectures in America and
other such works can be found, albeit not in exactly the same words, in the
writings of the American Transcendentalists, in Melville and Whitman, in
frontier literature- all parts of the literary canon with which Wilder was
familiar since his early days as a New England schoolmaster and which he
continually cites in his journals.
The major peril that Wilder associated with rootless individualism
was something that he dubbed the American Loneliness. In his Norton
lecture on Thoreau, in which he describes the American Loneliness as
springing from "the sense of boundlessness ... related to the American
geography" and from certain Americans' desire to make "boundless .. .
demands" both on other people and on Portune (Essqys 36). When people
and things continually fail to live up to these boundless demands, the
result is a "proud loneliness" that disguises itself as salutary solitude, the
loneliness of Thoreau on Walden Pond and Emily Dickinson in her attic.
Wilder makes it clear that figures like Thoreau and Dickinson represent
outliers rather than the norm, but nonetheless contends that their isolation
stems from an intensification of a shared national trait.
Intense feelings of loneliness and detachment permeate many of
Wilder's plays, and occasionally those feelings come to rest on specific
characters who exemplify the tragic pitfalls of individualism. One of the
best examples is the character of Mrs. Churchill in Pullman Car Hiawatha.
In Pullman Car Hiawatha, a one-act written between 1928 and 1931, Wilder
seeks to depict a railroad sleeping car and its position "geographically,
meteorologically, astronomically, and theologically considered."
9
Mrs.
Churchill, identified in Wilder's text as "The Insane Woman," travels in
one of the train's private compartments with two attendants, seemingly on
her way to a mental institution. At the play's climax, when the archangels
Gabriel and Michael arrive to whisk a newly deceased passenger off to
the afterlife, Mrs. Churchill addresses a melancholy monologue to the two
Encyclopedia": The Theatre of Thornton Wilder (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995).
9
Wilder, Pullman Car Hiawatha, in The Collected Short Plqys of Thornton Wilder,
Volume I, ed. Donald Gallup and Tappan Wilder (New York: Theatre Communications
Group, 1997), 49. All plays collected in this volume are hereafter cited in the text as Short
Plays 1.
94
YoUKER
heavenly messengers. "No one understands me anymore," she says. ~ t last
I understand myself perfectly, but no one else understands a thing I say ...
everything is so childish, so absurd. They have no logic" (Short Plqys 55).
Wilder depicts madness and alienation as results of a discursive mismatch,
an inability or unwillingness by an individual to use the generally accepted
signs and procedures of her fellow humans. For Mrs. Churchill, this
unwillingness at least partly arises from her contempt for the immaturity
and stupidity of others. In this regard, Mrs. Churchill closely resembles
Wilder's reading of Thoreau, who Wilder claimed was deeply lonely
because of his desire to rethink everything "from scratch" and because
of his disappointment in the human race's inability to live up to his moral
and intellectual standards. Because Mrs. Churchill relies on her own modes
of thought, logic, and communication, she has become unintelligible to
others-trapped in a "house of thought" that has become a prison.
Later, in Our Town, Wilder assigns a similar role to Simon Stimson,
the drunken, misanthropic suicide whose tribulations provide the principal
source of "scandal" in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. Simon, the
church choir director who has suffered unspecified "troubles" and wasn't
"made for small town life," according to Dr. Gibbs, is largely shunned by
his neighbors, who gossip about him behind his back.
10
Before hanging
himself in his attic, Simon requests that his gravestone bear a sequence of
musical notes in place of an epitaph. This strange final marker, which the
other characters fail to decipher, demonstrates Simon's inability to express
himself in a language that was readable to his neighbors. His post mortem
speech in act 3 reflects this: "That's what it was to be alive. To move about
in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of
those .. . of those about you" (Three Plqys 101). For Simon, a man who
valued melody and harmony, life was nothing but a series of muddled and
discordant mishaps, in which people went around unwittingly offending
one another. The world had failed Simon, and in that sense he also
suffered from the Thoreauvian "proud loneliness" that Wilder describes
in his lecture.
In addition to the social dimension of Wilder's American
Loneliness, there is also a temporal dimension-the existential loneliness
of the finite individual who recognizes the vastness and inexorability
of rimeY One of Wilder's early plays, The Long Christmas Dinner, helps
10
Thornton Wilder, Three Plqys (New York: Harper & Row 1957), 40. Hereafter
cited in the text as Three Plqys.
11
Wilder was an avid reader of Kierkegaard (his last full-length play the Alcertiad
is intended to be a I<ierkegaardian gloss on Euripides), and he later became familiar with
the work of Sartre, translating the latter's play Morts sans sepulture as The Victors in 1948.
"His OWN HousE OF T HOUGHT" 95
illustrate this dimension. In The Long Christmas Dinner, Wilder compresses
ninety years worth of Bayard family Christmas gatherings into a single
dinner scene lasting approximately thirty minutes, in which the Bayards
consume invisible food with invisible forks and knives. Aside from the
white wigs that several characters don as a signal that old age has set in, the
passage of time is indicated entirely through physical cues. Two portals,
one indicating birth and the other death, stand at opposite ends of the
stage, and the periodic entrance of a nurse with a pram through the birth
portal indicates the arrival of a new child. As the play goes on, one Bayard
after another passes through the death portal; some stroll through the
doorway mid-conversation, representing the suddenness of death, while
others pause with trepidation on the brink before making their exits. The
number of deaths accumulates to the point where one character, the aging
spinster Genevieve (whom the audience has seen progress from girlhood
to adulthood to her autumn years), breaks into a fit, crying out: "I can't
stand it any more .. .It's not only the soot that comes through the very
walls of this house; it's the thoughts, it's the thought of what has been
and what might have been here. And the feeling about this house of the
years grinding awqy. My mother died yesterday-not twenty-five years ago"
(Short Plqys 1: 23). In the context of Wilder's play, Genevieve's outburst
is even truer than she knows, for in truth her mother exited through the
dark portal only about ten minutes earlier. The very form of the piece
emphasizes the "grinding away" of time.
