Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama

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Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging

American Identities
Theatre has often served as a touchstone for moments of political change or national
definition and as a way of exploring cultural and ethnic identity. In this book Wilmer
selects key historical moments in American history and examines how the theatre, in
formal and informal settings, responded to these events. The book moves from the
Colonial fight for independence, through Native American struggles, the Socialist
Worker play, the Civil Rights Movement, and up to works of the last decade,
including Tony Kushners Angels in America. In addition to examining theatrical
events and play texts, Wilmer also considers audience reception and critical response.
s . e . w i l m e r is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and formerly Director of
the School of Drama. He has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and
University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the faculty of the International
Centre for Advanced Theatre Studies, in Finland. He is editor of Portraits of Courage:
Plays by Finnish Women (Helsinki University Press, 1997) and of Beckett in Dublin
(Lilliput, 1992), among other works. Wilmer is also a playwright, with his works
performed at the Manhattan Theatre Club and Lincoln Center.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN AMERICAN THEATRE AND DRAMA
General editor
Don B. Wilmeth, Brown University
Advisory board
C. W. E. Bigsby, University of East Anglia
Errol Hill, Dartmouth College
C. Lee Jenner, Independent critic and dramaturge
Bruce A. McConachie, University of Pittsburgh
Brenda Murphy, University of Connecticut
Laurence Senelick, Tufts University
The American theatre and its literature are attracting, after long neglect, the crucial
attention of historians, theoreticians and critics of the arts. Long a field for isolated
research yet too frequently marginalized in the academy, the American theatre has
always been a sensitive gauge of social pressures and public issues. Investigations into its
myriad of shapes and manifestations are relevant to students of drama, theatre, literature,
cultural experience and political development.
The primary intent of this series is to set up a forum of important and original
scholarship in and criticism of American theatre and drama in a cultural and social
context. Inclusive by design, the series accommodates leading work in areas ranging from
the study of drama as literature to theatre histories, theoretical explorations, production
histories and readings of more popular or para-theatrical forms. While maintaining a
specific emphasis on theatre in the United States, the series welcomes work grounded
broadly in cultural studies and narratives with interdisciplinary reach. Cambridge Studies
in American Theatre and Drama thus provides a crossroads where historical, theoretical,
literary and biographical approaches meet and combine, promoting imaginative research
in theatre and drama from a variety of new perspectives.
books in the series
1. Samuel Hay, African American Theatre
2. Marc Robinson, The Other American Drama
3. Amy Green, The Revisionist Stage: American Directors Re-Invent the Classics
4. Jared Brown, The Theatre in American during the Revolution
5. Susan Harris Smith, American Drama: The Bastard Art
6. Mark Fearnow, The American Stage and the Great Depression
7. Rosemarie K. Bank, Theatre Culture in America, 18251860
8. Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World
9. Stephen J. Bottoms, The Theatre of Sam Shepard
10. Michael A. Morrison, John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor
11. Brenda Murphy, Congressional Theatre: Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film,
and Television
12. Jorge Huerta, Chicano Drama: Performance, Society and Myth
13. Roger A. Hall, Performing the American Frontier, 18701906
14. Brooks McNamara, The New York Concert Saloon: The Devils Own Nights
15. S. E. Wilmer, Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities
Theatre, Society and the Nation

Staging American Identities
S . E . W ILM E R
Trinity College, Dublin

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcn 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org
S. E. Wilmer 2004
First published in printed format 2002
ISBN 0-511-04152-7 eBook (netLibrary)
ISBN 0-521-80264-4 hardback
Contents
Acknowledgements
page vii
Introduction
From British colony to independent nation: refashioning

identity
16
Federalist and Democratic Republican theatre: partisan

drama in nationalist trappings
53
Independence for whom? American Indians and the

Ghost Dance
80
The role of workers in the nation: the Paterson Strike

Pageant
98
Staging social rebellion in the 1960s
127
Reconfiguring patriarchy: suffragette and feminist plays
151
Imaging and deconstructing the multicultural nation

in the 1990s
173
Notes
203
Select bibliography
250
Index
267
Acknowledgements
I want to thank my colleagues in the School of Drama at Trinity College,

Dublin for allowing me generous study leave to research this book and the
Academic Development Fund and the Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction
Fund at the Trinity College, Dublin for financial help. I also want to thank
my students at Trinity College, Dublin, Stanford University, and University
of California, Berkeley for the stimulating discussions concerning many of
the topics in this book, and especially the faculty (Pirkko Koski, Bruce
McConachie, Janelle Reinelt, Freddie Rokem and Bill Worthen) and students at the International Center for Advanced Theatre Studies (ICATS)
at the University of Helsinki for commenting on several of the chapters
of this book in draft form. Parts of this book, in different versions, have
appeared in Acta Americana (vol. 7, no. 2, 1999, pp. 2545), the Irish Journal
of American Studies (vol. 8, 1999, pp. 119179), Nordic Theatre Studies (vol. 12,
1999, pp. 94103), Theatre Survey (vol. 40, no. 2, 1999, pp. 126) and Theatre
Symposium (vol. 5, 1997, pp. 7894). I am very grateful to the Department of
Drama at Stanford University, especially Michael Ramsaur and Ron Davies,
for accommodating me during my research visits to the United States, and
I am particularly indebted to the series editor Don Wilmeth and to Vicki
Cooper at Cambridge University Press for their guidance and encouragement, to the copy editor Maureen Leach for her careful work, and to Mary
Ellen OHara at TCD for her help with the index. Lastly and most importantly I want to thank my family Marja, Tania and Alex for their
support in spite of long and painful absences.
vii
Introduction
Ivarious
n the historical development of the nation-state,
forms of cultural expression have been instrumental in helping to
construct notions of national identity. Recent works on cultural nationalism
(such as Edward Saids Culture and Imperialism, Homi Bhabhas Nation and
Narration and Benedict Andersons Imagined Communities) have analyzed
this process, but to a large extent they have undervalued the role of theatre.
For example in Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson highlights the
influence of print journalism and literature in establishing the concept of
the nation, but hardly mentions the stage. This book attempts to widen
the discussion on cultural nationalism by demonstrating the importance of
drama and theatrical performance in having contributed to and in continuing to influence the process of representing and challenging notions of
national identity.
Theatre has often acted as a site for staging national history, folklore and
myths and for formulating national ideology in many parts of the world.
With its rhetorical and semiotic features, theatre has offered a particularly
effective means of conveying notions of what is national and what is alien.
Furthermore, because plays purporting to express national values can be
performed in the actual presence of the community (in a public theatre),
they can serve not only to make claims for a national identity, but they
can also gain immediate communal support or rejection for that assertion.1
Unlike the solitary reader of a novel or a newspaper who reacts in isolation,
the theatregoer is part of a community of spectators who can express their
approval or disapproval to the performers and to each other. As Stephen
Greenblatt has shown, theatre is a collective creation, both as the product of collective intentions and also because it addresses its audience as
a collectivity.2 But theatre is, moreover, a place for interaction between
performers and audience. In a manner consonant with Renans notion of
THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION
the nation as a daily plebiscite,3 the theatre can act as a public forum in
which the audience scrutinizes and evaluates political rhetoric and assesses
the validity of representations of national identity. The theatre can serve as
a microcosm of the national community, passing judgement on images of
itself.
In the late eighteenth century, Goethe and Schiller wrote of the potential of theatre to galvanize the nation. After the French Revolution, Schiller
went so far as to argue that the theatre could help not only to establish
national values but also to create a new German nation. If a single characteristic predominated in all of our plays; if all of our poets were in accord and
were to form a firm alliance to work for this end; if their work were governed
by strict selection; if they were to devote their paintbrushes to national subjects; in a word, if we were to see the establishment of a national theatre:
then we would become a nation.4
In Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, plays and theatre performances became important sites for expressing notions of national
identity both in established nation-states and in emerging nations. German
Romanticism (including the work of Klopstock, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist
and Wagner) encouraged the rise of nationalist drama and opera in various European countries, such as the work of Oehlenschlager in Denmark,
Victor Hugo in France, Katona and Kisfaludy in Hungary, Pushkin in
Russia, Alfieri, Manzoni, Niccolini and Verdi in Italy, Ibsen5 and Bjrnson
in Norway and Yeats in Ireland.6 Writing of the theatres in Northern and
Eastern Europe, Laurence Senelick has emphasized the counter-cultural
nature of much of this type of work. Most national theatres arose in reaction
to a dominant culture imposed from without; they were a means of protest
as well as of preserving what were considered to be salient features of the oppressed group. Theatre was a catalytic factor in the formation of its identity.7
Moreover, Marvin Carlson has suggested that this kind of nationalist theatre affected most of Europe. Few of the emerging national/cultural groups
of the post-Romantic period neglected to utilize the drama as a powerful
tool for awakening a people to a common heritage and, not infrequently, encouraging them through an awareness of this heritage to seek both national
identity and national liberty in opposition to the demands of dominant and
external political and cultural influences.8
In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson emphasizes this notion of
awakening from sleep9 as a common trope for nascent nationalism, i.e. that
the people of the nation are awakened to the call of their natural national
allegiances. In the nationalist drama and the work of many national theatres
INTRODUCTION
from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, one can see the attempt
to awaken the nation to its natural sense of nationhood. But how natural are
these notions of nationhood? To what extent is the nations history fabricated? How common is the heritage? In how many ways might it be configured? Which voices are suppressed in order to create a national (and possibly
univocal or homogenous) discourse? One could argue that notions of national identity are continuously being contested by different vying groups
within the nation, seeking to assert or impose their own cultural values at
various points in time. Andrew Higson has suggested that, The search for
a stable and coherent national identity can only be successful at the expense
of repressing internal differences, tensions and contradictions differences
of class, race, gender, region, etc. Higson also notes the importance of
historical shifts in the construction of nationhood and national identity;
nationhood is always an image constructed under particular conditions.10
Thus, one could propose that notions of national identity are constantly
being reformulated, revised and reasserted in an ongoing battle to assert
and maintain a hegemonic notion of the nation. Likewise, subaltern groups
have confronted the homogenous image represented by the dominant group
in asserting a more pluralistic or counter-hegemonic identity.
This book demonstrates that theatre in the United States has often been
used to define or challenge national values and the notion of the nation.
The North American tradition of this type of drama predates German
Romanticism. It was already manifest in the earliest drama of the English
colonies, and it continues until today. Particularly at times of national crisis, the theatre has served as a political and ideological tool to help reconfigure the nation. The purpose of this book is to investigate important
examples of this process from the eighteenth to the twentieth century in order to illustrate the role of the theatre and live performance in reformulating
concepts of national identity.
Rather than focusing on hegemonic nationalism, however, Theatre,
Society and the Nation concentrates as much on counter-hegemonic and
subaltern discourses. For example, it analyzes plays and performances that
formulated a positive identity for marginalized or oppressed groups in
society and that posited an identity for the nation that privileged rather
than minimized the position of such groups. Divided into chapters relating
to specific political and social movements, the book discusses representative
plays and performances that emerged out of those movements. In addition to examining theatrical events and the printed text of plays and the
messages implicit or explicit therein, it considers the audience and critical
response (both of the dominant and oppressed groups in society). In general the strategy of Theatre, Society and the Nation is, rather than seeking to
cover every drama or theatrical performance within each social or political
movement, to analyze a few of the more illustrative plays and performances
in depth.
The image of the United States has been evolving since the republic
was founded in the eighteenth century. As in other countries, the concept
of the nation has responded to social change and times of stress. Theatre
and other media have contributed to the changing discourse about national
values and national identity. As J. Ellen Gainor has written, Our culture
is always constructing and representing itself to itself.11 Before the development of film, radio and television, theatre and live performance played
an important role in staging the national character in front of a live public
audience which could immediately indicate their acceptance or rejection of
such images, for example by applause or booing or other forms of intervention. In the first century of the republic, the discourse that was circulating
in other media (such as newspapers, novels, magazines and public speeches)
could be converted for stage presentation. Equally, plays and performances
could introduce new ideas and images that could take hold of the popular
imagination, and be reinforced through their dissemination in other media. Unlike public speeches and literature, the theatre often works through
live visual images that carry sub-textual or symbolic messages, and so the
rhetoric is not only conveyed in the verbal dialogue and written text. More
recently, the theatre and live performance have competed with radio, television, film and other media in this enterprise. This book does not try to
cover the wide range of media but concentrates on the changing ideologies
evident in drama and live performance that have presented various notions
of national identity over the course of three centuries.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish, British, French and
Dutch colonies were established on land belonging to American Indian
tribes on the East Coast of North America that would later become part
of the United States. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the British
colonies dominated the territory that would encompass the initial expanse
of the United States of America. Furthermore, although there were immigrants from different countries and of different religious faiths, the Englishspeaking white Protestant had gained a dominant position by this time.
In 1740, an Act of Parliament enabled settlers in the American colonies
to become British citizens after seven years of residency and after taking a
Protestant oath. Jews and Quakers were exempt from the oath, but Catholics
INTRODUCTION
were excluded. Non-English-speaking immigrants such as Germans were

