Making American Playwrights, Making American Theater

Following the Revolutionary War, Americans were confident that political independence would be accompanied by cultural liberation as well.  They looked to artists, architects, writers, and playwrights to create original and unique cultural forms that reflected their new nation and evolving identity.  A century later, Americans had famous paintings, novels, poems, and architectural feats to boast of, but the national theater was nothing short of an embarrassment.  By the 1870s, a consensus reigned among critics and theatergoers that the United States possessed no native drama, nor native dramatists.

From 1870 to the turn of the century, a group of persistent playwrights worked to overturn this consensus.  Responding to a long-held and much-discussed desire on the parts of audiences and critics for the theater to act as a mirror of the nation, playwrights began to create and stage new drama that reflected the nation’s character, values, and spirit in ways that appeared fundamentally honest, but also complimentary.  Some focused on the nation's regional diversity, while others narrated valorous moments of national history.  Many also depicted the nation as their primarily urban audiences knew it, introducing the businessman as a new hero archetype.  In these ways, playwrights created a market for their work by capitalizing on a desire for self-reflection and definition that had existed for over a century.  In the process, they also established the theater as an arena in which to present, debate, and contest visions of American history, identity, and exceptionalism.  In this paper, I will explore the drama playwrights staged during this era, as well as critics’ and audiences’ reception of it, examining what it can tell us about how Americans regarded themselves and their nation in the late nineteenth century, as well as how they wanted to be depicted on their native stages and around the world.