In "Toward an American Language," Wilder hints at a preventative
for the American Loneliness, one that sounds a lot like his style of theatre:
There is only one way in which an American can feel
himself to be in relation to other Americans-when he
is united with them in a project, caught up in an idea and
propelled with them into the future ... "I am I," he says,
"because my plans characterize me." (Essqys 16-1 7)
That final sentence is Wilder's response to the nursery rhyme, quoted
repeatedly by Gertrude Stein in The Geographical History of America, in
which an old woman says "I am I because my little dog knows me.'
112
Wilder posits against this purely relational sense of identity a scheme in
which a communal "project" becomes a source of shared identity and a
shared future. Rather than associating with one another on the basis of
past events and relations, Wilder's Americans choose their comrades on
12
Stein, The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the
Human Mind (New York: Random House, 1985), 108.
96 YouKER
the basis of future events and relations stemming from cooperative effort.
The kind of "project" to which Wilder refers here requires a combination
of creative collaboration and a collective motion forward through time,
"caught up in an idea." While many different kinds of projects might fit
these parameters, the first that comes to mind, given Wilder's own oeuvre,
is theatre.
In fact, according to Wilder's essay "Some Thoughts on
Playwriting," theatre's most fundamental features are the very qualities
that Wilder associates with the vital projects that he alludes to in "Toward
an American Language." Theatre, he writes:
I. Reposes on the work of many collaborators
II. Is addressed to the group mind
III. Takes place in a perpetual present time. (Essqys 115)
By "the work of many collaborators," Wilder alludes not only to the
interaction of actors, directors, and designers but also to the "collaborative
activity of the spectator's imagination" (124). In other words, a play, when
properly mounted, "catches up" performers and spectators alike into the
act of creating art. As a result, an assembly of individuals who may have
nothing at all in common outside of the theatre become participants in
a gestalt consciousness inside the theatre. Though this is not, literally,
the sense in which Wilder himself means "group mind" (which for him
simply means "the general body of common people"), Wilder clearly
valued theatre's ability to invoke an imaginary sodality.
Theatre becomes communal and atemporal by connecting the
specific circumstances of characters to what Wilder, his preface to Three
Plqys, calls "the realm of idea and type and universal" (Three Plqys xi). In
"Some Thoughts on Playwriting," Wilder bases this claim on his own
reading of the ancient Greek approach to character. "For the Greeks,"
he writes, "there was no pretense that Medea was on the stage. The mask,
the costume, the mode of declamation were a series of signs which the
spectator interpreted and reassembled in his own mind" (Essqys 123).
By citing Medea rather than trying to be Medea, an actor relies upon the
audience's ability to recognize and interpret particular sign systems, an
approach that Wilder believes is more conducive to an audience's belief
and investment in what it is watching than the "pretense" of a character
(or, as he discusses elsewhere, a moment from the past) being brought to
life onstage.
Wilder's reference to a "perpetual present time" (a term not
unfamiliar to pragmatist thinkers of an earlier generation, though their
"HIS OWN HOUSE OF THOUGHT" 97
usage of it was slightly different) echoes a remark from the Norton
Lectures, in which he avers that one of the principle aims of Melville's
prose was "to give even to the past tenses the feeling of a 'continuous
present,' a door open to the future, a recovery of the we-don't-know-
what-will-happen" (Essqys 29). Wilder's ideal theatre, like Melville's
writings, aims to abolish chronology and therefore make even narrated
past events seemingly susceptible to refashioning. History is no longer a
vast, unaccommodating expanse in which the individual occupies a single,
insignificant point; it is instead something that one can annex into the
present through the imaginative labor of narration. Theatre, to borrow
Wilder's own words, allows people to be "united" and "caught up" in a
project, "propelled ... into the future."
The individual and internal nature of truth for Wilder's American
demands that no interpretation of the world be dictatorially foisted
on him or presented in any manner that forecloses alternate visions
or formulations of what he is being shown. Hence, the elimination of
representational scenery was, for Wilder, a curtailment of the authority
of the writer and director. The bourgeois realist drama, in which the fixed
specificity of the stage setting precludes the option of building one's own
"house of thought," is unacceptable for the same reasons that a lecture
is unacceptable. A theatre of "collaborative imagination," however, turns
the experience of the play into the composite product of individual
subjectivities-a "shared project" that pulls the singular, lonely American
into something greater than himself and that somehow exceeds the sum
of its parts.
There are some superficial resemblances to Brechtian Epic
Theatre here, which have led to critical comparisons between Wilder
and Brecht, but their respective aims are not the same.
13
While Wilder
shared Brecht's interest in gesture, parable, and a transparent theatrical
apparatus, Wilder's goal was not Brechtian distancing but an elimination
of externals in order to facilitate active absorption in the dramatic action.
Furthermore, the collective or "group mind" in Wilder is not associated
with class or class consciousness; in fact, Wilder's collectives are usually
characterized by a classlessness that Brecht would criticize as ahistorical. It
is the supposed capacity for collectives to transcend social distinctions and
13
Critical compare/ contrast of Wilder and Brecht used to be a common
exercise. See, for example, Francis Fergusson, ''Three Allegorists: Brecht, Wilder, Eliot,"
The Sewanee Review 64:4 (Fall 1956), 544-73; C. H. Helmetag, "Mother Courage and Her
American Cousins," Modern Language Studies 8:3 (Autumn 1978), 65-69; and Lifton's chapter
on Brechtian parallels in A Vast Enryclopedia. Eric Bentley notes that certain associates of
Brecht referred to Our Town as "a 'steal' from Brecht." For more on this, see Eric Bentley,
Bentley on Brecht (Evanston [Reprint]: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 402-03.
98
YouKER
to link individuals to transhistorical processes that give them their allure for
Wilder.
Wilder does, however, demonstrate a Germanic cast to his thinking
about history and creativity in his essay "Goethe and World Literature."
There, Wilder makes a case for Goethe's idea of the ewig Wirkende
("Eternally Fashioning Principle" is Wilder's gloss), the God-in-Nature that
guides the entire world in its striving. "The world and each one of us in
it," Wilder writes, "are the collaborators on our ultimate form ("ultimate"
itself only applicable to a stage, since the operation is eternal)" (Essqys 145).
