The Forgotten Face of Early Modernism in American Drama and Theatre: The Transatlantic Perspective ( I )

By Dr. Kornelia Tancheva, Cornell University

PART I: THE CULTURAL SCENE

I. Introduction

In 1915 Alfred Kreymborg, a poet and dramatist who had dedicated his life to the modernist transformation of American culture, launched yet another of his short-lived modernist ventures, a journal called Others. In an ironic contrast to such radical versions of European modernism as Italian futurism, the title page of Others unabashedly proclaimed its ambivalence towards tradition and innovation by insisting that the "old expressions are with us always, and there are always others." Not only does this motto capture a most significant permutation of the modernist paradigm in the United States, the whole journal itself can be read as a metaphor for American modernism.

Both developed sporadically and mostly as the result of networking. Both aspired towards the new and modern yet consistently returned to the traditional and the old in their catholic tastes. Both reached hesitantly to the achievements of the European modernists but remained forever caught in the contradiction between their creators' nationalism and cosmopolitanism, as well as their adherence to either "high" culture or popular entertainment. Most important of all, both were genre-inclusive. In 1918 Others put out a "play number" featuring dramatic works by Maxwell Bodenheim, Djuna Barnes and Wallace Stevens, among others. The editor and publisher himself was not only the author of over 30 dramatic pieces but was also deeply involved in the modernist innovation of the American theatre.

John Reed and Louise Bryant

The traditionally most celebrated American modernists, though not explicitly concerned with drama and/or theatre, still produced modernist dramas: T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Walalce Stevens, Theodore Dreiser, e.e. cummings, Scott Fitzgerald, Ring Lardner, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein. Others, whose standing as modernists has only recently been granted or is still under debate, were much more closely involved with the theatre than is usually realized, as in the case of Djuna Barnes and Edna St. Vincent Millay. A host of "minor" modernists--Kreymborg, Maxwell Bodenheim, Harry Kemp, James Oppenheim, among others--were also closely associated with the theatre. There were also those who produced modernist drama incidentally, as part of their being "modern" rather than "modernist," such as Susan Glaspell, Louise Bryant, Neith Boyce, Floyd Dell, John Reed, and Edmund Wilson, to mention only a few. Among the recognized canonical dramatists themselves, despite the scarcity of names that can be associated with modernism offhand, at least one--Eugene O'Neill--produced a whole corpus of modernist texts.

And yet today, Others is studied solely as one of the venues for the modernist American poetry, if at all. The poetry of Stevens, Pound, Eliot, cummings, and the prose of Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Stein, and Barnes belong to the established American modernist canon but their plays are largely ignored. The dramatic works of Bodenheim, Kreymborg, Oppenheim, Bryant, Boyce, and Dell are virtually unknown. Glaspell has been rediscovered yet certainly not as a modernist.

For some reason the early twentieth-century dramatic and theatrical dimensions of American modernism performed a double disappearing act: they slipped through the cracks of first, the modernist canon, and second, the dramatic and theatrical canons. One notable exception is, needless to say, O'Neill, but even he is better known for his later works associated with the so-called "psychological realism" rather than for his early experimental modernism(*1). His singular dedication to the theatre may account for theatre scholars' preference for his works at the expense of many of those mentioned above. This dedication can hardly elucidate the marginality of John Howard Lawson, Elmer Rice or Sophie Treadwell, however.

It is not only difficult to uncover the forgotten dramatic and theatrical face of American modernism; it is also a challenge to explain the oblivion it has suffered so far. One of the reasons might have to do with the general inferior status of drama and theatre as compared to other forms of artistic production, especially literature and painting, in most critical studies of modernism. Despite the enormous amount of critical work on modernism, its genre bounds surprisingly persist unchallenged. The "great" modernist narratives and modernist poetry are invariably implicated in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collective cultural (self)construction in the West. Modernist drama, however, rarely emerges as seminal an element in the identity crisis of the times and its representation as the modernist novel or poetry. Much less so modernist theatre.

The status of the pillars of modern theatre--Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, and Shaw--as modernists is highly contingent. Hofmannsthal and Maeterlinck do not vie for the critical attention that Pound, Joyce or Eliot enjoy. German expressionist theatre is not conceived as having exercised as omnipotent and long-term an effect on the restructuring of representational practices as expressionist painting, for example. The early-twentieth century surrealist, cubist, and futurist drama and theatre or Dada spectacle still remain significant primarily as curios, a presage of the advent of a much later and supposedly more "evolved," mid-century avant-garde. As profoundly shattering as the theories and practice of Adolphe Appia, Edward Gordon Craig, Antonin Artaud, or Vsevolod Meyerhold have proven, theirs has been a specialized impact in particular areas of theatrical production or on individual theatre practitioners. Much of the dismissal of drama and theatre probably has to do with their popular nature or entertainment value, which at least some of the modernists felt could debase the high aesthetic purpose of art.

Yet another reason for the lack of critical interest in the modernist dramatic and theatrical practices in the United States might be sought in the visible tension created by the hermeneutic juxtaposition between the European and the American halls in the Modernist museum. The European halls as a rule appear far better populated than the American "homemade" ones (Kenner), even after Hitler physically destroyed quite a few of the exhibits, Stalin, the exhibitors, and Lukács, the principles underlying modernism. There is a transatlantic, Anglo-American hall built to accommodate the "greatest" names claimed by both continents but, predictably, few are chosen to inhabit it.

The American wing seems to require a rigid specialization. The smaller halls are dominated by one or two figures, the "initiators" of the modernist practice in the United States in painting, photography, music, theatre, drama, fiction, and journalism. They all lead securely to the focus of the exhibition, the Poetry Hall, where all the "coherent splendor" of American modernism (Gelpi) can be admired in awe and reverence. Again, it is hardly a coincidence that the American poetry hall is half way between the European and the American wing. Most of the exhibits there remain forever hovering in mid-air, not quite sure for which continent to head. No wonder then that even a cursory look at the early modernist drama and theatre halls reveals that both are dedicated to a handful of artists. Only occasionally does the eye come across a shy mention of a few of the lesser names in small print, providing local color and testifying to the curators' exhaustiveness in a footnote.

