Question | Answer |
Four Circuits | Charleston, Philadelphia, New York Boston |
Samuel Drake Company | Traveling troupe took theater to Pittsburgh. |
Show Boats | From 1833, Ohio to Mississippi, boats with shows. Mostly con-men and shitty actors. |
resident Stock Company | Organized model up to 1870. Changeover(rotating) repertoire. Short run-time period, new plays rehearsed for 2-3 days. |
Long Run System | Started with Uncle Thomas Cabin. 300 performances. Began trend that decreased size of standard rep. led to touring comps. Increased reliance on stars and hits. |
Combination Comp | Only Stars + supporting comp. Traveled with Scenery and costumes. Eliminated resident stock. Theater actor managers to landlords. Cheaper, more profits. |
Edwin Forrest | First important American actor. Played Native types (Metamora). Mcready-Forrest riots for three days. Founded school for american acting. Better business person |
Charlotte Cushman | First famous American born actress. Finest tragic actress. Big success in London. Wasn't great at PR. |
Edwin Booth | Best actor of all time. Actor-Manager of the Winter Garden Theatre in 1863. Shakespeare. Big on modern tech. |
Booth Theater | Founded by Edwin. had: hydrolic lifts, box set, proscenium, no apron. |
Steele MacKay | Designer. Opened Madison Square theater. Hydrolic lifting of stage floors. Created raked seating. Started amtinee that allowed women to attend with women. Founded American Academy of Dramatic Art: training outside of star-apprentice structure. |
Jump Jim Crow | Based on cripple black porter. Played in blackface. Invented by Thomas D. Daddy Rice. |
Minstrelsy | First American form. Songs coincided with popular songs. had black performers by 1850s. |
Virginia Minstrels | Dan Emmett. Prototype of minstrel show. |
Christy Minstrels | Biggest and most famous group. refined concept. All white. |
Minstrel Format | Semi-cricle of musicians: Tambo+Bones (End men, Spoons and tambourine). Interlocutor, MC spoke in high english. |
Olio | "Mixture" middle part of 3 pt structure of Minstrel show. acrobatics, songs, stump speeches. |
Stump Speeches | White person in blackface misusing words and context. |
African Grove Theater | Founded by William Henry Brown. Outdoor tea garden. Plays of slave rebellions and classics. White theater riots outside shut it down. |
Williams Wells Brown | The Escape: Cato is zip-coon (crafty slave). |
One-Drop law | If you have any black ancestors you are black. |
In Modernism where's the Burden? | ON YOU! |
The Concept of "Modern" | Positivism (capacity for progress), Evolution (monkeys!), Socialism, Realism. |
Tenets of Realism | Art must depict truthfully the real physical world. Only the contemporary world can be observed directly. truth can be obtained most fully through impersonal objective observation and representation of the surrounding world. |
Henrik Ibsen | Father of modern drama. Well-made play formula. A Doll's House. Ghosts. Hedda Gabler. Took society onto stage. Took ideas of mdoern society and made them into characters. |
Well-Made formula | Discarded asides, soliloquies and motivated exposition. |
Duke of Saxe-Meinigen | Established resident theater company that he completely controlled. Modern director w/aesthetic vision. Staging had insane historical detail. rehearsals as long as needed. Ensemble acting: no stars, all actors played parts. Great crowd scenes. |
Emile Zola | Wrote the book on naturalism. "Verify what is" Expose wound so you can heal it. Wrote Therese Raquin. Hated formulaic "mechanical" plays. Loved science. |
Theatre Libre | Formed by Andre Antoine in 1887 in Paris. Subscription structure. highly naturalist. Presented 184 plays including Ibsen's Ghosts. Real carcasses onstage. |
Naturalism | Fragment/slice of life. Writer is doctor. Action is inside stage setting (bookshelf with right books.) |
Freie Buhne (free stage) Berlin | Founded by Otto Brahm in 1889 as subscription theater. Opened with Ghosts. Democratic club. elected board. Structured to avoid censorship. |
Independent Theater/ London | Founded by J.T Grein in 1891. Ghosts. |
Moscow Art Theater | Found after 18-hour conversation between Stan and Nemirovich. Share-holder structure. |
Innovations of Moscow Art Theater | Large + small roles for everyone., educating audience on proper behavior, social education through contemporary plays. |
MAT Main Ideas in Acting | Actor's should be: trained in body and voice, stage techniques, observers of reality, seek inner justification, not play themselves, focus on current action, strive for perfect understanding. |
Ribot | Physchologist. MAT Adapted theories to stage |
Irish Renaissance | Irish Literary Society founded, abbey Theater founded, Lady Augusta Gregory, Synge, Yeats. |
The Black Crook | First musical, spectacle. Mash-up of plot, ballet company. Scandalous because women form. respectable people could go see female body. Opened 1866, 3200 seat niblo's Garden. Ran 474 performances. Used state of art special effects. |