This theory about life and history, which participates in a long tradition
of German thought that includes Herder, Fichte, and Hegel, is one that
Wilder clearly took to heart, as identical sentiments repeatedly come out of
the mouth of the Stage Manager in Our Town, who twice mentions nature's
"pushing and contriving" to bring certain couples together with the aim
of making "the perfect human being," and who in his final speech notes:
"Only this [planet] is straining away, straining away all the time to make
something of itself. The strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody
lies down and gets a rest" (Three Plqys 46, 71, 103). Our Town portrays the
entire species as imbued with the spirit of Goethe's ewig Wirkende, endlessly
striving for a perfect performance of humanness, engaged in a rehearsal
process that, like Zeno's tortoise, will never reach its final objective, but
which still continues to creep forward. Most humans, of course, have at
most an intuitive awareness of this grand project, but one of the purposes
of Wilder's drama is to make his audience explicitly aware of what,
according to Our Town's Stage Manager, only the "saints and poets" (Three
Plays 100) fully appreciate.
14
Again, it is tempting to attribute Wilder's thoughts about "type and
universal" and the "perpetual present" to Stein. One of the major bases
for this thinking is Wilder's preface to The Geographical History of America,
in which he summarizes Stein's points on the difference between Human
Nature and Human Mind:
Human Nature clings to identity, its insistence on itself
as personality, and to do this it must employ memory and
the sense of audience ... the Human Mind, however, has no
identity; at every moment "it knows what it knows when it
knows it." It gazes at pure existing. (Essqys 187-88)
14
Wilder's journals suggest that he genuinely believed in the ewig Wirkende idea (See
journals 75). He also sketched out a fragmentary essay draft on Religion" in which
he suggested that a true American cannot comfortably worship an anthropomorphic god,
leaving reverence for an evolutionary "life-force" as the only suitable form of spirituality
Uournais 116).
"Hrs OWN HousE OF T HOUGHT" 99
Stein herself links the strength or weakness of Human Mind to geography,
noting that the island-bound are much more inclined toward Human
Nature, whereas those who live in a country like America, which has "more
space where nobody is than where anybody is," are more associated with
Human Mind.
15
Significantly, however, Stein excludes speech from the
province of Human Mind. "The human mind," she says, "is not the same as
human speech. Has one anything to do with the other is writing a different
thing, oh yes ... writing has nothing to do with the human speech and with
human nature."
16
Speech is physical, temporal, and other-directed, and
therefore cannot be the same thing as Human Mind. Stein only regards the
timeless immateriality of text as above the ignorance and vicissitudes of
Human Nature. For Wilder, however, orality was an extremely important
part of the creation and continuation of shared ideas. Many of his plays,
including the supposedly Steinian Our Tmvn, rely on the power of speech
to perform actions in the present tense. If the Human Nature/Human
Mind dichotomy did inform Wilder's dramaturgical choices, it did so only
insofar as Wilder was able to revise Stein's thinking to accommodate ideas
he had already developed through his own earlier work.
17
It seems more helpful to attribute Wilder's preoccupation with
abstraction to his own constantly evolving engagement with ideist
perspectives on creation and subjecthood. In his early three-minute play
Centaurs, the late Percy Shelley interrupts a performance of Ibsen's The
Master Builder to inform the audience that before he died, he was "full of
a poem to be called The Death of a Centaur," and that upon his death, the
idea for this unwritten poem ascended into the ether, where Ibsen "caught
it and wrote in down," creating The Master Builder. Shelley explains that
"the stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting
to be clothed with words," that the "mere language" of a masterpiece is
"the least of its offerings" (Short Plqys 2: 42-3). A "masterpiece," here,
is a manifestation of a free-floating Idea (in a Platonic sense) that exists
independent of its expression in language. The distinct contribution of t he
artist is merely packaging for a concept that belongs to what Wilder would
later call the "Group Mind." In another three-minute play, And the Sea
Shall Give Up Its Dead, three humans who have floated, dead, in the ocean
for several centuries, gradually forgetting t heir lives and identities, emerge
on Doomsday, and "divested of all identification .. . [tumble] like falling
15
Stein, The Geographical History, 17.
16
Ibid., 40-41
"Wilder also differentiates between "eye-books" and "ear-books" in his journal,
concluding that quintessentially American writers like Melville and Emerson write as "a
Speaker and to a Multitude" (journals 79).
100 YOUKER
stars into the blaze of unicity" (Short Plays 2: 52). In an action that Paul
Lifton aptly compares to the work of Ibsen's Button-Moulder, the three
souls in this very early play combine into a Thought-Being that transcends
personality.
18
This apocalyptic fantasy of effaced subjecthood is somewhat
at odds with Wilder's later meditations on American individualism, but his
more mature works evidence an ongoing project of reconciling these two
key themes.
In Our Town, Wilder presents what might seem on the surface to
be a very similar perspective on death. The dead of Grover's Corners are
in the process of becoming pure mind, of possessing a more complete
and accurate knowledge of the world than the living because they have
divested themselves of attachments to their physical lives. The recently
deceased Emily Webb describes the living as "shut up in little boxes" and
"just blind people" (Three Plays 89, 101). The Stage Manager sums up Our
Town's perspective toward death at the beginning of the third act:
There's something way down deep that's eternal about
every human being ... You know as well as I do that the
dead don't stay interested in us living people very long.
Gradually, gradually, they lose hold of the earth ... and
the ambitions they had ... and the pleasures they had ...
and the things they suffered ... and the people they loved
... And they stay here until the earth part of 'em burns
away, burns out ... Aren't they waitin' for the eternal part
of them to come out clear? (Three Plays 82)
The notion that humans contain an "eternal" part that is both separate
from and hindered by an "earth part"-the body-recalls the anti-body
philosophy of Plato's Phaedo, in which Socrates describes death as the
ultimate goal for a lover of knowledge and claims that the distractions
of the flesh and limitations of the senses distort living people's vision of
the world. The shedding of the "earth part" described in Our Town equals
the purgation of specific circumstances to reveal the idea underneath
and as such could be seen as a trope for Wilder's entire dramatic and
social project. Indeed, one can read act 3 of Our Town as an allegorical
representation of Wilder's opinions about the relationship between
theatrical representation and temporality. In the central episode of act
3, the recently-deceased Emily attempts to go back in time to relive her
twelfth birthday. Ignoring the Stage Manager's caveat that "You not only
live it; but you watch yourself living it" (Three Plays 91), Emily returns to
18
Lifton, 15.