Additional complications arise when modernism is selected as a prism through which to contemplate American drama and theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century. The first thing that strikes the eye is a noticeable discrepancy between dramatic and theatrical modernism, a fact recognized by the participants in the "New Theatre" rebellion themselves. The idea of the New Stagecraft, which was modernist in its origin and realization, seems to have captured the imagination of designers and directors much earlier and more securely than that of playwrights. "Theatrical" modernism was also quicker to affirm itself on commercial stages, as compared to "dramatic" modernism or purely experimental avant-garde.

Furthermore, the involvement of individual artists with modernist drama and/or theatre in the United States was not necessarily unreserved or exclusive. Yet, despite their professed affiliations, these artists created a significant modernist dramatic and theatrical body of work that commands serious scholarly attention. Sidestepping aesthetic or ideological value judgments, from my perspective of cultural semiotic study, they were all embroiled in analogous representational and symbolic clusters of signification, commonly accepted as modernist.

In the three installments that follow, I will attempt to unveil the forgotten dramatic and theatrical face of American modernism. I will argue that it was precisely during the early twentieth century and the advent of what is called modernism that theatre and drama in the United States became a vigorously contested cultural site where diverse significations and interpretations battled for supremacy. Early twentieth-century American drama and theatre will be articulated as equally significant participants in the cultural wars of the times that raged over the two continents, along with painting, music, fiction, and poetry.

Before I proceed with my analysis of American dramatic and theatrical modernism, let me briefly delineate what “modernism” means for me here. In my understanding, modernism as a social and aesthetic phenomenon can be seen as an expression of anxiety over the project of modernity. It can be theorized as a reflection of bourgeois culture's growing dissatisfaction with itself and a materialization of the perceived crisis of modernity. In epistemological terms it emerges as a radical suspicion towards the claims of the Enlightenment and modernity on reality, human nature and knowledge (*2). The most general epistemological shifts central to modernism pertain to changes in what constitutes reality, in what constitutes human nature, and in the relationship between man and nature. Reality becomes fluctuating, ephemeral, mysterious, and impossible to pin down comprehensively. Human nature acquires a sub- or inhuman dimension because the subject has lost its fixed point of perspective. What is more, it has lost its substance and has become a fictional label denoting clusters of sensations that cannot be expressed logically. As Hofmannsthal put it in The Lord Chandos Letters, "I have utterly lost my ability to think or speak coherently about anything at all" (19).

Modernism, however, can also be considered an attempt to redeem the immediate modernity. This attitude goes back to Baudelaire who celebrated both the contingency and the heroic dimension of modern life and its self-conscious experience in "The Salon of 1846" and "The Painter of Modern Life." Thus modernism boasts at least two faces--modern and anti-modern at the same time. Its "duality" is of particular interest to me here since I will maintain that modernism is an expression of difference--the difference of the present from the now, of the "modern" from the "past" and the old-fashioned but also from the leftovers of the past in the present. That is, modernism in my understanding is not essentially definable (*3) but is relative and a subject to contextual interpretations of "modern" and "modernity," which in turn are in historical and temporal fluctuation (*4). Such an understanding would account for the multiplicity of modernist responses to the perceived crisis in modernity.

If modernism is seen historically as a radical questioning of the Enlightenment project, simultaneously resulting from and further perpetuating a crisis in modernity's self-confidence, then American modernism can be regarded as a half-hearted attempt at such a radical "European" doubt. European modernism can be violently modern and anti-modern at the same time. It combines Max Weber's demystification and disenchantment of the social world with Benjamin's re-enchantment through the reactivation of mythic powers as a result of capitalist industrialization. American modernism clings to "the old expressions" as it reaches for the "others." It is too immersed in modernity and as a result more "modern" than "anti-modern." In fact, celebratory modernism can be thought of as the essential American art--the language of American "progressivism, pluralism, cultural convergence; its commerce; its aesthetic drive; its modernity" (Bradbury, 34).

Yet another restructuring of American modernism that I want to suggest is its incorporation of the avant-garde. Any sharp differentiation between modernism and the "avant-garde" comes, in my opinion, from a strict adherence to a singular account of modernism: a Modernism that insists on artistic autonomy, aesthetic disinterestedness, excellence of form, and an emphasis on art for art's sake. Such a solidly and unrelentingly erected version of Modernism resulted in the "great" Modernist canon. As with all constructions, in this canonical Modernism a lot of developments and artists, along with whole genres and artistic practices, have been allowed to fade away or have simply been wished away, as compelling evidence of the motivated politics at work in any act of scholarly investigation (*5). If, however, "modernism" is seen as a critical, celebratory, or ironic engagement with the experiences of modern life in both high art and mass and popular culture by means of self-conscious experiment and innovation, the avant-garde as a critical engagement with the codes, conventions and political assumptions of the ideologically dominant class will be an element of modernism. The difference between the two will be only of degree and attitude, rather than of time and content. In this sense, the avant-garde will be incorporated within modernism. Modernism will constantly be elaborating new avant-gardes and new challenges within itself. The latest avant-garde will, in turn be challenged by a more "avant-garde" form. In other words, avant-garde will be the cutting edge of modernism (*6).

From this perspective of modernism, in what follows I will explore the manifestations of dramatic and theatrical modernism in the United States, first looking briefly at the social and cultural milieu of theatre and drama in the 1910s and 1920s, as well as the heterogeneous responses to the perceived cultural crisis in America around 1912. I seek to position the manifestations of the modernist paradigm in the establishment of independent, little, art, and community theatres interested in the New Stagecraft and modernist drama, the organization of experimental theatre exhibitions, and the founding of theatre publications devoted exclusively to the popularization of the new theatre movement. The main foci of attention are the Chicago Little Theatre and the Provincetown Players, two of the little theatre groups that were consistently interested in the modern rebirth of American drama and theatre, as well as the writings of Kenneth Macgowan, Oliver Sayler, Waldo Frank, Robert Edmond Jones and Sheldon Cheney. Theatrical and dramatic experimentation and their critical appreciation are seen as an agent in the legitimization of modernism and the avant-garde in the United States.

In the second installment, I will examine the textual and production signs through which American artists expressed their modernist agenda, and in the third one, I will focus on dramatic modernism and its avant-garde dimension. Thus the disparate voices of the people working in the 1910s and 1920s modernist theatre and drama in the United States are brought together in a fully-fledged modernist discourse. It challenged the social and artistic conventions of the time and broke new ground, which became available for further expansion in the subsequent stages in the development of the American drama and theatre.