expected to learn English and their children to attend English-speaking
schools.12 Enslaved Africans were imported as laborers and American
Indians were pushed westward. Gradually the other competing European
colonial forces were displaced by the British in much of North America.
The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was taken over by the British and
renamed New York in 1664, and the Spanish Floridas and French Canada
were acquired under the Peace of Paris in 1763. (Other colonies would be
acquired by the United States after it became independent such as the
Louisiana Purchase from the French in 1803, the Spanish colony of Florida
which had reverted to Spain after the War of Independence in 1819, and
much of the Spanish territory in the west including Texas and California
in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.) Thus, an English-speaking
Protestant identity gained ascendancy in the territory that would form the
first thirteen states of the new republic.
A Native American performance tradition existed in North America long
before European settlement. With the advent of Spanish, British, French
and Dutch colonies, European styles of drama began to appear in North
America including religious performances in the Spanish colonies as early
as the 1520s.13 Because of the emphasis on national identity in the United
States, this book begins with the period shortly before independence when
the North American English colonies were manifesting their loyalty to the
British Crown.
The first chapter examines the period prior to independence from Britain,
and the plays that either promoted a Loyalist or a Patriot stance. Until the
Stamp Act of 1765, the few dramas written in the British colonies of North
America supported British colonial policies and promoted the image of
settlers as being loyal to the Crown. With the rebellion over the Stamp
Act, colonial drama engaged in the debate about the identity of the settlers.
Some dramas demonstrated continuing loyalty to the Crown while others
expressed a new sense of national identity. These early plays, which were
mainly written to be read rather than performed, presumably appealed to a
literate elite rather than a mass audience.
With independence, a new national identity was legally defined along
racial, gender and class lines. The rights of citizenship were generally restricted to white property-owning males.14 In drafting the Constitution and
the Bill of Rights, the founders of the new nation-state ignored the natural birthright of African Americans and American Indians, and in the
1790 Act of Congress made it clear that only white immigrants (free white
person[s], who shall have resided within . . . the United States for the term
of two years) could gain citizenship.15
The Federalists argued for a strong central government as opposed to a
loose confederation of states, and following the election of Washington as
the first President, they favored their kinship and neocolonial-mercantile
ties with Britain in formulating national values and a foreign policy. AntiFederalists argued for states rights and accused the Federalists of trying
to ape British aristocratic values. Partly to suppress dissent, the Federalists
introduced more stringent legislation in the Alien and Sedition Acts of
1798 that limited immigrant rights and freedom of speech, defined who was
an alien and indicated on what basis immigrants could be deported. This
legislation further determined who was to be included in the nation-state
and who was to be excluded (e.g. those with pro-French and anti-Federalist
sympathies.)
The second chapter looks at the period in the 1790s, when the theatre
became increasingly a site of confrontation between the two rival political
factions. These groups staged performances that reflected partisan values
(such as attitudes about class and social status and about loyalties to particular foreign governments), while endeavoring to posit these values as
national and in the national interest. Federalists defended class distinctions
and promoted strong links with Britain, while Democratic Republicans supported close ties with France and advocated the more egalitarian values of
the French Revolution as reflecting the goals of the founding fathers of the
American republic. Progressing from an elite to a middle-class art form, the
theatre broadened its appeal by presenting more American material. Such
performances as John Burks anti-Federalist Bunker-Hill attracted artisans
as well as upper-class members of society.
In the nineteenth century Americans increasingly questioned the cultural
hegemony of Britain and encouraged American artistic efforts and images.
The playwright James Nelson Barker urged his countrymen to support nationalistic plays and warned that otherwise they must be content to continue
the importation of our ideas and sentiments, like our woollen stuffs, from
England.16 Certain overlapping stereotypes of American character began
to emerge in the theatre such as the American Veteran, the Yankee and the
backwoodsman or frontiersman. These were white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
male characters who, although sometimes comic, provided a positive image
of an independent American spirit. The Yankee character in such plays as
Royall Tylers The Contrast (1787), James Nelson Barkers Tears and Smiles
(1808) and A. B. Lindsleys Love and Friendship (1810) spoke with a peculiar
INTRODUCTION
American dialect and exhibited a homespun wisdom unsullied by old world

(e.g. British) decadence.17 In some examples, such as Dan Marble in The
Vermont Wool Dealer (1838) or The Stage Struck Yankee (1845), the Yankee
character adopted the dress of the figure of Uncle Sam.18 Of this character,
Bruce McConachie has written, Like several earlier stage symbols of the
nation, Yankee stars played a large role in the social construction of whiteness . . . Although accommodating the values of republican simplicity and
sentimental virtue, the stage Yankees actually advanced the cultural system
of rationality and the whiteness it assumed.19 Likewise, the rugged frontiersman conquering the American continent, taming the environment and
fighting against American Indians in the name of civilization exuded the
values of the individualist pioneer. Such plays as James Kirke Pauldings
Lion of the West (1830) which was adapted by William Bayle Bernard as The
Kentuckian (1833), Louisa Medinas Nick of the Woods (1838), W. R. Derrs
Kit Carson, the Hero of the Prairie (1850) and Frank Murdocks Davy Crockett
(1872) helped entrench this mythical hero into the public consciousness.
They also promoted the concept of what Sacvan Berkovitch has called the
American jeremiad, the spiritual mission of Americans to conquer the
wilderness.20 The association of the frontiersman with a religious quest, or
alternatively as an American Adam seeking his fortune in an American
garden of Eden,21 also reflected an ongoing ethnic, religious and gender
prejudice in the country that would encourage the notion that the country
belonged to a specific type of person and that its fruits were for their benefit
and should be denied to others. As Donald Pease has written, Alongside
the nexus of belongingness established for the national community, the
national narrative represented other peoples (women, blacks, foreigners, the
homeless [and Native Americans]) from whom the property of nationness
had been removed altogether and upon whose differences from them the
national people depended for the construction of the universality of their
norms.22
President Andrew Jackson, who acquired the image of the individualist
frontiersman and democratic yeoman, encouraged cultural nationalism in
the theatre: It is time that the principal events in the history of our country
were dramatized, and exhibited at the theatres on such days as are set apart as
national festivals.23 Dramatists complied by writing melodramas featuring
various types of Jacksonian figures in particular for the actor Edwin Forrest,
who was closely associated with Jacksonian values, viz., Robert T. Conrads
Jack Cade (1835), Augustus Stones Metamora; Or, the Last of the Wampanoags
(1829) and Robert Montgomery Birds The Gladiator (1831).24 The struggle
for cultural autonomy from Britain was perhaps most clearly displayed in the
Astor Place riots of 1849 (in which twenty-two people died) when supporters
of the American actor Edwin Forrest clashed with supporters of the visiting
English actor William Charles Macready.
With the increase of Irish immigration in the 1830s and 1840s, antiCatholic prejudice grew and the stage Irishmen and stage Irish immigrant
figures emerged as popular comic stereotypes.25 As slavery became more of a
contentious issue, abolitionist groups used the theatre to promote the cause
of freedom. Harriet Beecher Stowes 1852 novel of Uncle Toms Cabin was
adapted by many theatre groups and performed throughout the northern
states. George L. Aikens adaptation received an unusually long run in New
York and the New York Spirit of the Times commented that the performance
of this drama has made converts to the abolition doctrine many persons, we
have no doubt, who have never examined the subject, and know nothing of
its merits.26 Other plays addressed the slavery issue, notably The Octoroon
(1859) by the Irish immigrant Dion Boucicault, and The Escape; Or, A Leap
for Freedom (1857) that William Wells Brown, as a former slave, wrote from
personal experience and read in public to promote the abolitionist cause. In
the south, the fear of northerners dramatizing Uncle Toms Cabin was expressed by the editor of the New Orleans Daily Picayune: The gross misrepresentations of the south which have been propagated extensively through
the press, with the laudations of editors, politicians, and pious fanatics of
the pulpit, are to be presented in tableaux, and the lies they contain acted by
living libellers before crowds of deluded spectators.27 Southerners counterattacked with alternative versions of Uncle Toms Cabin that conveyed the
superiority of southern life, such as Joseph M. Fields Uncle Toms Cabin:
or Life in the South As It Is, Dr. William T. Leonards Uncle Toms Cabin
in Louisiana and George Jamiesons The Old Plantation; or, Uncle Tom As
He Is.28
While opposing the institution of slavery before the Civil War, Uncle
Toms Cabin continued to be popular as entertainment after the abolition of
slavery. As Jim Crow laws followed the newly won freedom of African
Americans during the reconstruction era, Tom Shows by white actors in
black face depicted demeaning stereotypes like the self-effacing Uncle Tom
and the uncivilized Topsy. Likewise, other plays and minstrel shows (which
had started as early as the 1820s by African Americans or white artists in
black face and which toured the country during much of the nineteenth
century) created demeaning stereotypes for African Americans, e.g. comic,
dancing figures, tragic mulattos, brutes or Mammy caricatures.
INTRODUCTION
Other ethnic characters such as Irish Americans and Native Americans

were particularly popular in the melodramas and comedies of the time, but
the values and culture of Anglo-Saxon Americans remained dominant with
members of other ethnic groups often being shown on the stage in comic
roles. This became increasingly apparent following the gold rush, industrialization, the building of the railroads, the growth of the cities and the enormous increase in immigration especially from Europe and Asia. The threat
to white Protestant hegemony because of immigration entered the subtext
of numerous new plays, such as McCloskeys melodrama about the railroads, Across the Continent. On the other hand, immigrants brought their
own culture and performance traditions with them, and numerous immigrant ethnic groups performed theatre to their own communities usually in
their native languages.
Native Americans tried to preserve their cultures and their ways of life in
the nineteenth century despite white settlers depriving them of their land,
their language and their religions and confining them on reservations. In
some cases they were pushed to the extreme and reacted aggressively, but the
white settlers, reinforced by the government and the military, continued to
insist on their right to take over the country. In early American drama such
as Metamora, Native Americans were often portrayed as noble savages who
were tragically disappearing from the landscape.29 However, by the middle
of the nineteenth century, this image changed as settlers on the frontier
wanted Native Americans to disappear more rapidly. For example, when
Forrest presented Metamora in Augusta, Georgia in 1831 while the Georgians
were in the process of evicting the Cherokees, the audience reacted angrily
to the sympathetic treatment of Indians.30 Having been represented in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth century as proto-Americans and even, in
cultural nationalist parlance, as the American volk,31 Indians had become
un-American or anti-American by the mid nineteenth century. Representations of Native Americans as tragic noble savages gave way by the
1850s to ridiculous comic portrayals on the stage as in the burlesques by
John Brougham, such as Metamora; Or, The Last of the Pollywogs (1847), or
to uncivilized and warlike predatory figures as in W. R. Derrs Kit Carson,
The Hero of the Prairie (1850) or Augustin Dalys Horizon (1871). Such depictions provided the settlers with the moral justification to abrogate treaties
and deprive the Indians of their lands.
The third chapter explores the response of the Native Americans and
more specifically the Lakota to their loss of sovereignty in the western plains.
Although Native Americans sometimes performed in Wild West shows and
were often represented (and sometimes appeared) in playhouses, this chapter