"HIS OWN HoUSE OF THOUGHT"
101
the past and tries to enjoy a simple day with her family in spite of the
fact that her knowledge of their future remains intact. Emily finds the
experience unbearable and breaks down sobbing over her family's inability
to see the true significance of their actions. "All that was going on," she
says, "and we never noticed" (100). Emily's fail ed attempt to recapture her
past recalls one of Wilder's remarks in the Preface to Three Plqys: "When
you emphasize place in the theater, you drag down and limit and harness
time to it. You thrust the play back into past time ... Under such production
methods, the characters are all dead before the action starts" (xi). Emily
desires to see her past recreated before her eyes, assuming that it will feel
as new as when she actually lived it, but what she actually witnesses is a
"dead" event, rendered immutable and impermeable by its relationship to
subseguent points in time. In other words, Emily experiences what Wilder
considered the limitations of naturalism and box-set historical drama.
19
Contrasted against Emily's experience is that of the dead in the cemetery.
They sit in rows of chairs, faces forward, like spectators in a theater, and
contemplate the eternal operations of nature-the stars, the weather,
and the world's inexorable movement toward "something important, and
great" (Three Plqys 82). Though the dead realize that the starlight shining
above their heads was created millions of years ago (Three Plqys 102), they
experience it as something happening in the present, taking in all of nature
like a group of Emersonian transparent eyeballs.
20
The key difference between the "unicity" portrayed in And the
5 ea 5 hall Give up Its Dead and the community of the dead in Our Town is
that whereas the earlier play depicts a rapture that annihilates individual
consciousness, the latter leaves the guestion of the soul's ultimate destiny
open and focuses instead on the individual process of letting go of the
19
This aspect of the birthday scene was arrestingly illustrated in David Cromer's
2009 production of the play at New York's Barrow Street Theatre. Up to that point in the
performance, Cromer's staging was as spare as the text dictates, with the actors wearing
21st-century street clothes and speaking in their own accents instead of trying to affect
the diction of small-town New Englanders. Then, at the beginning of the birthday scene,
the Stage Manager pulled back a curtain to reveal a painstaking naturalist recreation of a
late 19th-century New Hampshire kitchen with Mrs. Webb dressed in period clothes and
frying real bacon and eggs on a working stove while simulated sunlight streamed through
the windows.
20
Wilder spent a great deal of time reading and rereading Emerson's essays
during the 1930s and '40s. The image of the "transparent eyeball" comes from Emerson's
Nature:
Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into
infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball-! am
nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me- l
am part or particle of God. (See Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature [Boston: James
Monroe & Company, 1849], 8).
102 YOUKER
"earth part" of the self. The dead of Grover's Corners all share in this
experience, but they share it as distinct entities. The shift from the first
afterlife fantasy to the second shows how Wilder tried to use his plays to
work out a balance between his ideistic impulse to transcend embodied
subjectivity and his respect for the American tradition of intellectual
independence in which he sought to situate himself and his work.
Wilder's early short play Pullman Car Hiawatha is prototype for a
theatre designed to reconcile the craving for a "self-sufficiency" outside of
history and the social with the painful awareness that such self-sufficiency is
"insufficient for the whole experience of life which includes themselves."
21
This play's major dramaturgical features, many of which Wilder reused and
further developed in Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, exemplify how, in
practical terms, Wilder's theatre was meant to provide a temporary escape
from that double bind and, in doing so, combat the American Loneliness.
Pullman Car Hiawatha begins with a bare stage divided between
floor and balcony, occupied by the Stage Manager, who is busy drawing
an outline of the Pullman car on the floor in chalk. He explains: "This
is the plan of the Pullman car. Its name is Hiawatha and on December
twenty-first it is on its way from New York to Chicago" (Short Plqys 1: 42).
The Stage Manager goes on to point out the locations of the berths in the
sleeping car, which the actors will soon mark with pairs of chairs facing
one another, and describes the as-yet invisible passengers "dropping their
shoes on the floor, or wrestling with their trousers" (Short Plqys 1: 42). Once
the actors playing the passengers enter and position themselves in their
berths, they begin to recite their characters' inner monologues, each actor's
voice emerging in turn from the "murmuring-swishing" of each other's
thoughts (Short Plqys 1: 44). Although the passengers are jointly engaged
in the act of journeying from New York to Chicago, stuffed together into
the cramped space of the car, they remain separated from one another,
each caught up in solitary reverie. Though not necessarily lonely, they are
oblivious to their participation in a collaborative effort. After showing us
the Pullman car's passengers, the Stage Manager calls forward a series of
actors who represent and speak for towns and landmarks that the train
passes (including a boy in overalls who steps forward and declares that
he represents Grover's Corners, Ohio). These are followed by the Hours
of Ten, Eleven, and Twelve (played by beautiful women carrying golden
numerals) and the planets of the solar system. Most of these symbolic
figures pause as they cross the stage to recite passages of poetry or
philosophy, as if simultaneously embodying geography and the literary
canon.
21
Wilder, journals, 154.
"HIS OWN HOUSE OF THOUGHT" 103
Pullman Car Hiawatha's use of actors to stand in for geographical
locations or units of time and a stationary, two-dimensional chalk figure
to stand in for a complex, three-dimensional machine represent a more
extreme version of what Wilder claims the Greeks did with Medea. By
presenting signs or objects that differ profoundly from that which they
mean to signify, Wilder delegates imaginative responsibility to the spectator
while also self-consciously highlighting that delegation. In other words, he
makes the audience perpetually aware of the contract of "collaborative
imagination" between them and the performers. At the same time, the
play's personification of abstractions encourages the contemplation of
ideas.