II. The Cultural Context of the Modernist Rebellion in American Drama and Theatre

Needless to say, the symbolic participation of the American theatre and drama in the general cultural matrix of the time is not unique to the modernist period. Suffice it to recall the Astor Place riot of 1849, agitprop drama, or the feminist theatre of the 1970s, for instance. In the modernist period, however, the specific battles that were fought concerned precisely the confrontations between the concepts of high/elitist and low/popular culture.

The usual equation of "low" and "popular," on the one hand, and "high" and "aristocratic," on the other, was somewhat modified in the American context. Many of the modernists objected to the popular character of the traditional drama and theatre. They endeavored to produce an art form of "great" artistic worth, aesthetically higher than what was perceived as the nauseatingly maudlin formula of Broadway. They also attempted to create the public for the new, presumably "high" art, with an almost messianic fervor. Most of them clearly assumed a "group" character of this advanced audience, as distinguished from the "mass" audiences of Broadway. Hence, the establishment of little and/or community art theatres. And still, it could be argued that the almost inevitable move of little theatres uptown resulted, among other things, from the belief that there was a wider public for the new offerings than initially expected. This dynamic of high, low, mass, popular, and elitist immediately suggests the American theatre at the time as the site of cultural controversy.


If modernism is postulated as a rebellion, an exploration of the traditional American context against which its spirit rebelled, as well as of the aspects in the artistic and ideological revolt, is in order. The conventional, mainstream vision at the end of the 19th century was characterized by the certainty and universality of moral values, and the faith in the inevitability of progress, as May describes it (6). However, at the turn of the century, the belief in doing what was just, true, and decent was considerably hampered by the differences in opinion as to what exactly constituted "truth," "justice," and "decency."

The uncertainty of moral, social and cultural values received a profound, albeit rather convulsive boost around 1912, when it was felt that between the mid-West and the East, the new spirit in America was born. The earlier manifestations of the Modernist rebellion in the United States had included the opening of Alfred Stieglitz's Gallery 291 and the publication of his Camera Work in 1903, the organization of Robert Henri's group in 1908, the Independent Show of 1910, and the appearance of numerous modern magazines, among which Poetry (1912, Chicago) and The Masses (1912, New York).

The American expatriate modernists had been actively interacting with European experimenters, too. Stein, who had already begun Three Lives, had had her famous portrait done by Picasso; and while Picasso and Braque had been launching cubism, she had been working on The Making of Americans (1906-11). Pound had settled in London in 1908, Eliot in Paris in 1910, and Frost arrived in London in 1912. In the country itself, even a short survey of significant developments in 1912 will have to include the serialized publication of James Joyce's Ulysses in The Little Review, the production of Max Reinhardt's Sumurun in New York, the organization of the Chicago Little Theatre by Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenberg; the publication of the Lyric Year Anthology which contained Edna St. Vincent Millay's Renascence.


Graphic element designed by C. Raymond Johnson for Maurice Browne’s production of Medea, ca. 1918. Browne and actress Ellen Van Volkenburg had first presented the play with the Little Theatre, Chicago in 1912, which they founded. They later moved their productions to Seattle, where they worked with the Repertory Theatre and Cornish School of Music. Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

The most shattering experience, however, came in 1913. The Armory Show of modernist paintings defiantly flung at the unexpecting American public Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, which "enraptured the self-chosen few, infuriated the nameless many" (Browne, 127.)  (*7). Nothing could have prepared the visitors to the Armory for the sharp angularity of the Cubist Room that defied every pictorial and conceptual assumption of its viewers. Experiment in American culture was an issue long before 1912-1913, to be sure, but I am interested in the subjective perception of the cataclysmic 1912-1913 period shared by the participants in the Modernist revolt. As an illustration of the feeling of an incipient all-pervasive radical transformation, of a sweeping revolutionary outburst, Mabel Dodge's impression of the Armory Show preparation is worth quoting in full: 
The year 1913 also saw the Paterson strike pageant in Madison Square Garden, the second American tour of the Irish Players, the publication of Robert Frost's A Boy's Will. The years following the Armory Show opened up numerous opportunities. Although it is impossible to do justice to the entire modernist output in the States, it is important to keep in mind some notable examples. Early modernist poetry and fiction included also Frost's North of Boston (1914), Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1914), Stein's Tender Buttons (1914), H. D.'s Sea Garden (1916), Eliot's Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Amy Lowell's Can Grande's Castle (1918), Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1919), and Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1919). The 1920s witnessed the publication of e. e. cummings' The Enormous Room (1922), Wallace Stevens' Harmonium (1923), Frost's New Hampshire (1924), Pound's A Draft of XVI Cantos (1925), H. D.'s Collected Poems (1925), Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Hart Crane's White Buildings (1926), Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926), Djuna Barnes' Ryder (1928), and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929).

In other words, the rebellion was to prove surprisingly successful. The revolution was running parallel in different domains, Stein was "doing with words what Picasso is doing with paint" (Luhan, 27), and it was impossible to resist it. It provoked the emergence of intellectually affiliated groupings of overlapping membership, which in turn, further enhanced the appeals for a fundamental cultural revolution. The modernist artists felt the need to free their art from any complicity with bourgeois taste and from that taste's origins in the bourgeois state. They welcomed any kind of break with tradition, adopting the aggressive slogan of New Art, one of the strongest drives in which was an aversion from the public and official (Green in Heller and Rudnik, 157).


Any consideration of modernist art and its reception and incorporation in the States should acknowledge a significant distinction. While in the 1910s the comments on modern art tended to be derogatory, or at best skeptical, "the debate about the issues of modern art in the press of the twenties was, for the most part, informed and intelligent" (Platt, 1). The 1920s saw the simultaneous acceptance of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in even the most conservative circles and the spread of Cubism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, and Constructivism. The overwhelmed public did not have an authoritative institution to rely on, so individual predilections and beliefs were often of major importance. Both Cubism and Dada were interpreted frequently in the American press, by artists, as well as critics. The more mainstream critics, however, understood neither and often conflated them, a fate that befell other artistic movements, as well. The ultimate acceptance, in terms of institutionalized culture, was, of course the founding of the Museum of Modern Art in November 1929.