does not examine representations of Native Americans in the mainstream
theatre or Native American performances for a paying public. It discusses
a religious ritual that spread across the country and was interpreted by the
Lakota in a particular fashion. The chapter demonstrates that the Lakota
rendition of the Ghost Dance was a performative cultural and religious
response to their loss of sovereignty and functioned as a demand for an
independent Native lifestyle. The Ghost Dance, which spread across the
United States, reflected a widespread belief that the millennium was near.
The Native Americans were faced with the obliteration of their culture
and the extermination of their people, but the Ghost Dance represented
a dream that the whole process of white incursion could be reversed. The
whites would disappear, the buffalo would return and the Indians would
reunite with their ancestors. As such, the Lakota Ghost Dance redefined
the notion of the nation that was being promulgated by the white settlers
and the government in Washington. The Ghost Dance operated as a form
of political theatre, similar in function to the pamphlet plays for the white
population in the previous century.
In spite of the increasing diversity of the United States in the nineteenth century with immigrants from many parts of the world in addition
to the early white settlers and the indigenous and African American peoples,
the dominant notion of the nation remained monocultural and united. This
was particularly emphasized following the Civil War as a rhetorical means
to express a common and undivided national identity. Unlike the nations
of Europe that could claim the organic development of a national spirit
through a common history, folklore, literature, ethnicity, language, etc.,
Americas common identity needed to be more artificially constructed because of its diversity of ethnicities, religions, languages and customs. Despite
severe social prejudice, a hierarchical social structure and legalized forms of
social discrimination, some of the factors that were represented as uniting
the country were the English language, the Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture,
and the common dream of prosperity founded on notions of liberty, equality
and free enterprise. According to Frederick Jackson Turner, To the frontier
the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and
strength . . . that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but
powerful to effect great ends . . . that dominant individualism, working for
good and for evil.32 Likewise, David Huntington wrote, It is a wondrous
impulse to the individual, to his hope, his exertions and his final success,
[thus] to be taught that there is nothing in his way; that he stands fair
INTRODUCTION
with his comrades, on the same great arena, with no social impediments,
and that the prize is always certain for the fleetest in the race. This is the
natural influence of the democratic principle of our Revolution.33
The image of America as a land of opportunity for the hard-working
individualist applied to immigrants and citizens alike and fostered the
concept of a national community of individuals who could all prosper.
Despite widespread anti-Catholicism, Jim Crow laws, the confinement to
reservations of Native Americans, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and
other forms of ethnic and religious discrimination, the image of a national
homogenous population of white Protestants persevered and was reinforced
by the metaphor of a national melting pot in which all the diverse elements
could end up emulating the white Protestant archetype, bolstered by the national motto e pluribus unum, out of many, one. Furthermore, in spite of an
increasingly forceful implementation of the Monroe doctrine, foreign wars
with Mexico and Spain, and the acquisition of conquered territory such
as parts of Mexico, the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hawaii, the
dominant image of the nation remained democratic and anti-imperialistic,
encouraging freedom and self-determination.34
The Chautauqua movement helped solidify the notion that America
was homogenous and rural, despite (and because of ) trends to the contrary.
Like the cultural nationalism that spread through Europe in the nineteenth
century and owed its origins to German Romanticism and the ideas of
Herder and Rousseau, the Chautauqua gatherings emphasized rural rather
than urban values as the distinctive virtues of the nation. The Chautauquas
were annual cultural events that dated from the late nineteenth century
and occurred in thousands of small towns and villages across the United
States. From the early twentieth century, national touring organizations
sent out packages of events lasting from three to seven days, consisting of
public speeches, musical numbers, plays and other amusements. Although
the shows were sold to the communities as morally uplifting rather than as
commercial entertainment, the enterprise was hugely profitable for the organizers, with an estimated annual attendance of almost thirty million people
at its peak in 1924. While professing such foundational ideas as freedom of
religion and equality, the dominant values of the Chautauquas were white,
Protestant and capitalist.35 The hard-working white American Protestant
was idealized, and would be, according to Conwells ever popular Acres of
Diamonds speech, rewarded financially.36 European immigrants could be
transformed into model American citizens, as was shown in Zangwills The
Melting Pot (1908), which became a popular play on the Chautauqua circuit
from 1914, if they denied their former values, adopted American ways and
assimilated into the dominant culture.37
By contrast with the homogenous depiction of America by the Chautauquas, various marginalized and excluded groups used theatre to reverse the
stereotypical images conveyed by the dominant discourse in the theatre and
other media (including the budding film industry). The labor movement
in the United States used the theatre to protest their subservient status
under capitalism especially during the economic depression of the 1930s.
Workers theatres organized a national infrastructure for performing plays
around the country in order to increase class solidarity and participated in
a popular front to express a wide coalition of leftist political opinions in the
country. The Roosevelt government initiated the Federal Theatre Project
which absorbed some of the radicalism of this movement and at the same
time contained it within a government-funded institution.
Chapter 4 considers the counter-hegemonic ideology of this movement
and analyzes a seminal event in 1913 in which Paterson silk workers staged
scenes from an industrial dispute for a massive and predominantly workingclass audience in Madison Square Garden. Rather than showing a united
and homogenous population, the Paterson strike pageant depicted a nation
polarized by class divisions with the workers, unhappy under the capitalist
system, attempting to transform the structures of society.
Likewise, the suffrage movement used the stage to alter the image of
women as passive and dependent creatures. The new woman was represented as equal to men, capable of a career as a doctor, lawyer or political
leader, and as entitled as men to the right to vote. In the 1920s African
American playwrights in the Harlem renaissance began to write race plays
that depicted African American characters from their own perspective and
reversed the demeaning stereotypes of the nineteenth century.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, leftist ideas were crushed
under the national war effort. Japanese Americans were confined to concentration camps and social and industrial discontent was suppressed. Following
the war, a new reality replaced the pre-war social turmoil.38 The white
heterosexual male character returned as the dominant representation of
American national identity in the media. The image of the American hero in
war films was extended into cowboy-and-Indian films and television shows
where white cowboys defended humanity and civilization against Indian
savages. Film, television and the mainstream theatre projected the role
model of the white heterosexual male as a universal value and marginalized
the values and interests of others. Women played supportive roles, African
INTRODUCTION
Americans appeared as comic characters, Asian Americans as evil men or

lascivious women, and gays and lesbians were invisible. Counter-hegemonic
images emerged in the theatre such as Arthur Millers challenge to the capitalist ethic in Death of a Salesman (1949) and his criticism of the McCarthy
witch-hunt for un-American activity in The Crucible (1953). Similarly, in
Edward Albees The American Dream (1961), the character of the young man
who describes himself as a clean-cut, midwest farm boy type and is recognized by the grandmother as the American dream, has lost any sense of
feeling or compassion and will do anything for money. He arguably symbolizes the loss of humanity in America under capitalism, while his twin brother
who has disappeared seems to represent those who are rejected or rendered
invisible by American society and unable to attain the American dream.
From the 1960s, marginalized groups challenged the dominant discourse
through the civil rights movement, student protests, demonstrations against
the Vietnam War and the widespread rejection of dominant cultural values.
Successful anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia encouraged ethnic
pride and stimulated separate cultural nationalist movements amongst
African American, Chicano, and Native American populations. Such groups
used the theatre to write their histories in the face of historic misrepresentation, calling attention to the suffering that they had endured and the
struggles in which they were engaged. They showed that the dominant
discourse in America had served the purposes of certain privileged groups
and had disenfranchised others. In the late 1960s many ethnic-based groups
produced work within and for their own communities.
Chapter 5 focuses on the Black Revolutionary Theatre headed by Amiri
Baraka, the Teatro Campesino founded by Luis Valdez, and the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War as significant groups that called for urgent social
and political change and took their message to the people. Barakas cultural
centres in Harlem and Newark produced drama, often in the streets, that
reflected the Black Power movement and Black Nationalism. The Teatro
Campesino created work that initially responded to the strike in California
by the United Farmworkers and performed it on a flatbed truck in the
fields. Gradually, they moved into a wider representation of Chicano identity and investigated their cultural heritage including the spiritual practices of the Aztecs and Mayans. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War
mounted search-and-destroy enactments in the streets and country roads
of the American hinterland to persuade the American public to abandon
the war in Vietnam and recognize their responsibility for the atrocities that
were being committed overseas in their name.
The political turbulence in the 1960s encouraged women to reexamine

their status in society. Initially their claims were largely ignored, not only by
the establishment but also by male dominated counter-hegemonic political
organizations. In the 1970s and 1980s the womens movement provided a new
discourse on gender and sexuality that interrogated the patriarchal norms in
society. Likewise, the gay liberation movement used the theatre to challenge
heterosexual norms with drag shows, camp theatre, as well as realistic plays
such as Martin Shermans Bent (1979), Harvey Fiersteins Torch Song Trilogy
(1982) and William Hoffmans As Is (1985), fantasy performances such as
Tony Kushners Angels in America (1992), and campaigning pieces such as
Larry Kramers The Normal Heart (1985) about the aids crisis and Tim
Millers Glory Box (2000) that urged new legislation for gay partnerships.
Chapter 6 draws links between the role of the theatre during the suffragist movement at the beginning of the twentieth century and the feminist
movement towards the end of the millennium. It discusses the work of suffragists like Elizabeth Robins and the suffrage pageant in 1913 before turning
to the second wave of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s which applied liberal,
radical and materialist (socialist) strategies. It concludes with a discussion of
a return to radical feminism in the enormously successful Vagina Monologues
(1996) by Eve Ensler.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, multiculturalism provided an answer to the
accusations of essentialism embedded in identity politics, with artists, academics and policy makers urging a new attitude to American society that
celebrated its pluralism and diversity rather than its uniformity. The final
chapter examines the work from the 1990s of Anna Deavere Smith, Tony
Kushner, Velina Hasu Houston, Brenda Wong Aoki, the Colorado Sisters
and Guillermo Gomez-Pena that constructs various images of a multicultural, transnational and even postnational society.
In the early days of the United States of America, writers used theatrical
forms to present revolutionary values as national values. In the nineteenth
century as America colonized the west, such values evolved to support
entrenched privileged positions while the Protestant Anglo-Saxon figure of
Uncle Sam came to represent the dominant image of American national
identity. Justified under social Darwinism as survival of the fittest and by
expansionists as Manifest Destiny, Americans conquered the continent,
removing the indigenous peoples to reservations despite their protests.
During the twentieth century marginalized groups used theatre and live
performance to present counter-hegemonic values and promote more pluralistic and diverse notions of national identity for various types of audience.
INTRODUCTION
They challenged the dominant white patriarchal archetype and the concept
of a homogenous and unified country. In postcolonial fashion, as Homi
Bhabha writes, The peoples of the periphery return[ed] to rewrite the history and fiction of the metropolis.39 As we move into a new millennium,
contemporary American theatre artists continue to redefine the notion of the
nation.