Paul Lifton makes several credible guesses at possible sources
of inspiration for Wilder's use of personification, including medieval
morality plays, Jacobean court masques, and Spanish Golden Age
Drama.U However, the most telling observation that Lifton makes in this
regard is the similarity that Pullman Car Hiawatha bears to the American
civic pageants that enjoyed wide popularity between 1900 and 1920. In
civic pageants, actors would portray seasons, years, abstract ideas, and
often personifications of the towns that the pageants celebrated. These
allegorical figures would also often recite literary excerpts or texts drawn
from the town's history. In one of the largest and most famous examples,
the 1914 Pageant and Masque cf St. uuzs, actors or choruses portrayed the
stars, the Mississippi, commodities like Gold and Fur, abstractions like Art
and Labor, and the city's major ethnic communities.
23
By simultaneously
embodying the entire life and substance of a town or organization, a
pageant brings that entire town or organization in front of the audience as
if it were a single, representable entity. Through the ritual representation
of its history and affirmation of its shared values, a community attempts
to elevate itself into the realm of "idea and type and universal." Civic
pageants were also usually treated as communal projects that involved as
many members of the community as possible; the process of creating the
piece together was just as important to the pageant's community-building
agenda as the performance itself.
Giving Pullman Car Hiawatha the form of a civic pageant links
it to this tradition of using performance to legitimize the shared history
and shared future of those participating in making the performance. At
the same time, while civic pageants represent the history and geography
of a specific location, Pullman Car Hiawatha sets itself on a train with no
22
Lifton, 172
2
J Thomas Wood Stevens and Percy MacKaye, The Book of Wordr of the Pageant
and Masque of St. Louis (St. Louis: St. Louis Pageant Drama Association, 1914).
104
Y OUKER
fixed location in space; like Wilder's theatrical style, the titular Pullman
car touches on many histories and geographies (even the name Hiawatha
alludes, however ambiguously, to the Native American cultures that were
displaced to make room for the railroads), but is rooted in none of them.
As such, Pullman Car Hiawatha implies, as Amen"can Characten"stics does,
that a connection to a preexisting sense of place is not a prerequisite for
the performative work that goes into theatrical group formation. This is
because place, for Wilder, is merely an effect of language and thought
acting upon space; the only thing that endures in his plays is the intangible
sum of human intellectual labor that manifests through the works of great
artists and thinkers.
This idea becomes especially clear in act 3 of The Skin of Our Teeth,
in which Wilder reuses Pullman Car Hiawatha's conceit of actors portraying
the Hours and reciting literary passages. The Skin of Our Teeth, written in
1942, centers on the Antrobus family, who, despite purportedly living in a
New Jersey commuter suburb, also own a pet dinosaur and spend much of
act 1 fretting about the encroaching Ice Age. The family includes George
Antrobus, inventor of the wheel and the alphabet; Maggie Antrobus,
who sewed the first apron and discovered fried food; son Henry, who
invented murder when he struck his brother on the head with a rock; and
the maid Lily Sabina, who was condemned to serve the Antrobus family
(and keep the scenery from falling down) after she seduced Mr. Antrobus
into cheating on his wife. In act 3, Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, in the wake
of a world war (started by Henry) that has lain civilization to waste, sit
and contemplate the new world they plan to build. As they do so, actors
portraying the Hours (this time with cardboard numerals instead of gold)
recite passages from Spinoza, Plato, Aristotle, and the Book of Genesis.
One of actors playing the Hours explains: "just like the hours and stars go
by over our heads at night, in the same way the ideas and thoughts of the
great men are in the air around us all the time and they're working on us,
even when we don't know it" (Three Plays: 217). This remark, which echoes
the thesis of Centaurs, characterizes ideas and, by extension, intellectual
history, as perpetually present. One implication of this notion is that no
nation or culture holds a proprietary claim on a tradition of thought-
again, geography and group identities are impermanent for Wilder's
fantasy Americans, while ideas are indestructible. This line of thinking
is arguably problematic-not all populations are equally empowered to
renegotiate their relationships with history and become free citizens of the
cosmos (and not all would necessarily want to)-but it is understandable
that, with one World War in the recent past and another already starting,
a cosmopolitan humanist like Wilder would want to locate Shakespeare
and Goethe's plays in an intellectual ether where they exist disentangled
"HIS OWN HousE OF T HOUGHT" 105
from any specific people's imperialist aspirations or cultural posturing.
The claim that these texts are constantly "working on us" points to theatre
as a miniature reflection of the ewig Wirkende. In Wilder's theatre, actors
collectively work, through a repetitive process of performance that seeks
but never quite achieves perfection, to transform space into a physical
manifestation of the "work" that a text invisibly performs on them. The
signs and gestures contained in the performance then pass the "work"
of the idea onto the spectator, who must assemble what she sees into a
mental construct.
The belief that ideas are simultaneously immaterial and imbued,
through collective human action, with the power to shape and define
space, can be seen in action in how Pullman Car Hiawatha highlights its
own characters' use of performative utterances and gestures. This aspect
of the play becomes clear in its first line: "This is the plan of the Pullman
car. Its name is Hiawatha." This utterance and others like it within the play
enact the play through the temporary complicity of the audience, drawing
on the evocative force of language. The same applies to the moments
when Grover's Corners, the Field, the Hours, and the Planets declare
themselves or are declared as representing something; and it also arguably
occurs when the passengers and Porter mime the opening and closing
of the invisible compartment doors, thus indicating, through a form
of ostension, that they declare the empty space to be something other
than an empty space. Wilder continues to use this technique throughout
his career, most notably in Our Town, in which the Stage Manager builds
Grover's Corners around him by pointing and naming, and in which
characters pull invisible horses, feed invisible chickens, and drink invisible
sodas. At the same time that Our Town's Stage Manager describes Grover's
Corners in historical and geological terms, noting its three hundred year-
old gravestones and pastures full of fossils, the enactment of the play
makes it clear that the entire town and all its millennia of history exist
only in the very moment in which the performers mold and demarcate
the empty space of the stage; again, the sense of place, of the incredible
age of Grover's Corners, is entirely constructed by language and gesture.