Where exactly in this modernist rebellion in the United States did theatre fit in? The New Theatre doctrine followed the general pattern of rebellion at all costs by the avowed rejection of all the principles underlying the commercial theatre of the past and present. It helped establish the legitimacy of modernism and the avant-garde in the United States and created a novel dramatic and theatrical native tradition, characterized by a belief in the compatibility of life and art, support of the individual and communal amateur spirit, encouragement of experimentation, anti-commercial financial organization, and audience-oriented performance philosophy.

The revolution in the theatre around 1915 was indeed considered a participant in the overall social and cultural revolution in America. Both the subjective perception of the new theatre proponents and the opinion of later critics and scholars converge in this evaluation. The transformation in theatre was contiguous to the spread of cubism and futurism in the pictorial arts, of Freud's theories, of feminism, socialism, and anarchism, of the activities of the I. W. W. and all forms of political radicalism, as well as the bohemian atmosphere of Greenwich Village (Gagey, 23-4). It was also influenced by the European little theatres and movements, as well as plays by Shaw, Ibsen, Strindberg, and the theories of Craig, Appia and Reinhardt.

The attacks on theatrical and dramatic traditions and conventions were part of the general dissatisfaction of the times but they were also specifically engendered by what was perceived as theatre's backwardness in comparison to other cultural and artistic practices. Not only the modernists lamented the dire conditions of the Broadway scene. Here is the picture, which Montrose Moses paints as having met the eyes of the enthusiastic young men who had set their hearts on reforming the American theatre:

And what did they see? An American theatre without sensitiveness, with no direct aim or object; everyone in it trying to attract attention: the scenery yelling to be looked at; the actor temperamentalizing all over the stage and murdering both enunciation and gesture; the costumer arraying the players as though they were so many manikins in costly silks and satins--an animated Fifth Avenue parade; the playwright pandering to cheap taste, with an eye on the royalty statement (Moses, 424).

Even critics more genially inclined would point to the mediocrity of the American theatre and drama prior to 1915 (Gagey, 2). What the modernists objected specifically to were the low and old-fashioned aesthetic standards of both drama and theatre. Lee Simonson, for instance, asserted in "The Painter and the Stage" that "[e]very innovation in stagecraft we have witnessed in America is based upon the aesthetic discoveries of twenty years ago" (5). In The Road to the Temple, Glaspell explained the motives behind the organization of the Provincetown Players thus:

We went to the theatre, and for the most part we came away wishing we had gone somewhere else. Those were the days when Broadway flourished almost unchallenged. Plays, like magazine stories, were patterned. They might be pretty good within themselves, seldom did they open out to--where it surprised or thrilled your spirit to follow. They didn't ask much of you, those plays. Having paid for your seat, the thing was all done for you, and your mind came out where it went in, only tireder. An audience, Jig said, had imagination. What was this "Broadway," which could make a thing as interesting as life into a thing as dull as a Broadway play? (248)

One specific objection concerned the popular genres. The common denominator in the different genres offered on Broadway was felt to be their box-office appeal. Most successful proved to be the tearful comedy, the romantic love play, the witty comedy of character, the farce-comedy, and the "play with a punch." A survey of the plays reviewed in The Theatre Magazine, the main legislator of taste founded in 1900 and edited by Arthur Hornblow, in the years 1910-1930 reveals a heavy preponderance of musicals, musical comedies, comic operas or operettas, "spectacular revues," comedies, farce, romantic comedies, as well as adaptations from the French and German. For the sake of contextualization it is worth comparing the commercial theatre offerings with their respective counterparts in the insurgent theatres. Thus, in the season 1912-1913, the time when the Chicago Little Theatre was struggling to attract a larger audience, the plays reviewed by The Theatre Magazine included genre descriptions of the type "fanfare of frivolity," "musical causerie," among the usual farce, melodrama, comedy, farcical comedy, musical. In the 1920-1921 season, when The Emperor Jones was produced at the Provincetown Theatre, the issues of The Theatre Magazine again offered reviews of pieces described as "spectacular melodrama," "extravaganza," "musical pastime," and "fantasy." Even towards the end of the 1910-1930 period, although a marked change is observed, the prevalent genres reviewed are still melodrama and musical comedy.

The dissatisfaction with popular and "old-fashioned" drama and theatre had been expressed even earlier. By 1909 the press and magazines were brimming with hopes for a new "art theatre" in America. Business considerations marred one of the first attempts, the magnificent New Theatre built on Central Park West (1909-1911), managed by Winthrop Ames, which folded in two seasons but produced Ibsen's Brand, Maeterlinck's Sister Beatrice, The Blue Bird and Mary Magdalene (*8). It introduced repertory, eliminated stars and produced new plays, but also used the subsidy system to perpetuate the faults of the commercial theatre by paying exorbitant salaries and incurring tremendous production costs. Earlier attempts at a reorganization of the theatre in America included the Theater of Arts and Letters in New York, organized in 1892, the New Theatre of Chicago (1906) managed by Victor Mapes, the Chicago Theatre Society with its producing group, the Drama Players under Donald Robertson, and the Robertson Players (1907-9).

The profound change was facilitated by the introduction of courses on contemporary drama and playwriting, as well as the formation of societies for the promotion of the new stagecraft, the appearance of specialized publications as The Theatre Arts Magazine and books by Clayton Hamilton, W. P. Eaton, Sheldon Cheney, Kenneth Macgowan, as well as the organization of small theatre companies.

A dramatic club was established with the Hull House Settlement in Chicago in the 1890s; in 1905 Julius Hopp organized a Progressive Stage Society for the presentation of radical plays in New York; in 1910, the Drama League of America was founded in Evanston, Illinois for the support of professional players, the publication of plays, the distribution of theatre information, and the support of theatre periodicals. It was followed by the Drama Society of New York (1913-1916) and the New York Stage Society (1912), which raised a fund for bringing Gordon Craig, Max Reinhardt and Granville Barker to America (*9) and helped organize the Exhibition of the Arts of the Theatre at 714 Fifth Avenue in 1915.

Schools and workshops expanded the potential audience of the theatre and prepared professionals. Among those were Professor Baker's 47 Workshop at Radcliffe and Harvard (1912), the School of Drama of the Carnegie Institute of Technology at Pittsburgh (1914) directed by Thomas Wood Stevens, Hallie Flanagan's Experimental Theatre at Vassar, the workshop established by the Wisconsin Players in Milwaukee (1913), the Players' Workshop in Chicago, directed by Elizabeth Bingham (1916).