From British colony to independent
nation: refashioning identity
Iof nthethe
second half of the eighteenth century, many
settlements in North America underwent a major political and ideological transformation from isolated and dependent colonies to a united and
independent nation-state. Writers with differing political perspectives and
agenda used drama as a means to help define the values of the inhabitants
of the territory and their political relationship with Europe. During this
period, plays by Loyalist Americans and by the British military encouraged
the loyalty of the settlers to the British crown. Whig or Patriot drama, on the
other hand, inspired Americans to rethink their connection with the British
government, and began to redefine the American colonies as potentially a
separate and independent nation. This chapter will examine the changing
constructions of identity in these plays and dialogues, from the early didactic plays in the 1760s that underlined the responsibilities of the American
colonies to the British crown, to the drama of the 1770s that, in some cases,
promoted a new notion of the nation as independent from Britain.
In eighteenth-century America, prominent religious communities, such
as the Puritans in Massachusetts, the Quakers in Pennsylvania and the
Presbyterians in New Jersey, disapproved of the theatre. The Massachusetts
legislature passed a bill in 1750 prohibiting theatrical performances because
they not only occasion great and unnecessary expenses, and discourage
industry and frugality, but likewise tend generally to increase Immorality,
impiety, and contempt of religion.1 The Church of England, which dominated the southern states, was more tolerant of theatre, though the Reverend
Samuel Davies of Virginia reprimanded his congregation because plays and
romances were more read than the History of the blessed Jesus.2
Religious antipathy to theatre in the seventeenth and eighteenth century
stunted the growth of American playwriting and performance. On the other
hand, pamphlet drama had become important in the religious reformation
FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION
movement in Germany in the sixteenth century. The enormous dissemination of religious and political pamphlets from the sixteenth century in
Europe manifested the power of printed material (often in dramatic or dialogue form) to educate, instruct and persuade. By the 1760s in the colonies,
a history of writing plays as propaganda had already been established.
Religious advocates printed dramatic dialogues as a means for teaching
virtuous behavior to the young, such as Dialogue Between Christ, Youth
and the Devil (published anonymously in 1735), or for resolving doctrinal
disputes, such as Dialogue Between a Minister and an Honest Country-Man,
Concerning Election and Predestination (published by John Checkley in 1741).
Few American plays appeared before the end of the eighteenth century, and
those that were written were often intended only to be read rather than to
be performed. Possibly because so many of the colonists looked down on
theatre as immoral and frivolous, drama tended to be used more as a means
to instruct rather than to entertain. Accordingly, a high proportion of the
plays written in America during the 1760s and 1770s were didactic.
The Hallam family, who brought the first major professional touring
company (the London Company of Comedians) to the colonies in 1752,
resorted to disguising their plays as moral tracts in order to find favor with
the local authorities.3 They met with receptive audiences in the southern
towns and the prosperous West Indies but had to negotiate their way more
carefully in the northern colonies, discovering that resistance was especially
strong in New England and also at times in New York and Philadelphia.
The play that they performed most often (other than Shakespeare) was
George Lillos George Barnwell.4 Because of its moral instruction to young
people, it was more acceptable to religious communities, especially during
the Christmas and Easter seasons. In time the Hallam/Douglass company
established permanent venues such as the Williamsburg Theatre in 1752
(where George Washington was a frequent member of the audience), the
Chapel Street Theatre in New York in 1761 (and, after that was destroyed, the
John Street Theatre in 1767), the Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia in 1766,
and the West Street Theatre in Annapolis and the Church Street Theatre
in Charleston in 1773. They developed a touring circuit and performed
regularly at these various sites (depending upon the climate of public opinion
and such natural disasters as yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia) until
the Continental Congress discouraged theatre performances in 1774, as the
colonies prepared for war.
Because they were public forums where large crowds gathered, the newly
established theatres in important towns such as New York and Philadelphia
soon became a focus for displays of political sentiment. At performances by

the Hallam/Douglass troupe, the audience indicated their sensitivity to the
ideological content of the plays.5 English plays reflecting a Whig perspective, such as Joseph Addisons Cato (and even Shakespeares Julius Caesar),
became especially popular during this period because of their speeches advocating freedom from imperial oppression.6 In some cases strong political
feelings led to riots. The Sons of Liberty, for example, disrupted the activities of the Chapel Street Theatre in New York during protests associated
with the Stamp Act. A crowd invaded the audience that was attending a
performance, one person was killed in the melee and the rioters tore down
and burned the theatre to the Satisfaction of many at this distressed Time,
and to the great Grievance of those less inclined for the Publick Good.7
With the repeal of the Stamp Act, political protests quieted down. But
in order to curry favor, the actors changed their name from the London
Comedians to the American Company and introduced American pieces
that would appeal to their local audience, such as Thomas Forrests The
Disappointment (which had to be removed from the program because it
threatened to cause a local scandal) and Thomas Godfreys The Prince of
Parthia. Furthermore, the theatre company introduced politically relevant
material to otherwise neutral performances such as at a Philadelphia performance of Hamlet in 1773, when they added a prologue which referred to
the sweets of Liberty.8
The company also introduced other aspects of indigenous culture in their
performances to gain local support. In 1767, after constructing a new theatre
in New York at John Street to replace the one that had been destroyed, the
American Company provided box seats to Cherokee Indian Chiefs (who
were passing through on their way to Albany to negotiate a treaty and were
being hosted by General Gage) for a performance of Richard III. The event
turned into a major occasion. According to the local press, The Expectation
of seeing the Indian Chiefs, at the Play on Monday Night, occasiond a great
Concourse of People, the House was crowded, and it is said great Numbers
were obliged to go away for want of Room.9 On their return to New York
after signing the treaty, the Indians agreed to perform a war dance on the
stage following a performance of the play, The Wonder! A Woman Keeps a
Secret! Ostensibly to prevent a disturbance by those uncomfortable with
Indians in war paint but obviously selling the event in the same stroke, the
manager warned in his advertising, It is humbly presumed, that no Part
of the Audience will forget the proper Decorum so essential to all public
Assemblies, particularly on this Occasion, as the Persons who have
condescended to contribute to their Entertainment, are of Rank and Consequence in their own Country (New York Journal, 7 April 1768). The unusual
event, which included a piece for the Entertainment of the Cherokee
chiefs and warriors about Harlequin, took place without incident.
Again this performance was in a sense an attempt by the manager to develop the notion of Native American culture on the stage, in contrast to the
English farces and tragedies that represented the bulk of their repertory.
In the early 1770s members of the audience, particularly in the cheaper
seats, continued occasionally to disrupt performances for political reasons.
In Philadelphia in 1772, members of the gallery objected to the Tory sentiments of A Word to the Wise. A critic, commenting on the disturbances,
chastised the gallery for requesting partisan songs from the performers.10
Such disturbances often reflected social and class differences. The artisans
and mechanics tended to be the most vocal in announcing their anti-British
feelings in the theatres.11 In December 1772 the Philadelphia theatre experienced a riot outside the gallery door, followed by a burglary in which
the robbers removed the iron spikes which divide the galleries from the
upper boxes in a symbolic act against the class divisions in the theatre (and
society).12 The event indicates an attempt by American-Patriot demonstrators to use the theatre symbolically to redefine the nation, moving towards
a more egalitarian notion of national identity.
Other symbolic activity by the Sons of Liberty and like-minded Patriot
agitators often took on a decidedly theatrical appearance, such as demonstrations in which they hanged British leaders in effigy and erected liberty
poles. For example, the perpetrators of the Boston Tea Party performed a
symbolic act by disguising themselves as Tuscarora Indians, thereby identifying themselves as natives of America rather than as British settlers.13 In
some cases, these events involved a certain amount of acting as well as set,
costumes and props. For example, the press reported that in Wilmington
in 1766 at the height of the stamp act crisis,
a great Number of People again assembled, and produced an Effigy
of liberty, which they put into a Coffin, and marched in solemn
Procession to the Church-Yard, a Drum in Mourning beating before
them, and the Town Bells, muffled, ringing a doleful Knell at the same
Time; But before they committed the Body to the Ground, they thought
it adviseable to feel its Pulse; and when finding some Remains of Life,
they returned back to a Bonfire ready prepared, placed the Effigy before it
in a large Two-armed Chair, and concluded the Evening with Rejoicings,
on finding that liberty had still an Existence in the colonies.14
In 1774, with the threat of war on the horizon and in order to concentrate
the minds and energies of the Patriots, the Continental Congress declared
its disapproval of theatrical entertainment in the colonies, resolving to discountenance and discourage, every species of extravagance and dissipation,
especially all horse racing, and all kinds of gaming, cock fighting, exhibition
of shews, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments.15 The
American Company emigrated to the West Indies where they remained for
the duration of the war. For most of the war years American Patriots refrained from theatre performances and produced drama mainly in the form
of pamphlet plays, to be read rather than staged.
Early dramatic propaganda: loyalty to King and country

Political drama began early in the colonies. Androboros, the first play to
be printed in the British colonies in America, was a Swiftian satire on
the political intrigues of New York. Robert Hunter, the British-appointed
Governor of New York, published his biographical farce in three acts
in 1714 or 1715.16 The play, which satirized his political enemies and local
government, is an amusing and irreverent picture of legislative assemblies
and power politics, with thinly disguised portraits of the Governor himself,
his political friends and his opponents. In an early scene, the legislative
assembly (which seems to be located in a sort of mental institution) is
shown to be in chaos as representatives try to overthrow the rules and laws
in a spirit of anarchy. Coxcomb, one of the opponents of the Keeper (i.e. the
Governor), moves and the House agrees That neither this House, or they
whom we Represent are bound by any Laws, Rules or Customs, any Law,
Rule or Custom to the Contrary Notwithstanding and Mulligrub (another
opponent), resolves, That this House disclaims all Powers, Preheminencies
or Authoritys, except its own. Solemn, a supporter of the status quo (and
evidently representing a friend of the Governor), opposes the motions.
Recalling the origins of the assembly, he attacks the delegates for their abuse
of power and their disloyalty to the higher authority (i.e. the Governor and
Britain):
Here we are Maintaind at their Charge with Food and Rayment suitable
to our Condition, and the Fabrick kept in Repair at the no small Annual
Expences of our Land-Lords. And what Returns do we make? Have not
many of us from our private Cells thrown our Filth and Ordure in their
Faces? And now in a Collective Body we are about to throw more filthy
Resolves at them. (p. 4)
For his pains, Solemn is expelled from the assembly, and Coxcomb proposes that the Keeper ought to be dismisst from having any further Autho[rity over] us. The Keeper enters and terminates the session by ordering
the representatives, To your Kennels, ye Hounds (p. 8). Having been
temporarily thwarted, the opponents of the Keeper then concoct a new
scheme to gain independence by creating a religious organization. Fizle
(another opponent) argues, You see he can Dissolve our Senate with a
Crack of his Whip, so there is nothing to be done that way. Let us incorporate our selves into a Consistory; That I believe He dare not touch,
without being Reputed an Enemy to the Consistory; and if he does, we
may hunt him down (p. 9). Moreover, Fizle comes up with a plan to discredit the Keeper by falsely accusing him of befouling the holy vestments
of the church. The conspirators finally decide to get rid of the Keeper by
means of a trap door. In the denouement Androboros, an opponent who is
temporarily blinded, falls down the trap that was intended to ensnare the
Keeper. The conspirators, trying to save him, plunge in after him in slapstick
comedy tradition, leaving the Keeper in control. The farce discredited the
political opponents of the author, strengthened his position as the British
Governor of New York, and reaffirmed the loyalty of the colony to the
British Crown.
No other play texts written in the English colonies of America have been
discovered for the period from 1715 to 1764, but in 1764 two plays were published that similarly advocated the loyalty of American settlers to the British
Crown. Both plays commented on the Paxton Rebellion, an uprising in western Pennsylvania in which settlers from the outlying districts displayed their
anger at the inadequate provisions made by the colonial authorities to protect
their interests. Following the first wave of Pontiacs insurrection in which
his and other tribes attacked British forts and settlements, the Paxton rebels
attacked Indian villages and marched on Philadelphia in pursuit of Indians
who had sought shelter there. The events obviously frightened the inhabitants of Philadelphia, and, without the skillful intervention of Benjamin
Franklin, it seems that the riotous crowd might have attacked the local
residents and/or been massacred by the British militia.17
Both The Paxton Boys and A Dialogue, Containing some Reflections on the
late Declaration and Remonstrance, Of the Back-Inhabitants of the Province of
Pennsylvania were published anonymously in the same year as the Paxton
rebellion. The Paxton Boys, which was reprinted twice in the same year,
derided the rebellion and the support given to it by the Presbyterians,
and evoked sympathy for the Quakers, the Church of England and the
British monarchy. The play ridiculed the local citizens of Philadelphia for
their cowardice, the rebels for their divisive actions, and the Presbyterians
for conspiring to aid the rebels. One of the main villains of the piece, a
loudmouthed anti-monarchist Presbyterian whose ancestors supported the
Cromwellian rebellion in England, claims,
I would freely Sacrifice my Life and Fortune for this Cause, rather than
[that] those Misecrants [sic] of the Establishd Church of England, or
those R[asca]ls the Q[uaker]s, should continue [any] longer at the head
of Government. (p. 7)
The Presbyterian boasts that he has collected thousands of pounds in