Instead of making actors passive inhabitants of a showroom set,
Pullman Car Hiawatha gives us the Stage Manager's chalk, the mimed opening
and closing of doors, and "I represent Grover's Corners, Ohio," gestures
through which the actors actively mark the unmarked space of the stage,
much like the Americans described in "Toward an American Language"
(Short Plqys 1: 50). The performers engage in building their own Wilderian
"house of thought," and the more Wilder widens the gap between the
marked space or object and that which the space or object is being marked
as, the more the actors' active process of "building" becomes evident.
106
YOUKER
Concomitantly, the spectators become aware of their own participation
in the construction process, as they use their imaginations to visualize the
fictional world indicated by the gestures and speech acts performed on
stage.
Recognizing the collective aspect of this creative work is especially
important given how frequently Wilder's Stage Managers are misidentified
as god or author igures.
24
Like actual stage managers, Wilder's Stage
Managers facilitate and coordinate the creative work of others. They are
no more or less the creators of the theatrical worlds that they inhabit than
anyone else onstage is. Like all of the other characters, the Stage Manager
performs intellectual and physical work whose success depends upon the
effort of everyone around him, including the audience.
Pullman Car Hiawatha also includes several moments in which the
actors are portrayed as forgetting their lines or botching their entrances.
The actor playing the Field between Grover's Corners and Parkersburg,
after reciting a few verses of poetry, nearly attributes the verses to the
wrong poet: "The Vision of Sir a u n f a ~ William Cullen-! mean, James
Russell Lowell" (Short Plqys 1: 50). Similarly, the young women portraying
the Hours require prompting by the Stage Manager to get their lines
out, and the Planets attempt to enter once before their cue. While an
audience might take these mistakes as obviously staged, a more potentially
confusing slip happens a minute later, when the Workman, the spirit of a
dead German railroad worker, recites the first sentence of the Gettysburg
Address in German, and the Stage Manager, in converting the words
back to English, misquotes Lincoln's famous opening phrase as "Three-
score and seven years ago" (Short Plqys 1: 51). This last mistake is clearly
intentional (how could Wilder have unknowingly written the wrong
number in English after writing the correct number in German?), but
when heard live, the slip could easily come off as an error committed by
the actor playing the Stage Manager. The inclusion of pre-scripted "slips"
reminds the viewer that each performer is a "free agent" and that the
outcome of the performance is never strictly predestined. Wilder wants
his viewers to know that each iteration of a stage play, while participating
in the same intangible idea, is unique and only exists in the moment that
it unfolds in front of the audience. In this sense, the fake slips restore the
"we-don't-know-what-will-happen" element that Wilder thought was so
important to Melville's prose style, as well as contributing even more to
the accentuation of the actors' collaborative contract with the audience.
While Our Town only contains one minor example of the fake
24
Wilder encouraged this misidentification by playing the Stage Manager himself
in more than one production of Our T01vn.
"HIS OWN HousE OF THOUGHT'' 107
mistake (in act 1, Editor Webb misses an entrance, and Mrs. Webb rushes
onstage to explain that her husband has just cut his hand while eating
an apple (Three Plqys 23)), The Skin of Our Teeth abounds with feigned
mishaps and blunders. In act 1, the flats composing the Antrobus house
constantly threaten to collapse, and Miss Somerset, the actress supposedly
playing Sabina, has to improvise a whole monologue when Mrs. Antrobus
misses her first entrance. Miss Somerset breaks character throughout the
play, much to the chagrin of the Stage Manager, and she even refuses to
perform one of her scenes in act 2 on the grounds that it would upset
an acquaintance of hers in the audience. Finally, act 3 begins with Mr.
Antrobus announcing that seven members of the cast have been sent to
the hospital with food poisoning and that a group of newcomers have
been asked to fill in for them. From beginning to end, The Skin of Our
Teeth portrays its own scriptedness as constantly imperiled, suggesting that
it is only through a constant negotiation with circumstance, a high-wire
act of in-the-moment decisions and adjustments, that theatre can come
into being.
One of the scenes that best illustrate Wilder's vision of theatrical
practice is the wedding of George and Emily in Our Town. In the Stage
Manager's sermon immediately prior to the wedding, he stresses the
importance of the common witnessing of all society to the performance
of marriage, saying: "Don't forget all the other witnesses at the wedding-
the ancestors. Millions of them. Most of them set out to live two-by-
two, also. Millions of them" (Three P/qys 71). This awareness of collective
witnessing during the execution of the per formative ritual inducts everyone
into the "tie that binds" referenced in Emily's favorite hymn and turns the
theatre audience into stands-ins for and constituents of the "millions" to
whom the Stage Manager refers. This invocation of a broader "virtual"
audience explains why Emily's bridal procession enters through the theatre
audience and why the bride and groom exit the church the same way. The
act of marrying- the act most frequently cited in theoretical discussions
of performative language- is shown not as something legitimized by the
juridical authority of church or state, but as something brought about
by the collective action of a group that has elected to recognize this new
bond. This is arguably why Wilder has the gossipy Mrs. Soames talk over
the exchange of vows, directly addressing the theatre audience from her
seat in the onstage audience of churchgoers. While the entire second act
up to that point has been devoted to Emily and George's romance, the
climax of that romance is pulled out of focus in favor Mrs. Soames talking
about the joy of being part of the collective event of a wedding.
This point is also illustrated by the grand finale of Pullman Car
Hiawatha in which that play's Stage Manager directs the passengers, towns,
108 YouKER
fields, ghosts, hours, and planets in a fugue-like recapitulation of all of
their sounds and speeches. The Stage Manager remarks to the audience,
"This is the Earth's Sound" (Short Plqys 1: 54). Notably, the many voices
do not melt together into a unison vocal line. Their contributions remain
distinct. This is not the "blaze of unicity" from And the Sea Shall Give
up Its Dead. The problem of Mrs. Churchill's isolation is not explicitly
resolved here, but implicit in this moment is the consoling proposal
that even as one builds one's own house of thought, one continues to
participate in the ongoing shared project of the earth's "straining away"
toward an unknowable destiny. For Wilder, the possibility of imagining
this compromise between independence and loneliness is one of theatre's
vital cultural contributions.