A large part of the modern theatre in the States was a product of the small towns, where numerous stock companies were organized: the Portland Stock Company that lasted for only 12 weeks; the Pittsfield Theatre organized in 1911, managed by William Parke; the Northhampton Theatre (1912) under Jessie Bonstelle and Bertram Harrison. The Wisconsin Dramatic Society (1910) established a company in Madison in 1911, followed by another in Milwaukee (*10). Other little theatre companies included the Toy Theatre, established by Mrs. Lyman W. Gale in 1911 in Boston at 16 Lime Street, the Little Theatre of Philadelphia (1913) managed by Beulah E. Jay; and the Plays and Players Club of Philadelphia (*11).
 
Among the groups attempting to reform in one way or another the American stage were the theatre with the Arts and Crafts Guild of Detroit (1915) under Sam Hume, the Vagabond Players of Baltimore (1916) directed by Adele Gutman Nathan, the St. Louis Little Playhouse (1916) directed by C. J. Masseck; the Little Theatre Society of Indiana (1914); the Little Theatre Players of Denver directed by Granville F. Stugis; the Cleveland Playhouse; the Pasadena Community Playhouse (1917) directed by Gilmor Brown; the Dallas Little Theatre; the Hedgerow Theatre (*12).

What were the modernist dimensions in this huge transformation of the American theatre at the turn of the century? The new theatre movement meant primarily the establishment of independent, little, art, and community theatres. Modernism, however, did not appeal equally to all of them. Inasmuch as it can be identified with any of the varieties of independent theatre groups these were the so-called art theatres, foremost among which were the Chicago Little Theatre (*13), the Washington Square Players (14), and the Provincetown Players (*15). This is not to say that these groups were exclusively dedicated to the adoption of the New Stagecraft on the American stage and were totally opposed to entertainment or large popular appeal. As a whole, however, their philosophical premises tallied in with the modernist rebellion against tradition, the dissolution of familiar representational practices, and conscious experimentation.

These groups worked towards the combination of artistic and social radicalism, both on an individual and a collective level. The new art was believed to be inspired by and to inspire in turn a new form of human interaction, thus testifying to the close links which, in the American context at least, "art" and "life" shared. In the announcement for what turned out to be their last season, the Chicago Little Theatre promised their public:

...the Chicago Little Theatre through the coming year will be directed toward those ends which have been stated: search, study, scrutiny and test, alike of art and of conduct, but not towards these as ends in themselves: rather as means to an exacter knowledge of excellence and beauty; and so, ultimately perhaps, to right practice in conduct and art, which are their own ends (Browne, 212).

Theatre's active social engagement at the time was partly to be explained by the diversity and inclusiveness of the groups that had undertaken its transformation. Among the original Provincetown Players, for instance, there were social reformers, anarchists, revolutionaries, social pragmatists, mystic lovers of art, apolitical artists. They were all united by their understanding of the creation of modern American drama and theatre as part of a larger effort to transform the culture according to the demands of the new sensibility. Since artistic and social rebellion were regarded as complementary, even if not mutually dependent, a lot of the more "social" playwrights like Lawson, or Rice, also employed radical artistic practices like expressionism to a fuller extent than O'Neill, for instance.

The social role envisioned for the New Theatre did not always necessarily mean a direct involvement with burning social issues, of course. The fall 1918 circular of the Provincetown Players, for instance, expressed their aims in terms of work for the "powerful, many-sided artform which the theatre has been at times, and may again become" and personal artistic fulfillment:

The Provincetown Players are not, however, trying to uplift or reform the stage. We are working with the stage because we like to. That is an artist's reason, not a money-maker's. At our best we play seriously--with our whole souls--and therefore with delight (*16).

The very emergence of independent theatre groups willing to oppose the conventions of commercial Broadway was rhetorically couched in the terms of delivering a long-promised salvation, through the conviction that "the theatre is a place for beauty, for design, for color, for imagination, for plays with spiritual content, for interpretation, for harmony of many parts, for a certain kind of poetry" (Moses, 425). In their circular before the second season, the Provincetown Players summoned the native artist: "If any writers in this country--already of our group or still to be attracted to it--are capable of bringing down fire from heaven to the stage, we are here to receive and help."  (* 17)

Many of the artistic and organizational principles behind the new theatre groups were synthesized in the manifesto of the Washington Square Players issued early in 1915: higher standards achieved through experimentation and initiative, absence of purely commercial considerations, honest work for the birth of an artistic theatre in America, no endowment, subsistence through sale of tickets and subscriptions, democratic pricing, no set policy in the choice of plays other than producing pieces of "artistic merit," preferably, but not exclusively, American, as long as they were deemed unsuitable for or had already been rejected by the commercial managers.

Very few groups were irrevocably determined to produce only or exclusively American plays. The Provincetown Players company is probably the only one which had the explicit purpose of giving the "American playwrights of sincere purpose a chance to work out their ideas in freedom, to give all who worked with the plays their opportunity as artists" (Glaspell, 255). Most of the other groups were not as enthusiastic to nurture the growth of native talent at any cost and were more willing to compromise. It was true of the Washington Square Players, as well as the Theatre Guild.

The revolt against the commercialism and stilted professionalism of the mainstream theatre, characteristic of the very inception of the new theatre, resulted in a wholehearted endorsement of the spirit of "amateurism." It was not necessarily a purely American development, but rather the result of the influence of the European art theatres. The amateur spirit was complemented by belief in the collective nature of theatre, and its being a form of a community expression. Browne did not include the names of his actors opposite their parts but grouped them together alphabetically at the end of the list of characters, since he wanted to "plug--not the players, not even Nellie Van or myself--but the Chicago Little Theatre" (Browne, 147). The communal spirit of production was manifested in the Chicago Little Theatre's "Passion Play," where, according to Browne, the players suggested the episodes, did the casting, took minimal direction, and all "agnostics, Christians, Jews, Christian Scientists, worked side by side, individuals, no longer, but members one with another of a dedicated group" (Browne, 202).

