Synopses & Reviews
Theatre Culture in America, 1825-1860 advances the idea that cultures are performances that take place both inside and outside of playhouses. Americans imaginatively expanded conventional ideas of performance as an activity restricted to theaters in order to take up the staging of culture in other venues--in issues of class, race, and gender, in parades and the visits of dignitaries, in rioting and the denomination of prostitutes, and in the views of the town, the city, and the frontier. Joining up-to-date historical research with a firm and clear-headed grasp of contemporary critical theory, Theatre Culture in America offers a wholly original approach to the complex intersections of American theater and culture.
Review
"...Bank says things that are interesting and new....her treatment...is subtle and satisfyingly dense and...truly valuable." American Studies
Synopsis
Theatre Culture in America, 1825-1860 advances the idea that cultures are performances that take place both inside and outside of playhouses. Americans imaginatively expanded conventional ideas of performance as an activity restricted to theaters in order to take up the staging of culture in other venues--in issues of class, race, and gender, in parades and the visits of dignitaries, in rioting and the denomination of prostitutes, and in the views of the town, the city, and the frontier. Joining up-to-date historical research with a firm and clear-headed grasp of contemporary critical theory, Theatre Culture in America offers a wholly original approach to the complex intersections of American theater and culture.
Synopsis
A study of pre-Civil War American theatre.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Prologue: universal spaces; 1. The return of Lafayette; 2. The opening of the Erie canal; Part I. Spaces of Representation: 3. The town; 4. The city; 5. The frontier; Part II. Liminal Spaces: 6. Work; 7. Class; Part III. Spaces of Legitimation: 8. Bodying forth; 9. Sensation scenes; 10. Displaced play; Epilogue: simultaneous spaces; Notes; Bibliography; Index.