support of the rebels and that he had distributed money, powder and ammunition to them as they approached Philadelphia. He vows to attack the
city, Now we go on Triumphantly, let us Extipate [sic] those People, Root
and Branch, and not leave one Soul alive . . . (p. 8). A Quaker confronts
him and discovers his plot to overthrow the government. But the Quaker,
as a pacifist, is then faced with the moral dilemma of whether to resort to
arms against the conspirator. When the Quaker accuses the Presbyterian
of being a dissident, the Presbyterian identifies him likewise as a dissident
because of his religion. The Quaker reacts angrily:
But my Disenting [sic] does not proceed from any dislike to the King, or
the Government, but from a Religious scruple of Conscience in bearing
Arms, but thou art a Desenter [sic] from the wickedness of thy heart, like
fallen Angels, and let me tell thee, that unless thou mends thy ways, thy
condition may be like unto theirs. (p. 15)
The play ends with the arrival of the rebellious Paxton Boys in Philadelphia
and the Quaker vowing to fight the Presbyterian, tis Time to Arm, and
do thou attack me if thou dares, and thou shalt find that I have Courage
and Strength sufficient, to trample thee under my Feet (p. 15).
The Paxton Boys focused on the responsibility of the citizens of the colony
to defend themselves. Although the British militia was mentioned, the
rhetoric of the play did not emphasize the obligation of the British government and British military to maintain law and order. The playwright
clearly believed that it was the responsibility of the Philadelphia citizens
to employ armed force to quash rebellion, and in the play he situated the
Quaker in a pivotal position in order to make the case. The play outlined
the duty of the citizens to take responsibility for ensuring their own safety,
and it added a moral coda after the final speech to emphasize its message:
Stir then good People be not still nor quiet,

Rouze up yourselves take Arms and quell the Riot;
Such Wild-fire Chaps may, dangerous Mischeifs [sic] raise,
And se[e] unthinking People in a blaze. (p. 15)
In a sense, therefore, The Paxton Boys identified the civic responsibilities of Philadelphia citizens as British subjects. The author indicated that
Philadelphians should show their allegiance to the British Crown, not as
passive subjects reliant on the British military for their protection, but as
active citizens ready to fight alongside the British military as a local militia.
The play portrayed the Presbyterian rebel as the villain of the piece because
he wanted to overthrow the colonial government and replace it with an antimonarchist government. The author used the Quaker as a protagonist with
whom the readership could empathize, moving from a position of pacifism
to militarism in defense of the colony.
A Dialogue, Containing some Reflections on the late Declaration and Remonstrance, Of the Back-Inhabitants of the Province of Pennsylvania tackled the
same events. The frontispiece of the text, which indicated that the author
was a Member of that Community, underscored the rhetorical intention
of the piece in its subtitle: With a serious and short Address, to those
Presbyterians, who (to their dishonor) have too much abetted, and connivd
at the late Insurrection.
Unlike The Paxton Boys which contained some dramatic moments, A
Dialogue . . . was little more than a political conversation about the rights
and wrongs of the recent events. Three characters Positive, Zealot and
Lovell speak their positions, with the author clearly siding with Lovell.
Positive declares his support for the actions of the Presbyterians in attacking
and killing the Indians, marching on Philadelphia and presenting their
written demands. Zealot, who has participated with Positive in composing
the rebels demands, expresses his concern that their document suffers from
faulty reasoning and that their actions may be construed as traitorous to
the government. Lovell denounces their actions and attacks their declared
grievances, criticizing the rebel document point by point.
The play develops into a discourse on the nature of good citizenship.
Lovell attacks the Presbyterians for having persecuted both the Indians and
the Quakers, and he argues that the Indians are becoming good Christian
citizens and require government assistance. Positive opposes this:
Christians! I swear it cant be true; nor shall this, or any Thing you can
advance in their Favour, alter my fixd Opinion of them; nay, if I thot
that any of their Colour was to be admitted into the Heavenly World, I
would not desire to go there myself. (p. 9)
Discovering that Positive is too bigoted to accept that Indians might become
Christians, Lovell changes tack to suggest that the Presbyterians have made
government assistance to the Indians necessary by their rebellious actions:
As to the great Expence you complain of, are not you yourselves the absolute Cause of it? . . . And did not you oblige them to take those distressed
People under their fatherly Protection, to save a considerable Number
from Destruction? And where could they be safer than here, from the
Fury and Rage of an incensed, riotous and lawless Mob? You are the last
that should complain of this Expence, as you yourselves are the Occasion
of it. (p. 10)
Furthermore, Lovell argues that the actions taken by the Paxton Boys are no
less than seditious and would have landed them on the gallows in England.
He compares their professed loyalty to King George III to that of Judas
when he kissed Jesus, and declares them to be dangerous to the Commonwealth; and, if not nipt in the Bud, God only knows where such unwarrantable practices may end (p. 11). When Zealot asks why their marching
on Philadelphia was wrong since they did not harm anyone and were very
civil, Lovell responds by calling the rebels worse than highway robbers.
Tumult, Sedition and Rebellion . . . are more inexcusable than [the activities of the highway robbers] who have sometimes a better Right to plead
Necessity. In a thinly disguised plea from the author, Lovell calls on the
Presbyterians for a proper show of loyalty to the King, for a respect for law
and order, and for civility towards all their neighbors.
Androboros, The Paxton Boys, and A Dialogue, Containing Some Reflections . . . all essentially supported the status quo of British rule in America
and denounced acts of disobedience or rebellion. All three plays ridiculed
local political and religious figures who challenged the authority of the
colonial government. Androboros lampooned rebellious local assemblies. The
Paxton Boys and A Dialogue, Containing Some Reflections . . . criticized rebellious settlers and their supporters. The good citizen was shown to be a loyal
British subject.
Transitional plays
Following the French and Indian War which ended in 1763, the relationship between Britain and her American colonies began to deteriorate. The
British government tried to place a greater share of the financial burden

for running the colonies on the shoulders of the colonies themselves. At
the same time the colonies sought greater provision for self-rule, resenting British interference in their political and economic affairs. The British
introduced more stringent measures of control and taxation that met with
numerous acts of civil disobedience such as the Stamp Act riots in 1765. In
the wake of the dispute over the Stamp Act, the ideological discourse in
American plays and dramatic dialogues began to change as settlers questioned the benefits of colonial dependency. The anti-colonial attitudes stimulated a chauvinistic pride in an American as distinct from a British identity,
amidst a growing tide of nationalism. Ponteach; Or, the Savages of America,
which has been attributed to the Massachusetts-born Robert Rogers and
was printed in London in 1766, marked a transition away from the rhetoric of
loyalty to the British Crown. The author had served as a major in the British
army and had personally negotiated with Pontiac for the right of the British
to cross his lands during the French and Indian War.18 Pontiac had conceded
the right of passage on the agreement that his people would be treated with
respect. When they were not, Pontiac organized other tribes to help him
mount a war against the British-held forts and the surrounding settlements
in the west in order to drive them back across the Allegheny Mountains.
Like A Dialogue, Containing Some Reflections . . ., Rogerss play portrayed
Indians in a more sympathetic light than their adversaries. Despite the insurrection threatening the lives of the settlers, the five-act tragedy justified
revenge by the Indians on the white settlements and outposts because of the
poor treatment they were receiving. It depicted a frontier society ruined by
personal greed and ambition. The first act demonstrated the ways in which
traders, hunters, the military and the English administration all connived
to take advantage of the Native American. McDole, a trader, sums up the
attitude of the whites in boasting, Our fundamental Maxim is this, That
its no Crime to cheat and gull an Indian (p. 4). The traders alter the scales
to deprive the Indians of a just price for their goods and they get them drunk
on rum. The hunters murder them and steal their pelts. The military ignore
their complaints, and the representatives of the Crown steal their gifts to
the King and the Kings gifts to them. Ponteach, the Indian chief whose
characterization seems to have been influenced by the popular eighteenthcentury notion of the noble savage that Rousseau was articulating at the
same time in Europe, warns the administrators:
Tell your King from me,
That first or last a Rogue will be detected,
That I have Warriors, am myself a King,

And will be honourd and obeyd as such;
Tell him my Subjects shall not be oppressd,
But I will seek Redress and take Revenge. (p. 24)
Subsequently, the clergy also come in for criticism when an immoral French
priest, who resorts to conjuring tricks to impress the Indians with his religion, tries to rape an Indian princess. After Ponteachs son intervenes and
prevents the rape, the priest improvises a novel doctrine to justify his lustful
actions:
I have a Dispensation from St. Peter
To quench the Fire of Love when it grows painful.
This makes it innocent like Marriage Vows;
And all our holy Priests, and she herself,
Commits no Sin in this Relief of Nature:
For, being holy, there is no Pollution
Communicated from us as from others;
Nay, Maids are holy after weve enjoyed them,
And should the Seed take Root, the Fruit is pure. (p. 72)
The play justifies Ponteachs rebellion as an act of retribution for all the
mistreatment the Indians have received. However, the Indians seem only
slightly more moral than their English oppressors because many of them,
including Ponteach and his son Philip, hatch their own plots for personal
gain. Some of the later scenes of revenge by the Indians undermine the
audiences sympathy that has been built up in the first scenes of the play.
For example, in one scene the Indians play with the scalps of the white men
that they have killed.
Nevertheless, in criticizing the British treatment of the Indian, and ultimately justifying the rebellion, Ponteach represented an ideological transition
in American playwriting. Rather than expressing an underlying loyalty to
the government or the British Crown, the play justified greater Indian
independence and, by implication, rebellious activity against the British
government.19 At the end of the play, Ponteach has lost his lands but not
his spirit of rebellion, and he continues to seek revenge:
But witness for me to your new base Lords,
That my unconquerd Mind defies them still;
And though I fly, tis on the Wings of Hope.
Yes, I will hence where theres no British Foe,
And wait a Respite from this Storm of Woe;
Beget more Sons, fresh Troops collect and arm,

And other Schemes of future Greatness form;
Britons may boast, the Gods may have their Will,
Ponteach I am, and shall be Ponteach still. (p. 110)
The Candidates; or, the Humours of a Virginia Election, a satirical farce on

election practices by Robert Munford, indicated a different type of transition. While far from justifying rebellion, it implied a subtle discursive
move towards responsible self-government. Munford, who owned one of
the largest estates in Virginia and served in the House of Burgesses from
1765 to 1775, wrote from experience about the corrupt practices in local elections. He may have intended his play, which was written in 1770 or 1771, for
the Hallam/Douglass troupe but, unlike his later play The Patriots, there
is no evidence of a performance or publication during his lifetime, nor
until his son published it in 1798.20 The play upheld the patrician values of
the land-holding gentry and attacked self-serving politicians who deluded
the voters by spreading rumors against upright candidates. Munford, like
other Virginian landholders, regarded it as a moral duty for men of his
class to serve the common people as elected representatives in the House of
Burgesses, even though the position was without pay and interfered with the
responsibilities of running an estate. Like George Washington, who often
complained of the burden of public office, the central character Woudbe
(the would-be representative) declares, It surely is the duty of every man
who has abilities to serve his country, to take up the burden, and bear it
with patience (p. 42).
Alongside two virtuous political figures Worthy (an incumbent representative who has decided not to seek re-election) and Woudbe Munford
juxtaposed Strutabout, a dandy, Sir John Toddy, an alcoholic, and Smallhopes, a gentleman interested in horses. Through the character of Woudbe,
the author deplored the lack of suitable candidates for electoral office:
strutabout. Sir, I am as capable of serving the people as yourself;
and let me tell you, sir, my sole intention in offering myself is, that I may redress the many and heavy grievances
you have imposed upon this poor county.
woudbe.
Poor, indeed, when you are believed, or when coxcombs
and jockies [sic] can impose themselves upon it for men
of learning. (pp. 345)
The play provides a remarkable picture of eighteenth-century election