The audience was an essential component in the initial stages of the Provincetown Players' development. They were never merely spectators, but a vital element of the new theatre. The rapport between the audience and the players was especially strong in the first experimental productions. As Glaspell remembered it,

The people who had seen the plays, and the people who gave them, were adventurers together. The spectators were part of the Players, for how could it have been done without the feeling that came from them, without that sense of them there, waiting, ready to share, giving--finding the deep level where audience and writer and player are one (Glaspell, 254).

This audience-oriented production philosophy might appear to contradict the modernists' opposition to popular entertainment. A number of qualifications will explain this seeming contradiction away. First of all, it was part of the education of new audiences discussed above. Second, the audience envisioned was precisely a group of people interested and engaged in the production or dissemination of the new art. In many cases, the playwrights, directors and designers were also the spectators. As such they did not need to be converted. What the modernist productions actually had to do was live up to the standards of their initial audiences. On the same note, the concept of entertainment also seemed changed. What entertained Broadway audiences was boring and stifling to the new theatre advocates. For them entertainment translated into experiment both in form and content. The usual failure of experimental productions presented for larger "unconverted" audiences demonstrates the discrepancy between the subjective perceptions of serious drama, entertainment, and successful production.

In the long run, the perseverance and zeal of the New Theatre theoreticians and practitioners helped legitimize modernism and the avant-garde in the United States. The constant exposure of the wide public to New Stagecraft periodicals, books, and exhibitions finally achieved a change of taste. The exposure was indeed profound. Numerous theatrical exhibitions included drawings or designs by the modernists artists. The May 1917 exhibition of designs for stage settings and costumes at the Arts and Crafts Theatre in Detroit, for instance, featured drawings by J. Blanding Sloan, Raymond Jones and Robert Edmond Jones. The exhibition of "the scenic art of the theatre" held at the Brooklyn Museum in May 1917, largely with exhibits from the commercial studios also included designs by Rollo Peters and Lee Simonson. In April 1919, the Bourgeois Galleries in New York presented an exhibition of American stage design featuring the work of Robert Edmond Jones, Raymond Jones, Norman-Bel Geddes, among others and in 1920 offered a one-man show of Robert Edmond Jones.

Foremost among the publications devoted exclusively to the popularization of the new theatre movement was the Theatre Arts Magazine. It was established in 1916 in Detroit under the editorship of Sheldon Cheney; with its second volume of 1917-1918, it moved to New York City; the editorship was taken up by Edith J. R. Isaacs in 1923; and in 1924 the name was changed to Theatre Arts Monthly. In his articles, Sheldon Cheney explained what the art theatre meant and stood for, advocating the synthetic ideal of theatre production elaborated by Appia and Craig, pointing out its profound differences from the commercial theatre--imaginative plays, ensemble acting, simplified staging, spiritual unification of the production. Cheney was among those opposed most vehemently to the old stage 'realism' of the David Belasco type and constantly called for a complete break through the picture frame and a visual stylization of the production. Robert Edmond Jones availed himself of the opportunity presented by Theatre Arts to propagate his idea of a non-realistic theatre and drama, as well, an art which is "not a representation of the actual world but a presentation of light, color, moving form and sound" ("Notes on the Theatre," 324). Cheney made a point of exploring all the aspects of the art of theatre in their modern permutations, thus linking theatre to other art forms and practices and paying special attention to the architectural aspect of the modern theatre.

The journal had to steer a precarious course between its editors' desire to urge the complete adoption of modernist techniques and their realization of a potential conflict with cultural nationalism. Thus, when Cheney published an article on the Amsterdam Theatre Exhibition, in his reply "Apologizing for America," Simonson accused him of paying too little attention to the American designers' contribution and of underestimating them. Thomas Craven in "An American Theatre" insisted that many of the ideas of the New Movement in the theatre, "however applicable they may be to foreign plays, have little or no relation to American life" (540).

Theatre Arts took special care to popularize the designers who were developing the new stagecraft in the States in features accompanied by reproductions of their work, presented series of designs by them or included their own statements regarding the new art of the theatre. It also featured numerous art and experimental theatre groups, theatre producers interested in the new stagecraft techniques, and paid special attention to the phenomenon of the little theatre. The European theories and practices of the new theatre were also a constant concern of the Theatre Arts editors. They published excerpts of Macgowan's Continental Stagecraft , materials on Max Reinhardt and the German theatre as a whole, Jacques Copeau, as well as other modernist playwrights--Ernst Toller, Franz Werfel, and O'Neill.

Cheney was among the most ardent proponents of the art theatre in the States, but he was not alone. There were also Thomas H. Dickinson, Kenneth Macgowan and later Edmond Gagey. Between them they advocated the novel principles of organization of the new theatre and furnished most needed information on international and domestic experimental developments. These could also be observed first-hand from the visits of the Abbey Theatre Company, the first in 1911, the second in 1912, the Moscow Art Theatre, Max Reinhardt's Theatre, Copeau's Vieux Colombier (1917). They could also be gleaned from the publications of Edward Gordon Craig's The Art of the Theatre (1905) and On the Art of the Theatre (1911) excerpts of which were familiar through The Theatre Arts Magazine.
 
By the 1920s, new ideas were constantly brought to the attention of the American public and elaborated upon in books, magazine articles, and exhibitions. In 1922, Kenneth MacGowan published his Continental Stagecraft with illustrations by Robert Edmond Jones of performances seen on their 1921 European tour, where he announced that Expressionism was "a blinding storm of illumination" which would lead the American theatre out of the "bog" of realism (3). In 1924, two other books appeared, Herman Scheffauer's The New Vision in the German Arts and Sheldon Cheney's A Primer of Modern Art, both of which proclaimed expressionism the most vigorous form of modern art. Interest in theatrical modernism prompted the publication of books and articles on Expressionism, Futurism and Constructivism, as well as the 1925 International Theatre Exposition in Steinway Hall. About 2000 models of sets from sixteen countries were presented and the extensive press coverage further popularized the principles of avant-garde art, especially of Constructivism.

