Download Free Players And Plays Of The Last Quarter Century The Theatre Of Today Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Players And Plays Of The Last Quarter Century The Theatre Of Today and write the review.

America's third largest city until 1890, Brooklyn, New York, had a striking theatrical culture before it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898. As the city gained size and influence, more and more theatres arose, with at least 15 venues ultimately vying for favor. Too many theatregoers, however, preferred the discomforts of a ferry and horsecar trip to New York's playhouses instead of supporting the local product. Nor did the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 do Brooklyn's theatres any favors. Manhattan's Goliath slayed Brooklyn's David. This first comprehensive study of Brooklyn's old-time theatre describes the city's early history, each of its many playhouses, its plays and actors (including nearly every foreign and domestic star), and its scandals and catastrophes, including the theatre fire that killed nearly 300. Brooklyn's ongoing struggle to establish theatres in a society dominated by anti-theatrical preachers, including Henry Ward Beecher, is detailed, as are all the ways that Brooklyn typified 19th century American theatre, from stock companies to combinations. Replete with fascinating anecdotes, this is the story of a major city from which theatre all but vanished before being reborn as a present-day artistic mecca.
Finalist for the 2021 Willa Literary Award in Scholarly Non-Fiction Finalist for the 2021 Will Rogers Medallion Award in Western Non-Fiction Carolyn Grattan Eichin’s From San Francisco Eastward explores the dynamics and influence of theater in the West during the Victorian era. San Francisco, Eichin argues, served as the nucleus of the western theatrical world, having attained prominence behind only New York and Boston as the nation’s most important theatrical center by 1870. By focusing on the West’s hinterland communities, theater as a capitalist venture driven by the sale of cultural forms is illuminated against the backdrop of urbanization. Using the vagaries of the West’s notorious boom-bust economic cycles, Eichin traces the fiscal, demographic, and geographic influences that shaped western theater. With an emphasis on the 1860s and 70s, this thoroughly researched work uses distinct notions of ethnicity, class, and gender to examine a cultural institution driven by a market economy. From San Francisco Eastward is a thorough analysis of the ever-changing theatrical personalities and strategies that shaped Victorian theater in the West, and the ways in which theater as a business transformed the values of a region.
The American playwright and actor William Gillette is best remembered today for the role of Sherlock Holmes that he first created for the stage in 1899 and played for more than thirty years. Gillette also adapted foreign plays for the American stage and wrote strong melodramas and spy stories in which he frequently appeared himself. This volume includes All the Comforts of Home (1890), Secret Service (1895) and Sherlock Holmes (1899). Gillette's sure grasp of the keys to theatrical success, together with his technical innovations, makes him an interesting and important theatre figure. In his time, as playwright and player, he achieved a new combination of melodramatic suspense with a cool, understated acting style. These three plays represent the range of his dramatic talent.