campaigns. Because alcohol features in many of the scenes, and because
drunkenness is used for satirical effect, the playwright evidently wished

his audience to recognize the importance of soberly electing their leaders.
Strutabout employs liquor to buy votes, while Worthy (speaking on behalf
of the playwright) laments, Im sorry, my countymen, for the sake of a little
toddy, can be induced to behave in a manner so contradictory to the candour
and integrity which always should prevail among mankind (p. 45). At a
campaign barbecue, Sir John Toddy and his friends Mr. and Mrs. Guzzle
get so drunk that Sir John falls and cannot get up and Mrs. Guzzle passes out.
Guzzle plays a trick on his wife and the disgraced politician by dragging her
sleeping body on top of Sir John. In order to persuade her husband that she
has not been unfaithful, the awakened Mrs. Guzzle beats Sir John (whom
she does not recognize) shouting, Ill learn you to cuckold a man without
letting his wife know it (p. 40). At the same time as amusing the audience,
the playwright provided a serious insight into the hazards of alcohol abuse.
The author also inserted another serious theme into the comedy that
elected representatives should act independently of their constituencies and
maintain their right to make unpopular decisions. Woudbe at one point in
the campaign is blamed for high taxation. He counters that it is the entire
legislative body rather than one individual that should take responsibility for
such actions. He refuses to make popular promises (such as lowering taxes)
in order to get elected. In the playwrights view, political leaders should
be expected to make objective decisions rather than acting in their own or
their constituents interests, and their re-election campaign should not be
adversely affected by having to make unpopular decisions.
At the end of The Candidates, Worthy reverses his decision to retire
from politics and agrees to stand for re-election in order that Woudbe
will also be elected. The play presents his action as one of admirable selfsacrifice on behalf of the interests of the community, rather than for selfaggrandizement. In a remarkable election scene in which the candidates
are chosen by a voice vote with the candidates thanking each voter for his
vote (which, rather than a secret ballot, was presumably the custom of the
day), the electorate choose the right men and the play ends happily with
expressions of self-congratulation, We have done as we ought, we have
elected the ablest (p. 50). As in The Paxton Boys, the playwright added a
moral coda to clarify his didactic intentions,
Henceforth, let those who pray for wholesome laws,
And all well-wishers to their countrys cause,
Like us refuse a coxcomb choose a man
Then let our senate blunder if it can. (p. 51)
The play focused on the high moral responsibility that political representation entailed and the need for citizens to discriminate between worthy
and unworthy politicians. In a sense, it is a perennial issue. The malaise of
voters in the twentieth-first century perhaps mirrors Munfords concerns
in the eighteenth century that elected officials should not be elected on the
basis of sectional and personal interests but for their integrity, their ability
and their responsibility to the community as a whole.
The Candidates also reflected the growing self-reliance of the colony on
the leadership of their own elected representatives. Unlike The Paxton Boys,
A Dialogue Containing Some Reflections . . ., or Ponteach, there is no mention
of the British government or loyalty to the Crown. Munford favored the
independence of the representatives in running the affairs of the colony.
Assuming that the play was not altered between its date of original composition in 17701 and its publication in 1798, one can see implicit in The
Candidates a subtle transition from advocating political dependence on the
British Crown towards seeking a state of independence. Munford portrayed
the growing sense of political responsibility that would ultimately lead to
self-government. In a mood of self-congratulation at the end of the play
that reflects the transition, Woudbe uses prescient words in thanking his
supporters for electing Worthy and him. You have in that, shewn your
judgment, and a spirit of independence becoming Virginians (p. 50).
College dialogues
Another dramatic form that manifested the changing political discourse in
the 1760s was the dramatic dialogue that was presented as part of college
commencement exercises. Despite religious reservations, American colleges
had occasionally staged theatrical events from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Students at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg,
Virginia, for example, performed a pastoral colloquy in 1702, and by 1736
they were staging plays such as Addisons Cato. By the middle of the century,
college commencement ceremonies in the British colonies made use of
dramatic dialogues. Although these were more exercises in rhetoric and
public oratory than theatrical events, they used dramatic form to comment
on current affairs at a public occasion and they manifested some of the
changes in political thinking. In the early days these performances favored
a loyalist stance. For example, at the 1761 commencement in the College
of Philadelphia (later renamed the University of Pennsylvania), An Exercise
Consisting of a Dialogue and Ode, Sacred to the Memory of his late Gracious
Majesty George II glorified the reign of the previous King of England

and expressed gratitude for his benevolent influence over the American
colonies:
Beneath his equal sway,
Oppression was not; justice poizd her scale;
No law was trampled, and no right denyd;
The peasant flourishd, and the merchant smild.
And oh! my friend, to what amazing height
Of sudden grandeur, did his nursing care
Up-raise these colonies. (p. 5)
This was followed in the next year by An Exercise Containing a Dialogue and
Ode On The Accession of His present gracious Majesty, George III 21 that was
again obsequious in its idolatry of the new monarch:
Bound every Heart with Joy, and every Breast
Pout the warm Tribute of a grateful Praise!
For oer the Realms of Britain reigns supreme,
The darling of his People, George the Good. (p. 5)
Likewise at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), a musical

tribute entitled The Military Glory of Great Britain was performed in 1762 to
assert the might of the British war machine. Praising the military victories
of the recent past in various parts of the globe, the piece predicted a glorious
victory for Britain in the French and Indian War, and the punishment of
her enemies:
Ye Sons of War, pursue the Foe;
Your Albemarle has struck thauspicious Blow.
See, Victory waits with laurel-Wreath to crown
Your Temples; fondly hovering round
Your glittering Arm. Tis Courage fights,
Courage conquers. Pour your Wrath abroad;
With martial Sound
The Foe confound;
Assert your British Rights;
And bid them feel the Weight of your avenging Rod. (pp. 1314)
In the following year, the Dialogue in the commencement exercises at the

College of Philadelphia praised the newly attained peace, and credited King
George:
George gave the word and bade mankind repose

Contending Monarchs blushd that they were foes.
(An Exercise Containing a Dialogue and Ode on the
Occasion of Peace, p. 75)
The ode re-emphasized the students loyalty to the British empire:

May Britains glory still increase,
Her fame immortal be,
Whose sons make war to purchase peace,
And conquer to set free. (p. 80)
In the wake of the Stamp Act controversy, loyalist pieces began to give
way to expressions of incipient nationalism such as An Exercise containing a
Dialogue and two Odes that was performed at the College of Philadelphia
commencement in 1766. Although acknowledging allegiance to George III
gracious George shall reign the Friend of Justice and of Man (p. 6) the
piece used the American Indian enslaved by the Spanish22 as a symbol for
the perceived loss of freedom amongst the colonies:
Say, what are all the Joys
Which vernal Suns, and vernal Scenes inspire
Where sacred Freedom, from her native Skies,
Deigns not to shed her more enlivening Rays?
Ask the wild Indian, with the Chains opprest
Of Spanish Slavery, Cruelty and Death
Can his Heart feel that Happiness replete,
That glow of Transport, and that general Joy. (p. 4)
The piece indirectly criticized the British government by praising the Whig
members of parliament who took the side of the Americans, and it underlined the importance of the concept of liberty in the colonies:
Hail Heaven-descended, sacred Liberty!
How blest the Land where thou shalt deign to dwell. (p. 5)
A similar approach was taken by A Poem on the Rising Glory of America

being an Exercise delivered at the public Commencement at Nassau-Hall in
1771 written by two Princeton students Philip Freneau and Hugh Henry
Brackenridge who would become well-known Patriot writers during the
War of Independence. The characters in the dialogue compare the New
World favorably with Europe, praising its geographical qualities and predicting scientific and literary greatness. While showing allegiance to the
Crown, the piece emphasized the virtue of freedom rather than subservience. It justified the recent actions of settlers to protect their rights,
and, moreover, it predicted that such heroic actions of the past would be
surpassed by greater patriotic actions in the future:
And here fair freedom shall forever reign.
I see a train, a glorious train appear,
Of Patriots placd in equal fame with those
Who nobly fell for Athens or for Rome.
The sons of Boston resolute and brave
The firm supporters of our injurd rights,
Shall lose their splendours in the brighter beams
Of patriots famd and heroes yet unborn. (p. 23)
Implicit in the poem was an emerging notion of a new nation, equal to

the states of Europe and with a glorious future that would evolve from the
actions of Patriots who would continue to fight for the legitimate rights of
the settlers.
By 1775 the academic exercises had grown more explicitly militant. The
British government passed the Intolerable Acts in 1774 that closed Boston
harbor and replaced the local government in the Massachusetts colony with
direct military rule. With the encouragement of politicians from the Whig
party in England who recommended greater liberty for the Americans, delegates of the thirteen colonies met at the first Continental Congress in
Philadelphia to decide on a course of action. In the midst of the debate,
Paul Revere arrived by horseback with the radical Suffolk Resolves of
Massachusetts in his saddlebags. The Resolves, which called for an embargo on trade with Britain and for the Massachusetts colony to arm itself
and behave like an independent state until the British government repealed
the Intolerable Acts, were endorsed by the Congress. The British government and the colony of Massachusetts began to prepare for war. Settlers
in Massachusetts and eventually in other colonies had to decide which
side to take whether to fight for independence or to remain loyal to the
Crown, a difficult decision that in many cases divided friends and families.
In April 1775 General Gage, who had been appointed military governor
of Massachusetts during the previous year, dispatched 700 British soldiers
to seize the military supplies that the Americans had been stockpiling in
Concord. American minutemen fired on them as they marched through
Lexington and into Concord and the War of Independence had begun.
At the 1775 commencement of the College of Philadelphia, which took

place shortly after the outbreak of the War of Independence, a dramatic
exercise was hastily thrown together to supply the Place of another
Exercise (p. 2). The lines of earlier dialogues and odes were interpolated
and transformed in an attempt to bring them up to date with the changing
sentiment in the country. Altering the 1761 exercise which had lamented the
death of George II, the writer replaced the English monarch with Thomas
Penn, a local man who had recently died, to give the piece much more of a
nationalistic character. By contrast with the earlier lines which had praised
George II for his nursing care [to] / Up-raise his colonies, the new piece
eulogized Thomas Penn:
And oh! my friend! to what amazing height
Of sudden grandeur, did his nursing care
Up-raise his country. (p. 5)
The dialogue commented on the recent outbreak of warfare, the British

blockade of the harbors and the Americans boycott of English goods, and
it lamented the deterioration in the relationship between the American
colonies and the British government that had led ultimately to bloodshed:
Yet other causes damp this festal day
When peace is fled when sacred freedom mourns,
And her fair sister commerce, by her side
Sits bound in fetters when untwisted lies
The golden chord of mutual trust and love
That should unite the parent and the child,
And slaughterd brethren strew thensanguind plain. (p. 5)
The piece also updated (from the 1766 commencement exercise) the list
of Whig members of parliament who had supported the American cause,
and, without explicitly recommending independence, encouraged Patriots
to maintain their determination to stand up for their rights:
Attend! be firm! ye fathers of the state!
Ye chosen bands, who for your country weal
With rigid self-denial, sacrifice
your private ease, let wisdom be your guide,
And zeal enlightened see the ardent flame,
Which yet shall purge and renovate the land. (p. 7)
Loyalist propaganda plays