The introduction of modernist philosophy and aesthetic principles in the drama and theatre in the States, which occurred in the beginning of the twentieth century, intersected with the transformation in American culture at the time. It immersed theatre in the dichotomies that were under debate--low versus high, national versus cosmopolitan, popular entertainment versus high aesthetics. As general principles it translated into an opposition to tradition and convention, anti-commercialism, the establishment of independent and art theatres, and a focus on the audience. The specifics of modernist experiment concerned the introduction of novel subject matter and anti-representational techniques, which offered complementary vistas of development to the highly conventionalized artistic practice. These specific manifestations of modernism in dramatic and theatrical terms will be examined in greater detail in future installments.

Notes:

NOTES:

(*1) O'Neill's enduring popularity in mainstream culture illuminates the convoluted way in which the modernist paradigm in the United States has been interacting contextually with various forms of the emergent, the residual and the dominant, in Raymond Williams's terms. See Williams, "Language and the Avant-Garde," 67.

(*2) Pippin proposes the following exclusive claims of modernity: nature is to be mastered, not contemplated; it is mathematizable and materialistic; all final causes in explanation should be rejected; knowledge is expected to achieve health, pleasure, and freedom from pain; the pursuit of scientific knowledge will provide great social benefits, and finally, the course of history is progressive. See Pippin, 20.

(*3) Locating modernism's specificity is a formidable enterprise and usually results in long lists of "fundamental modernist features." Michael Hoffman and Patrick Murphy, for instance, propose six assumptions "basic to any consensus about modernism": autonomy of art, cultural avant-gardism, compulsion to novelty, stylistic and formal innovation, fragmentation and juxtaposition. See Hoffman and Murphy,  8-9. Once these "fundamental features" are torn out of their respective historical and cultural contexts, however, they lose much of their specificity. On this point see also Sheppard, 2.

(*4) In this sense also, at least in the context of the 1910s and 1920s, I agree with Benjamin, who believed in the beneficial reconciliation of elite and popular culture, rather than with Adorno's brandishing of a later avant-garde intervention into mass-culture as an already appropriated commodity form. My understanding is also close to Benjamin's characterization of the modern as the recurrence of the ever-same in the guise of the ever-new.

(*5) A brief look at the historical permutations of the concept of modernism provides a suitable illustration. The numerous attempts to elaborate a canon of "great" narratives or to stage the history of modernism through the conflict of "great" names result in suppressions and silences that obliterate the complex and contentious nature of modernism. More recent endeavors to redress the canon's gaps and exclusions yield new canons. See, for instance Benstock, as well as Gilbert and Gubar, among others.

(*6) Most scholars usually follow Peter Bürger's distinction between modernism and the avant-garde, according to which the avant-garde is typical for its radical attack on the tradition and the institution of art, as well as for its utopian effort to reintegrate art and life, which modernism sharply separates. The other major scholar of the avant-garde, Renato Poggioli, treats the avant-garde not as an aesthetic but as a sociological fact without separating it from modernism. Jürgen Donnerstag distinguishes between the two in terms of tradition and innovation and defines modernism as a period, similar to romanticism, classicism, and realism, while the avant-garde is a movement within modernism. For Matei Calinescu, the avant-garde is a facet of modernism. Williams perceives a tentative difference between modernism and the avant-garde in temporal terms, while Andreas Huyssen contends that the avant-garde's attempt to reunite art and life did not migrate to the United States until the 1960s. Walter Kalaidjian, on the other hand, retrieves an inter-bellum American avant-garde, with a strong international dimension.

(*7) On the Armory Show, see especially Green.

(*8) The following account is based on Dickinson's The Insurgent Theatre , Macgowan's Footlights Across America,  Gagey's Revolution in American Drama ,as well as on the information contained in Theatre Arts Magazine (1916-1928).

(*9) Only Granville Barker made it and produced A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife and Androcles and the Lion in 1915 at the Wallack.

(*10) The Madison branch, directed by Thomas Dickinson, produced Maeterlinck's The Intruder, Ibsen's The Master Builder; the Milwaukee one, directed by Laura Sherry, Synge's Riders to the Sea, Strindberg's The Stronger, Hofmannsthal's The Marriage of Sobeide.

(*11) The Little Theatre of Philadelphia produced Ibsen's Ghosts, Wedekind's The Court Tenor, Maeterlinck's Sister Beatrice, The Miracle of St. Anthony, The Blind; and The Club, Yeats' The Land of Heart's Desire, Floyd Dell's King Arthur's Socks, Louise Bryant's The Game. On the characteristics of the little theatres, see Dickinson, The Insurgent Theatre,  75-77.

(*12) Samples of their repertoire included O'Neill's Bound East for Cardiff and Strindberg's The Stronger (The Vagabond Players); Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea, Ibsen's Ghosts, Strindberg's The Stronger (St. Loius Little Playhouse); Dreiser's Laughing Gas and Robert Emons Rogers' Behind a Watteau Picture (Little Theatre Society of Indiana); Synge's Deidre of the Sorrows, Maeterlinck's Pelleas and Melisande, Strindberg's Mother Love, Kreymborg's When the Willow Nods, Lima Beans, Manikin and Minikin, Vote the New Moon, Blue and Cold, Hofmannsthal's  Death and the Fool, Millay's Aria da Capo, O'Neill's The Great God Brown, Beyond the Horizon, Capek's R.U.R, Hauptmann's The Sunken Bell, Werfel's The Goat Song, Kaufman and Connelly's Beggar on Horseback, and Rice's The Adding Machine (Cleveland Playhouse); Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler, Peer Gynt, Yeats' The Hour Glass, Strindberg's Lucky Pehr, O'Neill's Lazarus Laughed, The Great God Brown, Fitzgerald's The Vegetable, Capek's The Makropoulos Secret (Pasadena); The Emperor Jones, Green's The No 'Count Boy, Hedda Gabler, R.U.R (Dallas); The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, The Master Builder, Pillars of Society, Hedda Gabler, In Abraham's Bosom, Glaspell's The Verge, Kaiser's From Morn to Midnight (The Hedgerow).

(*13) They were established in 1912 under Browne and Van Volkenberg, who adhered to rigorous standards of art. Housed in a small room of Chicago's Art Building, the theatre boasted a good lighting system. They produced Ibsen's Rosmersholm, Strindberg's The Stronger, Schnitzler's Anatol, Synge's Deidre of the Sorrows. 

