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Experimenters, Rebels, and Disparate Voices The Theatre of the 1920s Celebrates American Diversity
Arthur Gewirtz, James J. Kolb, ed.
ISBN: 0-313-32466-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-32466-6
216 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 8/30/2003
List Price: $75.00 (UK Sterling Price: £51.95)
Discount Price: $37.50 Sale Price for U.S. Customers Only. Save 50%. Ends 12/31/2009.
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: The theatre and drama of the 1920s reflect a synergy of art, glitter, and glitz—a decade of great mainstream playwrights and a flourishing popular and commercial theatre, but it was also a decade in which discontented artists and a variety of people on the margins of American society could find a means of expressing their views.

Gewitz and Kolb assemble 20 essays that reflect recent scholarship and research, focusing on generally unknown or ignored aspects of the decade: John Howard Lawson's polemics, especially in his most important play, Processional, his proclivity for using jazz and mixing the devices of popular theatre with serious drama, and his collaborations with the maverick designer Mordecai Gorelik; the first appearances of serious African-American drama, including discussions of African-American theatre critics and the work of dramatists Wallace Thurman, Garland Anderson, Willis Richardson, Frank Wilson, Angela Weld Grimke, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Myrtle Smith Livington, and Marita Bonner; the problematic depictions of African-Americans and other non-native characters on the stage; contributions of women artists and playwrights such as Eva Le Gallienne, Sophie Treadwell, and Susan Glaspell; and the search for new possibilities in theatre and set design, including an examination of the little-known Jane Heap, editor of The Little Review and a lesbian modernist who presented a pivotal International Theatre Expositon in 1926. An important resource for scholars, students, and other researchers of 20th-century American theatre and drama.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction by Arthur Gewirtz and James J. Kolb
    Experimenters, Rebels, and Disparate Voices
    Searching for "The Big American Play": The Theatre Guild Produces John Howard Lawson's Processional by Beverle Bloch
    The Idiosyncratic Theatre of John Howard Lawson by John Shout
    Glitzing the Proletariat: John Howard Lawson's Plays of the 1920s by Michael C. O'Neill
    Direction by Design(er): Robert Edmond Jones and The New Provincetown Players by Jane T. Peterson
    Glitter, Glitz, and Race: The Production of Harlem by Freda Scott Giles
    Disparate Voices: African-American Theatre Critics of the 1920s by Freda Scott Giles
    Garland Anderson and Appearances: The Playwright and His Play by Alan Kreizenbeck
    The First Serious Dramas on Broadway by African-American Playwrights by Jeanne-Marie A. Miller
    Theatre and Community: The Significance of Howard University's 1920s Drama Program by Scott Zaluda
    "To Doubt Is Fatal": Eva Le Gallienne and the Civic Repertory Theatre, 1926-1932 by Estelle Aden
    Sophie Treadwell's Play Machinal: Strategies of Reception and Interpretation by Kornelia Tancheva
    Sophie Treadwell's Summer with Boleslavsky and Lectures for the American Laboratory Theatre by Jerry Dickey
    On "The Verge" of a New Form: The Cabinet of Dr. Galigari and Susan Glaspell's Experiments in The Verge by Steven Frank
    They Knew What They Wanted: American Theatre's Use of Nonverbal Communication Codes to Marginalize Non-Native Characters in the 1920s by Beverly Bronson Smith
    The Poet Lore Plays: A New Chinese Voice . . . But How New? by Dave Williams
    Theatre and Set Design
    Against the Tide: Mordecai Gorlik and the New York Theatre of the 1920s--Processsional, Nirvana, The Moon Is a Gong, and Loudspeaker by Anne Fletcher
    "Another Revolution to Be Heard From" Jane Heap and the International Theatre Exposition of 1926 by John Bell
    Architecture for the Twentieth Century: Imaging the Theatre in the 1920s by William F. Condee
    Selected Bibliography
    Index
About the Author: ARTHUR GEWIRTZ is Associate Professor of English Emeritus at Hofstra University. Among his earlier publications is Restoration Adaptations of Early 17th-Century Comedies.

JAMES J. KOLB is Professor of Drama at Hofstra University. He is a frequent stage director and a regular lecturer on American musical theatre.
LCC Class: 812
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