As Patriot activity became more rebellious during the early 1770s, a pamphlet
war developed in which ideologues of different political perspectives defined
their notions of an appropriate future for the American colonies. Loyalist
and Patriot writers employed satire and farce in pamphlet plays to comment
on current events and to urge the settlers to remain loyal to the British crown
or to agitate for open rebellion. In a style reminiscent of Androboros, several
of the Loyalist writers ridiculed the democratic process of the representative
assemblies in the colonies.23 Two Tories published dramatic dialogues to
lampoon the Continental Congress of 1774: A Dialogue, Between a Southern
Delegate, and His Spouse, on His Return from the Grand Continental Congress
and Debates at the Robin-Hood Society in the City of New-York, On Monday
Night 19th of July, 1774.
The unknown author of the first dialogue, employing the pseudonym
Mary V.V., dedicated the piece to the Married Ladies of America, and
demonstrated that the females left at home were wiser than their wayward
husbands who had attended the Congress. Through a female protagonist,
the author maintained that the Patriot politicians had arrived with a mandate to negotiate with the Crown but were swept away in a hysteria of
rebellion.24 The dialogue begins as a comical argument between a timid
delegate and his disapproving wife who argue over the alcohol-induced decisions by the Congress. But the tone of the debate becomes more serious
as the wife warns of the possible consequences of endorsing the radical
Suffolk Resolves. Asking rhetorically, Can you hope, any State, will bear
such Insult, she warns that, As sure as you are born, this will at last end in
Blood. Referring to a conspiracy theory that was prevalent at the time,25
she intimates that the Congress is acting under instructions from an antigovernmental Cabal which is little short, of High Treason (p. 10). She
also predicts that the decision by the Congress to boycott English goods
will only make the people of the colonies suffer.
Your Non-Imports, and Exports, are full fraught with Ruin,
Of thousands, and thousands, the utter Undoing;
While, without daring to bite, youre shewing your Teeth,
Youve contrivd to starve, all the poor People to death. (p. 11)
While the delegate pleads impotence to influence his wife much less a
whole assembly, she admonishes him for the arrogance of the Congress
and its treatment of the British parliament and she prophesies dreadful
consequences:
Instead of imploring, their Justice, or Pity,
You treat Parliament, like a Pack, of Banditti:
Instead of Addresses, framd on Truth, and on Reason,
They breathe nothing, but Insult, Rebellion, and Treason;
Instead of attempting, our Interests to further,
You bring down, on our Heads, Perdition, and Murder. (pp. 1112)
The delegates wife also fears the establishment by Congress of the Courts
of Inspection to monitor the embargo on trade with Britain and compares
the Courts role to the tyranny of an inquisition.26 In her final words, which
sum up the rhetoric of the piece as a whole, she exhorts her husband and
other Patriots to show obedience to the British crown.
Make your Peace: Fear the King: The Parliament fear,
Oh! my Country! remember, that a Woman unknown,
Cryd aloud, like Cassandra, in Oracular Tone,
Repent! or you are forever, forever undone. (p. 14)
The Debates at the Robin-Hood Society, which lists 19 July 1774 as the date
of the meeting, ridicules a local assembly where the Suffolk Resolves are also
discussed and passed. Most of the participants in the debate are satirized as
incompetent to deal with matters of state. They speak in exaggerated tones
and bombastic phrases without understanding the meaning of the resolutions that they are debating. Mr. Silver Tongue, a Machiavellian Patriot who
manipulates mass opinion, advises the moderator of the debate to humor
them, We must indulge these absurd Fellows for our own purposes (p. 7).
The piece ends with a serious note to the audience to retain their loyalty to
the established government and to denounce the current rebellious actions
of political figures who claim to represent their interests.
This deluded country has been too much the prey of artifice and faction.
The affairs of this immense continent are now arrived at a crisis, when
they are no longer to be sported with and the virtue and good sense of
its inhabitants must be rouzed [sic] to vindicate that honour, which has
been so greatly sullied by the insidious arts of its pretended friends. (p. 15)
Perhaps the prize for the Tory dramatic tract with the longest title goes
to The Americans Roused in a Cure for the Spleen; or, Amusement for a Winters
Evening. Being the substance of a conversation on the times, over a friendly

tankard and pipe between Sharp, a country parson, Bumper, a country justice,
Fillpot, an inn-keeper, Graveairs, a deacon, Trim, a barber, Brim, a Quaker,
Puff, a late Representative. Taken in short-hand by Sir Roger de Coverly. The
author was probably Jonathan Sewall, a prominent Tory propagandist in
Boston who supported the British government measures in Massachusetts
and was one of the characters (Philalethes) satirized by Mercy Otis Warren
in The Defeat (discussed in the next section). His house had been attacked
by a Patriot mob, and with the outbreak of warfare he escaped to Britain.
The Americans Roused in a Cure for the Spleen again satirized Patriot political assemblies, in this case the Massachusetts provincial council, for supporting the Suffolk Resolves and for sowing the seeds of rebellion. By contrast
with The Debates at the Robin-Hood Society, which in the final address to the
audience suggested that the Loyalists should rise up and take action in order
to suppress the rebellious spirit in the assemblies, Sewalls piece implied that
the colony was really one big happy family which was being disturbed by
a few misguided radicals. Patriots and Loyalists gather in a tavern where a
convivial argument ensues on the direction in which the country is going.
The Loyalists defend the status quo and suggest that politics should be left
to the leaders of the country. Sharp, the Country Parson, advises, I believe
if we mind every one his own business, and leave the affairs of the state
to the conduct of wiser heads, we shall soon be convinced that we are a
happy people (p. 4). The Patriots are satirized as not really believing in
their cause. Trim, a barber, encourages sedition in order to attract clients
into his barbershop where they can have lively discussions.
I tell them how I would trim Lord North, and have the lords and commons
(excepting the dissentients) the East-India company, Gov. Bernard, Gov.
Hutchinson, &c. over head and ears in the suds, if I could get at them;
and then I rattle away upon grievances, opposition, rebellion and so
on, only for the innocent purpose of supporting the credit of my shop.
(p. 5)
He goes on to scoff at the purported differences between Whig and Tory,

suggesting that everyone is essentially the same and that the Patriot
grievances are imaginary. The barman agrees. Puff, a Representative of
the Provincial Council, in a bombastic and confused speech, attempts to
assert the Patriots cause but gets tied up in knots and can only resort to
threats of violence. The Deacon Graveairs tries to come to his aid with
vague Patriot rhetoric, all our charter rights and privileges are torn from
us and we are made slaves, and the Lord send us deliverance (p. 9). In a
lengthy debate the loyalist position is promoted by Parson Sharp, Justice
Bumper and Quaker Brim (all representing the authors viewpoint) who
refute the Patriots grievances against the British government and justify
the government actions including the tea act and other forms of taxation
and government revenue. For example, Pastor Sharp asserts that the Deacon
is better off in America than he would be in England, Turn your eyes to
your brother Englishman in Great-Britain see with what taxes and duties
they are burthened and you will find you enjoy liberty, freedom and ease
in a degree so far superior to them . . . (p. 9).
The Loyalists also ascribe selfish motives to the rebels that will lead
eventually to tyranny. In words that today bring to mind the results of the
French and Russian Revolutions as well as the anti-colonial struggles in
Africa, Justice Bumper warns that revolution will lead to anarchy which
can only be controlled by the emergence of a dictator. A long scene of war
and bloodshed would despoil and depopulate this fertile, happy country,
till some more fortunate villain, would rise superior to his comrades, and
become alone the lordly tyrant over this now free people (p. 28).
Moreover, Parson Sharp intimidates the would-be Patriots with a portrayal of the invincible British army and bleak images of a defeated rebellion
in which those fleeing from the British will be sacrificed in the subsequent
pursuit . . . taken prisoners, impaled and gibbetted from unavoidable necessity (p. 26). By conjuring up a battle scene where a rebel lies dying, Sharp
emphasizes the consequences of their seditious actions:
Imagine to yourselves, an individual head of the family, mortually [sic]
wounded in battle, but lingering in the pangs of death what would be
his bitter reflections, and how would he condemn his own rashness and
folly in that awful interval; in some such plaintive moans as these, may
we well suppose, he would breathe out his life what have I done, foolish
man that I was why did I blindly rush upon certain ruin . . . I now die a
traitor and rebel by the laws of my country my estate is forfeited my
affectionate wife and our innocent babes . . . to what hardships, dangers
and distresses have I abandoned them. (p. 26)
At the end of the play, Puff, the Patriot Representative, finally concedes,
I begin to see things in a different light from what I did. Indeed I never
liked the high proceedings of the provincial congress; this affair of seizing
the Kings monies, and taking the militia out of the hands of the governor,
I could never see through; it is against the Kings prerogative, and sounds
too much like treason; and Im resolved not to go to the next [Council
meeting], if I am chosen. (p. 32)
As in a Brechtian lehrstuck (teaching play), the protagonist Representative

Puff learns through the debate that his previous actions have been wrong
and discovers what the correct course should be. The playwright stressed the
importance of loyalty to the crown and the benefits of British government
rule and minimized the Patriot grievances so that the audience would more
greatly appreciate the status quo in America and the wisdom of remaining
a British colony. The Quaker emphasizes these values in a final peroration,
Treason is an odious crime in the sight of God and men; may we none
of us listen to the suggestion of Satan, but may the candle of the Lord
within, lighten our paths; and may the spirit lead us in the way of truth,
and preserve us from all sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion. (p. 32)
Dramatic propaganda for an independent national identity

Despite the Congressional resolution in 1774, American Patriots, as well
as Loyalists, used drama in the propaganda battle. The American Patriots
wrote plays to encourage their American readership to become self-reliant
and to think of themselves as no longer subject to the British Crown. Like
the Loyalist plays previously discussed, the American Patriot plays written
in the 1770s were not normally intended for the stage. Although there is evidence that some of these plays were read in gatherings and were performed
by college students (especially those produced during the War of Independence), they were mainly written for publication and were disseminated as
part of the Patriot propaganda campaign.
Radical republicans printed pamphlets to identify the rights of the settlers
in America, to list their grievances against the British government, and
eventually to rally support for a nationalist struggle to achieve political
independence. Amongst the most influential political tracts of the decade
were Thomas Jeffersons A Summary View of the Rights of British America
in 1774 and Thomas Paines Common Sense in January 1776, that argued for
American independence and sold half a million copies. George Washington
ordered that another pamphlet by Paine (beginning with the rousing cry,
These are the times that try mens souls) be read to all the troops during
the difficult winter at Valley Forge in 17778.
Like political tracts, printed plays became a useful method of disseminating radical ideas in the 1770s and encouraging revolution.27 Perhaps the
most prolific American writer of pamphlet plays was Mercy Otis Warren.28
As the sister of the vocal Patriot James Otis and the wife of James Warren, a
prominent political and military figure, Mercy Otis Warren was well placed
to comment on the political grievances in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Her close friends included John and Abigail Adams and Samuel Adams, and
her home in Plymouth became a site for many important political meetings
prior to and during the War of Independence. The first three plays attributed
to Mercy Warren, The Adulateur in 1772, The Defeat in 1773 and The Group in
1775, were written before the commencement of warfare and attacked British
officials as corrupt and self-serving, with little concern for the welfare of
the colonies. In particular, she assailed Massachusetts Governor Thomas
Hutchinson, who had been born in Boston in 1711 and had risen to the top
position in Massachusetts politics. Because he had lived in Massachusetts
all his life, Hutchinson became a target for Patriot abuse and was regarded
as a traitor to the cause when he continued to remain loyal to the Crown
in his successive appointments as Chief Justice, Lieutenant Governor and
Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During the Stamp Act riots
in 1765 when Hutchinson was Chief Justice, a mob of Patriots ransacked
and destroyed his house in Boston. In 1773 Samuel Adams published secret
correspondence from Hutchinson (who was by then Governor) to Britain
that called for a curtailment of liberty in the colonies. The Patriots also
blamed Hutchinson for the Boston Massacre of 1770 and the decisions that
sparked off the Boston Tea Party. In addition, they accused Hutchinson
of nepotism because his extended family monopolized many of the most
important positions in the colonial administration in Massachusetts. While
Hutchinson was Governor, Foster Hutchinson, his brother, became Justice
of the Common Pleas; Thomas Hutchinson, his son, became Judge of
Probate; Andrew Oliver, his wifes brother-in-law (and stamp master for
Massachusetts during the Stamp Act protests) became Lieutenant Governor; and Peter Oliver, his daughters father-in-law, became Chief Justice.
The Adulateur: A Tragedy As It Is Now Acted In Upper Servia, was published in the Massachusetts Spy in serial form in 1772, with the first part
appearing in March and the second a month later. Before Warren completed the play, another anonymous writer published two more acts, which
were written in the same flowery verse style, and contained a denunciation of
the British for the Boston Massacre. The various parts were spliced together
and anonymously published as a pamphlet in Boston in 1773. The Adulateur
satirized Hutchinson and members of his family, giving them caricatured
names like Rapatio (Hutchinson), Meagre (Foster Hutchinson), Limpit29
(Andrew Oliver) and Hazlerod (Chief Justice Peter Oliver). By contrast,

