On the Performance Front US Theatre and Internationalism

by Canning, Charlotte M.

• ISBN13: 9780230233386
• ISBN10: 0230233384
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-07-01
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

On the Performance Front argues that US theatre in the twentieth century embraced the theories and practices of internationalism as a way to realize a better world and as part of the strategic reform of the theatre into a national expression. Live performance, theatre internationalists argued, could represent and reflect the nation like no other endeavour. On the Performance Front focuses on US theatre's international efforts without losing sight of either the ways these efforts mirrored those in other countries or the complex, often conflicting, relationship between internationalism and nationalism.

Author Biography

Charlotte M. Canning is the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor in Drama in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. She is the author of Feminist Theaters In The USA: Staging Women's Experience (1995) and The Most American Thing in America: Circuit Chautauqua as Performance (2005). She co-edited, with Thomas Postlewait, Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography (2010).

Table of Contents

Introduction
1.Theatre Arts
2.On Stage I: The Wedding Proposal, 1927
3.The US (Inter)National Theatre
4.On Stage II: Hamlet, 1949
5.Tomorrow's Theatre Today
6.On Stage III: Porgy and Bess, 1952-1956
Conclusion
Index