(*14) Their first performance was in February 1915; in October 1915 they opened at the Bandbox Theatre near the corner of 57th Street and Third Avenue and in 1916 moved to the Comedy Theatre near Broadway. Among their productions were Maeterlinck's Interior, The Miracle of St. Anthony, Algavaine and Selysette, The Death of Tintagiles; Holland Hudson's The Shepherd in the Distance, Wedekind's The Tenor, Ibsen's Ghosts, John Reed's Moondown, Gerstenberg's Overtones.

(*15) Usually three stages are recognized in the existence of this group: 1915-1922--two summers at Provincetown and six seasons in New York City in Macdougal Street directed by George (Jig) Cram Cook; 1924-1925 under O'Neill, Macgowan and Robert Edmond Jones; and 1925-1926 under Eleanor Fitzgerald and James Light. For their repertoire up to 1922 see Sarlos, The Provincetown Players. After the reorganization, their productions included O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings, Edmund Wilson's The Crime in the Whistler Room, Strindberg's The Dream Play, Green's In Abraham's Bosom, cummings' Him, Upton Sinclair's Singing Jailbirds, Hasenclever's Beyond.

(*16) Fall of 1918 circular in the Berg Collection of New York Public Library in folder marked "1918."

(*17) Copy of the circular in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; folder marked "Provincetown Players, etc., Announcements, 1915-1917."

WORKS CITED

I. Theory and Criticism
Adorno, Theodor. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." The Dialectic of
Enlightenment. By Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. 120-
67.

---. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge, 1991. Benjamin, Walter.
"Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia." Reflections. Ed. Peter Demetz. New
York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978. 177-92.

Benjamin, Walter. "Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia." Reflections. Ed. Peter
Demetz. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978. 177-92.

---. "The Work of Art in Mechanical Reproduction." Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry
Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969.

Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. Austin: Texas University Press, 1986.
Bradbury, Malcolm. "The Nonhomemade World: European and American Modernism." American
Quarterly 39(1) (Spring 1987): 27-36.

Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Trans. Michael Shaw. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1984.

Calinescu, Matei. Faces of Modernity: Avantgarde, Decadence, Kitsch. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1977.

Donnerstag, Jürgen. "Was (Is) There an American Avantgarde? Theoretical Reflections on Innovation and
Tradition in Avantgarde and Modernism." Orbis Litterarum 46(1) (1991): 39-51.

Gelpi, Albert. A Coherent Splendor: The American Poetic Renaissance, 1910-1950. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. Introduction: The Female Imagination and the Modernist Aesthetic.
Women's Studies 13(1) 1986: 1-10. Special Issue. The Female Imagination and the Modernist Aesthetic
13(1,2).

---. No Man's Land. 3 vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988, 1989, 1994.

Hoffman. Michael J., and Patrick D. Murphy. Introduction. Critical Essays on American Modernism. Ed.

Michael J. Hoffman and Patrick D. Murphy. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1992. 8-9.

Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. The Lord Chandos Letter. Trans. Russell Stockman. Marlboro, Vermont: The
Marlboro Press, 1986.

Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Kalaidjian, Walter. American Culture Between the Wars: Revisionary Modernism and Postmodern
Critique. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Kenner, Hugh. A Homemade World: The American Modernist Writers. New York: A. Knopf, 1974.

Lukács, Georg. The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. 1967. London: Merlin Press, 1969.

Platt, Susan Noyes. Modernism in the 1920s. Interpretations of Modern Art in New York from
Expressionism to Constructivism. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1985.

Pippin, Robert B. Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High
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Poggioli, Renato. The Theory of the Avant-Garde. Trans. Gerald Fitzgerald. 1968. New York, London:
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Sheppard, Richard. "The Problematics of European Modernism." Theorizing Modernism: Essays in
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Williams, Raymond. "Language and the Avant-Garde." The Politics of Modernism: Against the New
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II. Collections, Histories, Memoirs, Reviews

Berg Collection of American Literature. The New York Public Library.

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Browne, Maurice. Too Late to Lament: An Autobiography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956.

Cheney, Sheldon."Theatre in the Machine Age." Theatre Arts Monthly 10(8) (Aug. 1926): 504-16.

Craven, Thomas. "An American Theatre." Theatre Arts Monthly 10(8) (Aug. 1926): 533-44.

Dickinson, Thomas H. The Insurgent Theatre. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1917.

Eastman, Max. Enjoyment of Living. New York and London: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1948.

Frank, Waldo. "Mr. Kreymborg Woos America." Dial 79 July 1925: 72.

Gagey, Edmond M. Revolution in American Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, 1947.

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---. New York 1913: The Armory Show and the Paterson Strike Pageant. New York: Macmillan Publishing
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---. The Dramatic Imagination: Reflections and Speculations on the Art of the Theatre. New York: Duell,
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---. Drawings for the Theatre. New York: Theatre Arts, Inc., 1925.

---. "Six Drawings for The Cenci." Theatre Arts 8(6) (June 1924): 408-09.
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Brace and Company, 1936.

Macgowan, Kenneth. Continental Stagecraft. (1922). New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1964.

---. "Curtain!" Theatre Arts 4(3) (July 1920): 179-89.

---. "Expressionism in the German Theatre." Vanity Fair (Nov. 1922): 53, 116.

---. Footlights Across America. Towards A National Theater. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
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---. The Theatre of Tomorrow. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921.

May, Henry F. The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time 1912-1917.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.

Moses, Montrose. The American Dramatist. 1925. New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1964. 424.

Sarlos, Robert Karoly. The Provincetown Players: Experiments in Style. 2 vols. 1967; Ann Arbor,
Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1983.

Sayler, Oliver, Ed. Max Reinhardt and His Theatre. New York: Brentano's, 1924.

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---. "The Painter and the Stage." Theatre Arts Magazine 2(1) (Dec. 1917): 3-12.

#2/2007-02-10

 Editorial

 1

 Issues of Transatlantic Relations

 Transatlantic Politics

 Transatlantic Cultural Perspectives

 The Forgotten Face of Early Modernism in American Drama and Theatre: The Transatlantic Perspective ( I )

 Love and Suffering in Bom Jesus: Marileia as Favela Woman and Mother

 Bulgaria and the Transatlantic World

 Language, Literature and Communication

 Reviews

 ISSUE #5 (2008-08-11)

 ISSUE #4 (2008-06-14)

 ISSUE #3 (2007-04-18)

 ISSUE #1 (2006-12-20)