Seminar in ITS: 19th Century American Theatre and Performance

This course explores significant trends in U.S. theatre and performance cultures during the long nineteenth century. We will learn about significant playwrights, actors, producers and designers.  We will trace the origins of both “legit” theatre and other kinds of popular performance, including travelling circuses, minstrelsy, wild west shows, world’s fairs, and pageants. Performance texts we will consider include such styles and forms as melodrama, temperance plays, minstrelsy, musicals, burlesque, operetta, and realism/naturalism. We will confront the creation/exploitation of stereotypes on stage and their legacies.  In all cases, we will consider US theatre and performance as a product of diverse and rapidly changing notions of America and Americanness throughout this era.