Abstract
The seminal work on the history of regional theatre remains by default Joseph Wesley Zeigler’s Regional Theater, despite the fact that it was published in 1973 and obviously fails to chart the many developments that have occurred since that time.1 Zeigler’s book is an interesting collection of research into the origins of many well-known regional theatres peppered with personal anecdotes and opinions on the various productions that he and others witnessed at these institutions. While often an insightful and amusing read, the book remains incomplete not only because of its limited information concerning contemporary developments, but also because it favors a few theatres while disregarding others that played an equally important role in the development of American theatre. In terms of charting the foundations of many of these institutions, Zeigler sufficiently details the development of the more well-known theatres by recounting the principal artists and the challenges that they faced, namely locating spaces, finding financial backers, attracting audiences, and the transition from amateur to professional status. Predictably, Zeigler recognized several of the nation’s most famous theatres—the Alley Theatre in Houston, the Arena Stage in Washington, and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, all received a detailed description of their foundations while an entire chapter was dedicated to the renowned Guthrie Theater.
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Notes
This chapter contains material from “A House in Search of a Home: A Contextual History of the Founding of the Cleveland Play House” by Jeffrey Ullom, Ohio History Journal, vol. 120 (2013): 70–91. Copyright © 2013 by The Kent State University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Joseph Wesley Zeigler, Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), 12.
Julia McCune Flory, The Play House: How It Began (Cleveland, OH: Press of Western Reserve University, 1965), 5.
Carol Poh Miller and Robert Wheeler, Cleveland: A Concise History, 1796–1990 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 100.
“Miss Charlotte Cushman,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland), June 4, 1851, 2; “The Atheneum,” Plain Dealer, July 18, 1853, 2; John Vacha, Showtime in Cleveland (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001), 53.
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William Ganson Rose, Cleveland: The Making of a City (Kent: OH: Kent State University Press, 1950), 405, 449, 640.
Foster Armstrong, Richard Klein, and Cara Armstrong, A Guide to Cleveland’s Sacred Landmarks (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1992), 5;
Jan Cigliano, Showplace of America: Cleveland’s Euclid Avenue, 1850–1910 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1991), 2.
Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller (New York: Random House, 1998), 119.
Brad Crawford and William Manning, Ohio (New York: Random House, 2005), 82; Cigliano, 312.
Herbert H. Harwood, Invisible Giants: The Empires of Cleveland’s Van Sweringen Brothers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 7; Cigliano, 317–20, 323–4.
Chloe Warner Oldenburg, Leaps of Faith: History of the Play House, 1915–1980, (Private publication by Oldenburg, 1985), 15; Vacha, 101; Flory, 2.
Flory, 4; Linda H. Davis, Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katherine S. White (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 45; “Gordon to Oppose Suffrage in House,” Plain Dealer, December 21, 1913, 4.
Davis, 45; Virginia Clark Abbott, The History of Woman Suffrage and The League of Women Voters in Cuyahoga County, 1911–1945 (Cleveland, OH: League of Women Voters, 1949), 45.
Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 258.
Katharine S. Davis and Elizabeth Lawrence, Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters, edited by Emily Herring Wilson (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), xi; Davis, 1, 47.
Minerva Brooks, quoted in The Play House: How It Began by Julia McCune Flory (Cleveland, OH: The Press of Western Reserve University, 1965), 4.
“Brooks, CharlesStephen,” TheEncyclopediaofClevelandHistory, http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=BCSl (accessed March 21, 2011); Florence Milner, My Acquaintance with Charles S. Brooks (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932), 3–4.
Gerald Martin Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak, “Play House,” Oxford Companion to American Theatre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 134.
Phillip W. Porter, Cleveland: Confused City on a Seesaw (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976), 7–8.
Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959), 259, 267–8.
Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 248; “Militants Wreck Suffrage Merger,” Plain Dealer, November 15, 1915, 5.
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© 2014 Jeffrey Ullom
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Ullom, J. (2014). Building the House. In: America’s First Regional Theatre. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394354_2
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