109
CoNTRIBUTORS
Sergio Costola is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Southwestern
University (Georgetown, Texas) where he teaches theatre history and
dramaturgy. He has published various articles on Italian Renaissance
theatre and is currently working on a book on Commedia dell' Arte
scenanos.
Lezlie Cross is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington. Her
research focuses include nineteenth-century American performance
and the history of Shakespeare in performance and print. A theatrical
practitioner as well as a scholar, Lezlie is also currently working as a
dramaturg on productions at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Classic
Stage Company.
Jenna L. Kubly received her PhD in drama from Tufts University. Her
primary research focuses on theatre during and about the Great War; her
dissertation specifically studied American vaudeville during this time.
Other areas of interest include musical theatre, opera, Victorian and
Edwardian drama, and the Austrian Habsburgs in the jin-de-siecle. She
works frequently as a dramaturg.
Angela Sweigart-Gallagher is the education director of Endstation
Theatre Company. She received her MA and PhD in theatre research
from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and her BA in theatre and
English from Mary Washington College. Her research interests include
the Federal Theatre Project and the intersection of theatre and national
identity. Her scholarly writing has appeared in Theatre Journal and SETC's
Theatre Symposium.
Timothy Youker is graduating from Columbia's Doctoral Program in
Theatre this spring. His research focuses on documentary theatre, object
theatre, and the role of quotation and intertexuality in modernist drama.
His work on the Viennese satirist and performer Karl Kraus has been
published in Theatre Journal.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Quick Change: Theatre Essays and Translations
Written and translated by Daniel Gerould
Quick Change is full of surprises. It is a
nicely seasoned tossed-salad of a book
concocted by an ironic cookmeister with
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this book of 28 pieces. The writings range
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kacy. From ancient Greeks to Renaissance
and Enlightenment Europe, from pre-revo-
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"libertine" puppet play from 19th century
France.
Richard Schechner
DAHIEL GEROUUl
QUICK CHANGE
""'" <41P
Quick Change: Theatre Essays and Translations, a volume of previously uncollected
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MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Playwrights Before the Fall:
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Edited by Daniel Gerould.
Playwrights Before the Fall: Eastern European Drama
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Jovanovic (51); Chicken Head by Gytirgy Spiro (HU);
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Claudio Tolcachir's Timbre 4
Translated and with an introduction by jean Graham)ones
Claudio Tolcachir's Timbre 4 is one of the most ex
citing companies to emerge from Buenos Aires's
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Family's Omission and Third Wing, the two plays that
put Timbre 4 on the international map, are translated
by Jean GrahamJones and Elisa Legon.
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MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Barcelona Plays: A Collection of New Works by
Catalan Playwrights
Translated and edited by Marion Peter Holt and Sharon G. Feldman
The new plays in this collection represent outstanding
playwrights of three generations. Benet i Jornet won
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Sergi Belbel and Llu'lsa Cunille arrived on the scene
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that is now attracting favorable critical attention.
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}osep M. Benet i }ornet: Two Plays
Translated by Marion Peter Holt
Josep M. Benet i Jornet, born in Barcelona, is the
author of more than forty works for the stage and has
been a leading contributor to the striking revitalization
of Catalan theatre in the post-Franco era. Fleeting, a
compelling "tragedy-within-a-play," and Stages,
with its monological recall of a dead and unseen
protagonist, rank among his most important plays.
They provide an introduction to a playwright whose
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of provocative themes have made him a major figure in
contemporary European theatre.
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MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Czech Plays: Seven New Works
Edited by Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, and Daniel Gerould
Czech Plays: Seven New Works is the first English-
language anthology of Czech plays written after
the 1989 "Velvet Revolution." These seven works
explore sex and gender identity, ethnicity and
violence, political corruption, and religious taboos.
Using innovative forms and diverse styles, they
tackle the new realities of Czech society brought on
by democracy and globalization with characteristic
humor and intelligence.
Price US $2o.oo plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
}an Fabre: Servant of Beauty
and I AM A MISTAKE - 7 Works for the Theatre
jan Fabre Books:
I AM A MISTAKE - 7 Works for the Theatre
THE SERVANT OF BEAUTY - 7 Monologues
Edited and foreword by Frank Hentschker.
Flemish-Dutch theatre artist jan Fabre has pro-
duced works as a performance artist, theatre
maker, choreographer, opera maker, playwright,
and visual artist Our two Fabre books include:
I am a Mistake (2007), Etant Donnes (2ooo),
Little Body on the Wall (1996), ]e suis sang (2001),
Angel of Death (2003) and others.
Price US $15.00 each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: The Graduate Center Foundation, Inc.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY100164309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
roMANIA After 2000
Edited by Saviana Stanescu and Daniel Gerould
Translation editors: Saviana Stanescu and Ruth Margraff
This volume represents the first anthology of new
Romanian Drama published in the United States
and introduces American readers to compelling
playwrights and plays that address resonant issues
of a post-totalitarian society on its way toward
democracy and a new European identity. includes
the plays: Stop The Tempo by Gianina Carbunariu,
Romania. Kiss Me! by Bogdan Georgescu, Vitamins by
Vera lon, Romania 21 by t e f n Peca, and Waxing West
by Saviana Stanescu.
This publication produced in collaboration with the
Romanian Cultural Institute in New York and Bucharest.
Buenos Aires in Translation
Translated and Edited by jean Graham-Jones
BAiT epitomizes true international theatrical
collaboration, bringing together four of the most
important contemporary playwrights from Buenos
Aires and pairing them with four cutting-edge US-based
directors and their ensembles. Throughout a period of
one year, playwrights, translator, directors, and actors
worked together to deliver four English-language world
premieres at Performance Space 122 in the fall of 2oo6.
