Theatre History Commons^™

Vaudeville, Popular Entertainment And Cultural Division In The Inland Empire, 1880-1914, Mark Hauser

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This paper discusses the emergence of vaudeville in California’s Inland Empire region of San Bernardino and Riverside counties. It will consider the social changes underway in late nineteenth-century America and their impact on attitudes towards popular entertainment. This paper will draw on Lawrence Levine’s observations of cultural hierarchies that emerged during the late nineteenth century and shaped American understandings of culture. Entertainment of the nineteenth century will be examined for the ways it was unable to match urban trends, and contrasted with vaudeville’s appeal to a diverse urban populace. The cities of San Bernardino, Redlands and Riverside were home to …

"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

John Ficca, John Ficca, Meg Miner

All oral histories

Emeritus Professor, School of Theater Arts John Ficca taught full time in the School of Theater Arts from 1956-2002 and was also Director of the School of Theater Arts.

Ficca comments on entering the Army during the Korean War and his decisions about his education afterwards. He also speaks about the Theatre and Speech programs being part of the English Department at the start of his tenure and how the programs evolved afterwards.

Other memories include performances at different theaters on campus and invited guests; curricular requirements, including a Summer Theater; and changes in campus leadership, governance and institutional benefits.

The Angel And The Imp: The Duncan Sisters’ Performances Of Race And Gender, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

From 1923 to 1959 Vivian and Rosetta Duncan performed the show Topsy and Eva in front of thousands of audiences in the United States and abroad. This essay examines how the Duncan Sisters’ appropriation of blackness through a yin and yang performance of black and white womanhood, their sexualized but ultimately infantilizing routine as young girls, and their take on anarchistic comedy resulted in a particular spin on age, gender, race, and sexuality that reinforced their privilege as white women even while it pushed the boundaries of acceptable femininity in the swiftly shifting American culture of the first half of …

"The Tenter-Hooks Of Temptation": The Debate Over Theatre In Post-Revolutionary America, Meredith Bartron

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

In Royall Tyler’s 1787 play The Contrast, the innocent and simple Yankee Jonathan unknowingly attends a playhouse, mistaking it for a hocus pocus show. The historian and eighteenth-century theatre manager, William Dunlap, later criticized Tyler’s play because his hero was a clown who misrepresented the new nation that the Revolutionary War created. Tyler’s satirical portrait of his hero, however, is not an attack on the Yankee, but rather a symbol of the ideological conflicts within America. Jonathan repeats the religious charges against theatre, but he also joins in the fun at the playhouse. He is simple and honest, but he …

The Casino Theatre At Newport, Rhode Island, The Summer Colonists' Playhouse: Reality, Grandeur, Memories 1881-1960, Marialyn E. Riley

Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers

James Gordon Bennett., owner of the New York Herald, was the visionary founder of the Casino Theatre at Newport, Rhode Island. The Casino, a complex located on fashionable Bellevue Avenue, was recognized as the first complete resort facility in America. The theatre was an integral part of this complex. Between 1879 and 1881, this showcase was designed by the New York firm of McKim, Mead & White. White designed the theatre.

It is important to recognize that theatrical productions were a notable component of Newport life from pre-Revolutionary times. These theatrical endeavors were a prelude to the Newport Casino Theatre. …

Ua68/13/4 Bowling Green, Vol. 4, No. 2, Kelly Thompson Chapter, Public Relations Students Society Of America

Student Organizations

Magazine produced by senior seminar class in public relations with the Kelly Thompson Chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America and students in the WKU Department of Journalism.

Regular features include:

• Reflections
• Business
• Art
• Community Service
• Reminiscing
• Curiosities
• Entertainment

This issue includes articles:

• Berkley, Tonya. The Bits & Bytes of Computers
• Schammel, Cat & Rene Vance. Business & Pleasure Go Together - Horses
• Jones, Paige. Living it Up Downtown
• Reeder, Kristen. E.A. Diddle's Red Towel Still Waves
• Clarke, Elizabeth. The Alley Playhouse Takes a Bow
• Crime, p. 32

Cincinnati Theater 1918-1919: A Season Of Burlesque, Vaudeville & Legitimate Entertainment, Paul Thomas

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The legitimate theater, vaudeville, and burlesque presentations that composed the 1918-1919 theatrical season in Cincinnati, Ohio, were investigated. In order to understand the business practices that brought performers and productions to the Queen City, a study of the various entertainment circuits and the power brokers who controlled them was included. Cincinnati and its climate for professional entertainment in 1918-1919 also warranted attention. Such items as the theaters that housed the entertainment, the transportation systems that brought patrons to the entertainment, and the competition that rivaled the entertainment were probed so hat the foundations of the 1918-1919 season might he understood. …

Two Fifes And A Drum Poster, University Of Southern Maine Department Of Theatre

Theatre Posters 1970 - 1980

Poster for the University of Southern Maine and Maine Bicentennial Commission production of Two Fifes and a Drum.

Dimensions: 16" x 22"

Oral History Interview: William Allen Cross, William Allen Cross

0064: Marshall University Oral History Collection

In his interview, William Allen Cross discusses Prohibition and bootlegging in Huntington, West Virginia. Mr. Cross was a theater manager for the Keith Albee Theater (referred to as the State Theater) in Huntington, WV. Although he did not make moonshine, he was a buyer during Prohibition. He discusses how bootleggers sold their whiskey and provides locations for stills. Mr. Cross also focuses on how to make moonshine, whiskey, and wine. He reminiscences about “the Strip” between 10^th and 11^th Streets in Huntington, WV, that served from 1925-1945 as a red-light, gambling, and bootlegging district. In the audio clip …

Muckraking And The American Stage: The Emergence Of Realism, Maxwell Bloomfield

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

A Historical Study Of The Theatre Of The Mother Lode During The Gold Rush Period, Berton Everett Trulsson

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Many events of the gold rush have been adequately narrated in numerous books and articles. The succeeding pages in this thesis will recall, historically by topic, important incidents of one phase of that period never before treated as a separate study that phase is the theatre of the Mother Lode region.

The argonauts of the Mother Lode wanted to be entertained and could pay for it. Many preferred the saloon and gamboling hall, but the theatre did not languish because of this, and in fact, developed in some instances directly out of the saloons and fandango halls.

It was the …

The Little Theatre Movement In Louisville., Fred J. Karem

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.