Plays include: Women Dreamt Horses by Daniel
Veronese; A Kingdom, A Country or a Wasteland, In the
Snow by Lola Arias; Ex-Antwone by Federico Leon; Panic
by Rafael Spregelburd. BAiT is a Performance Space
122 Production, an initiative of Salon Volcan, with
the support of lnstituto Cervantes and the Consulate
General of Argentina in New York.
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Pl ease make payments in US dollars payable to: The Graduate Center Foundation, Inc.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016-4309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Witkiewicz: Seven Plays
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould
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This volume contains seven of Witkiewicz's most
important plays: The Pragmatists, Tumor Brainiowicz,
Gyubal Wahazar, The Anonymous Work, The Cuttlefish,
Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes, and The Beelzebub
Sonata, as well as two of his theoretical essays,
"Theoretical Introduction" and "A Few Words About
the Role of the Actor in the Theatre of Pure Form."
SEVEN PLAYS
Witkiewicz . . . takes up and continues the vein of dream
and grotesque fantasy exemplified by the late
Strindberg or by Wedekind; his ideas are closely
paralleled by those of the surrealists and Antonin
Artoud which culminated in the masterpieces of the
dramatists of the Absurd . . .. It is high time that this
major playwright should become better known in the
English-speaking world. Martin Esslin
Price US $2o.oo plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Four Works for the Theatre by Hugo Claus
Translated and Edited by David Willinger
Hugo Claus is the foremost contemporary writer of
Dutch language theatre, poetry, and prose. Flemish
by birth and upbringing, Claus is the author of some
ninety plays, novels, and collections of poetry. He is
renowned as an enfant terrible of the arts throughout
Europe. From the time he was affiliated with the
international art group, COBRA, to his liaison with
pornographic film star Silvia Kristel, to the celebration
of his novel, The Sorrow of Belgium, Claus has
careened through a career that is both scandal-ridden
and formidable. Claus takes on all the taboos of his
times.
Price US Sts.oo plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: The Graduate Center Foundation, Inc.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NYtoo16-4309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Theatre Research Resources in New York City
Sixth Edition, 2007
Editor: Jessica Brater, Senior Editor: Marvin Carlson
N l ~ YoRK CrtY
Theatre Research Resources in New York City is the
most comprehensive catalogue of New York City
research facilities available to theatre scholars. Within
the indexed volume, each facility is briefly described
including an outline of its holdings and practical
matters such as hours of operation. Most entries
include electronic contact information and web
sites. The listings are grouped as follows: Libraries,
Museums, and Historical Societies; University and
College Libraries; Ethnic and Language Associations;
Theatre Companies and Acting Schools; and Film and
Other.
Comedy: A Bibliography
Editor: Meghan Duffy, Senior Editor: Daniel Gerould
This bibliography is intended for scholars, teachers,
students, artists, and general readers interested in
the theory and practice of comedy. The keenest minds
have been drawn to the debate about the nature of
comedy and attracted to speculation about its theory
and practice. For all lovers of comedy Comedy: A
Bibliography is an essential guide and resource,
providing authors, titles, and publication data for over
a thousand books and articles devoted to this most
elusive of genres.
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Price US $1o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: The Graduate Center Foundation, Inc.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10o164309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 2128171868
Four Plays From North Africa
Translated and edited by Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four modern plays from the
Maghreb: Abdelkader Alloula's The Veil and Fatima
Gallaire's House of Wives, both Algerian, ]a lila Baccar's
Araber/in from Tunisia, and Tayeb Saddiki's The Folies
Berbers from Morocco.
As the rich tradition of modern Arabic theatre has
recently begun to be recognized by the Western theatre
community, an important area within that tradition is
still under-represented in existing anthologies and
scholarship. That is the drama from the Northwest of
Africa, the region known in Arabic as the Maghreb.
This volume contains four plays based on the Oedipus
legend by four leading dramatists of the Arab world.
Tawfiq Al-Hakim' s King Oedipus, Ali Ahmed Bakathir's
The Tragedy of Oedipus, Ali Salim's The Comedy
of Oedipus, and Walid lkhlasi's Oedipus as well as
Al-Hakim's preface to his Oedipus on the subject of
Arabic tragedy, a preface on translating Bakathir by
Dalia Basiouny, and a general introduction by the
editor.
An awareness of the rich tradition of modern Arabic
theatre has only recently begun to be felt by the
Western theatre community, and we hope that this
collection will contribute to that growing awareness.
The Arab Oedipus
Edited by Marvin Carlson
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
The Heirs of Moliere
Translated and Edited by Marvin Carlson
POUJ COWtDIU OP TH!
17 AND 10,. CENTfJl iU
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MA.a\<1 .. CI.USOII
This volume contains four representative French
comedies of the period from the death of Moliere to
the French Revolution: The Absent-Minded Lover
by )ean-Fran<;ois Regnard, The Conceited Count by
Philippe Nericault Destouches, The Fashionable
Prejudice by Pierre Nivelle de Ia Chaussee, and The
Friend of the Laws by Jean-Louis Laya. Translated in
a poetic form that seeks to capture the wit and spirit
of the originals, these four plays suggest something
of the range of the Moliere inheritance, from comedy
of character through the highly popular sentimental
comedy of the mid-eighteenth century, to comedy that
employs the Moliere tradition for more contemporary
political ends.
Pixerecourt: Four Melodramas
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould & Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four of Pixerecourt's most
important melodramas: The Ruins of Babylon or Jatar
and Zaida, The Dog of Montargis or The Forest of
Bondy, Christopher Columbus or The Discovery of the
New World, and Alice or The Scottish Gravediggers,
as well as Charles Nodier's "Introduction" to the 1843
Collected Edition of Pixerecourt's plays and the two
theoretical essays by the playwright, "Melodrama,"
and "Final Reflections on Melodrama."
Pixerecourt furnished the Theatre of Marvels with
its most stunning effects, and brought the classic
situations of fairground comedy up-to-date. He
determined the structure of a popular theatre which
was to last through the 19th century.
Hannah Winter, The Theatre of Marvels
Price US $2o.oo each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
Please make payments in US dollars payable to: The Graduate Center Foundation, Inc.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY100164309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-8171868