the Patriots were disguised as heroic anti-imperial Romans like Brutus
( James Otis) and Cassius (Samuel Adams).30 Warrens dramatis personae
of good and evil characters contained enough clues in the text so that the
informed reader could guess their real identities.
The Adulateur portrays a duplicitousdespot named Rapatio(Hutchinson),
seeking to increase his authority while the people of Servia (i.e. the American
Patriots) grow enraged by his violent military actions. At the end of the play
Brutus ( James Otis) longs for retribution in words that anticipate the War
of Independence:
When will it be,
When high-souled honor beats within our bosoms,
And calls to action when thy sons like heroes,
Shall dare assert thy rights, and with their swords,
Like men, like freemen, force a way to conquest
Or on thy ruins gloriously expire. (p. 31)
In comparing the Patriots to the Roman senators fighting the oppressive

imperial authority of Caesar, The Adulateur utilized a popular metaphor to
justify American rebellion. In a tradition that went back to Joseph Addison
and other Whig writers in Britain, Warren employed Roman republican
characters to legitimize the demands for greater liberty. By associating the
British government in the colony with Roman tyranny, she hinted that rebellion was not only justifiable but also necessary. Thus two years before the
War of Independence, when few American Patriots were seriously considering military action against the colonial authorities, Mercy Otis Warren
was already preparing the populace for armed insurrection. Testifying to the
influence of her work, Mercy Otis Warren later wrote that the play was
deemed so characteristic of the times and the persons to whom applied, that
it was honoured with the voice of General approbation.31
Her next play, The Defeat, satirized Thomas Hutchinson again but went
a step further by confidently predicting his downfall. She portrayed him as a
selfish ruler with a vengeful intention to punish the common people because
of his shatterd habitation (p. 2) (evidently a reference to the ransacking of
his house during the Stamp Act riots).32 In a soliloquy at the beginning of
the play, he intends to tax the people of Servia and to increase his authority
by bribing his subordinates with titles and money.
For this Ill squeeze the labring Peasants brow
And reap the ruind honest Traders spoils.
The orphans tears shall lend their wretched aid,

To rear a pile to glut my wild ambition. (p. 2)
However, while depicting Hutchinson as a villain who lusts after greater

power and wealth, Warren also encouraged the Patriots cause by suggesting
that Hutchinson regarded rebellion as inevitable. In the same soliloquy, she
revealed Rapatio to be in constant fear of insurrection:
The wooden latchet of my door ner clicks,
But that I start and ask does Brutus enter?
Or comes a Mucius, in the form of Ludlow? (p. 2)
In scene three Senators Proteus (William Brattle), Honestus ( James

Bowdoin) and Hortensius ( John Adams) collect to review the grievances
against the oppressive state. The Senators display their different attitudes toward Rapatio (Hutchinson) and his government. Honestus and Hortensius
defend the interests of the common people of Servia. But Proteus supports
Rapatio to the consternation of the other two.
The scene satirized the unpredictable conduct of William Brattle, who
had sided with the Patriots in their actions against the Stamp Act but
had then supported Hutchinsons policies on high salaries for government
officials in 1773. Warren used the play to label Brattle as a government tool,
echoing the sentiments of John Adams who had also discredited Brattle.
The name of Proteus (the Greek god of the sea that could adopt different
guises) helped identify Brattle as a turncoat. Honestus (Bowdoin) denounces
Proteus for acting in his own interest rather than in the interests of the
people of Servia and orders Proteus to inform Rapatio that they see through
the plan to buy off their countrys leadership with the trappings of high
office:
Shall Servia bleed, and shant her sons complain,
While traitors revel oer her children slain?
Go dirtiest dupe of all the venal race
Who sell their country for a pensiond place,
Who barter conscience for a gilded straw,
Riot on right, and trample on the law. (p. 4)
In this scene, Warren helped identify for her readership the heroes and the
villains in the confusing and volatile political situation in Massachusetts in
1773. To make the message even clearer, Warren used the turncoat Proteus
to denounce himself in a soliloquy. He reveals his duplicitous nature and his
ambition to become a government appointee in the new mandamus council,
which the British government was about to install and which would replace
the elected representatives:
Ive shifted, trimd and veerd to either side,
As changing fortune smiled on either party,
Till neither trusts, or can in me confide.
My future game shall be to fawn on Powr,
And gain a smile on which depends my fate.
Ill cringe and court each ministerial tool,
With zeal redoubled, Ill extol each measure,
So keep my seat when a mandamus comes,
Procurd by serpentine manoeuvres of one man,
To sort the sycophant, from men of worth. (p. 4)
The fanciful stage directions declare, A Battle ensues, in which Rapatio,

his Abettors and Creatures are totally defeated, after which Freedom and
Happiness are restored to the Inhabitants of Servia, by the prudent and spirited Conduct of Honestus, Hortensius, Cassius [,] Rusticus and others
(pp. 45). In the next scene, Rapatio, who is about to be executed for his misdeeds against the people of Servia, mourns his fate as he imagines himself
plunging towards Hades,
Oh the reverse, the sad reverse of fortune!
Stript of my plumes, my plunder and my peace.
Peace did I say! that gentle heavenly guest,
Has not resided in my cankerd breast,
Eer since my native Land, I basely Sold,
For flattering Titles, and more sordid Gold. (p. 5)
The second half of The Defeat was printed some weeks later and in a surprising non sequitur, the audience discovered that Rapatio was still alive
and was subject to further acts of retribution. As a point of departure for
this second section, Warren featured the scandal of Hutchinsons letters
to Britain. Rapatio and Limpit (Andrew Oliver) discuss the effects of the
public exposure (by Samuel Adams) of their secret correspondence. Their
letters reveal that they had used additional taxation to create a standing army
in order to protect the government. The publication of the letters has angered the people of Servia, who see their freedom being further jeopardized.
Rapatio and Limpit conspire to hire Loyalist writers to defend their policies,
and they identify such figures as Philalethes ( Jonathan Sewall) who can be
bought to praise them. Limpit ends the scene warning that if this tactic of
buying favorable publicity does not succeed, they will soon be hanged:
If after all the lenient Hand of Time

With Philalethes Aid should not compose
The rising Storm, the madning Peoples Rage
Thats nigh wrought up to Fury and Despair,
A lifeless Effigy wont long suffice,
But you and I as Forfeiture must pay,
Our Hoary Heads to this much injurd State. (p. 12)
The Defeat thus helped to further castigate Loyalist leaders like

Hutchinson and Oliver and to question the activity of William Brattle.
Furthermore, it defended the actions of John Adams and James Bowdoin,
and celebrated certain characters that did not appear in the play but who
are mentioned by Rapatio as unbribable, such as Brutus ( James Otis),
Cassius (Samuel Adams), Helvidius ( John Winthrop) and Rusticus (the
playwrights husband James Warren). The Defeat portrayed such recent
measures by the colonial administration as giving titles and payment to
civic leaders and hiring journalists to write in favor of the government as
corrupt and anti-democratic practices. Moreover, it ridiculed Loyalists and
justified rebellion as the only honorable way forward.
Following The Defeat, Warren wrote several poems in 1774 that further
emphasized her position. In response to a request from John Adams for a
poem about the Boston Tea Party in which he asked to See a late glorious
Event, celebrated, by a certain poetical Pen, which has no equal that I know
of in this Country,33 she wrote The Squabble of the Sea Nymphs; or the
Sacrifice of the Tuscararoes which lampooned the British and lauded the
rebellious actions of the Patriots. In this poem and in A Political Reverie
also published in 1774, she referred to the American colonies as Columbia
and hinted at the possibility of separate nationhood in the future:
No bold destroyers of mankind I sing;
These plunderers of men Ill greatly scorn,
And dream of nations, empires yet unborn.34
She also composed a poem in 1774, dedicated to John Winthrop, that concluded with ambivalent lines that hinted at armed struggle: Theyll fight
for freedom, and for virtue bleed.35 Written at the time of the Patriots
decision to boycott British goods, this poem originated from a request by
Winthrop for Warren to draw up a list of womens items that should continue to be imported from Britain. Her response in poetic form called for
American women to forego the luxury of British goods in order to support
the Patriots cause. Poking fun at women who would find it difficult to
give up British fashion, she underlined the need to make sacrifices for the
cause:36
Yet shall Clarissa check her wanton pride,
And lay her female ornaments aside?
Quit all the shining pomp, the gay parade,
The costly trappings that adorn the maid?
What! all the aid of foreign looms refuse! . . .
For what is virtue, or the winning grace,
Of soft good humour, playing round the face;
Or what those modest antiquated charms,
That lurd a Brutus to a Portias arms;
Or all the hidden beauties of the mind,
Compard with gauze, and tassels well combind?37
Towards the end of 1774, Mercy Otis Warren became caught up in

the preparations for armed conflict between Britain and the colony of
Massachusetts. She wrote to her friend Hannah Winthrop in August 1774,
echoing the sentiments expressed in her plays and anticipating a war that,
in her view, had been provoked by the Tory leadership:
Will not the infamy of a North and a Hutchinson be written in characters of blood, while the crimsoned stream will mark to future ages, the
glory, and the virtue, of a patriotic race, who, (if necessary) will cheerfully
sacrifice life and its enjoyments, to extricate posterity from the threatened bondage. Must not the feelings of humanity be totally eradicated
from the bosoms of men, who for the temporary advantage of a dignified
title or the imaginary happiness of accumulated wealth have sown the
seeds of discord and will not cease to nourish the baneful growth, till the
foundations of a mighty Empire are shaken, till the civil sword is drawn,
and thousands of their fellow citizens may fall in a contest enkindled to
gratify the selfish passions of some of the most worthless, and wicked
instruments of power that America can produce?38
Mercy Otis Warrens third play, The Group, continued the political saga
of her earlier plays with topical references to events after the departure of
Thomas Hutchinson, who by this time had been called to London and
replaced by a military Governor, General Thomas Gage. Rather than portraying characters from both sides of the conflict as in her previous plays,
The Group focused almost exclusively on Loyalist and British military figures
such as Foster Hutchinson, Peter Oliver and General Gage. The title refers
to the mandamus council that was imposed by the British government to
replace the elected representatives in the upper chamber of the colonial

legislature. What is perhaps most remarkable about this satire is that it predicted and encouraged a war that would break out only two weeks after the
full play was printed in Boston.39
The Group deliberately undermined the myth of the invincible British
army. It portrayed the British military and colonial administration as generally incompetent, disagreeing over strategy, and frightened by the prospect
of an American armed uprising. Sylla (General Gage) is seen walking in
great Perplexity (p. 13) and asks his brigadier how he can prevent skirmishes if he sends his troops out of Boston. Brigadier Hateall (Timothy
Ruggles), who is portrayed as unscrupulous, immoral and bloodthirsty, tells
him not to worry about attack because such an action would lead to the
compleat destruction of the enemy. Anticipating the events of Lexington
and Concord, Hateall urges,
Tis now the time to try their daring tempers.
Send out a few and if they are cut off,
What are a thousand souls, sent swiftly down
To Plutos gloomy shades. (pp. 1314)
However, after boasting of the superiority of British forces and the easy
destruction of rebel forces if they rise up, Hateall is undermined by another
advisor who tells Sylla that the Patriots may not be so easy to defeat:
Be not so sanguine the day is not our own,
And much I fear it never will be won.
Their discipline is equal to our own.
Although Thomas Hutchinson was by this time in England, Mercy

Otis Warren could not leave her favorite target untouched. Emphasizing
the concept that America and Britain were separate countries (as opposed
to the colonies being part of one imperial nation), she called Hutchinson a
traitor to his own country by making a deal with the British. Moreover,
she identified Britain as the villainous other in the phrase his countrys
foes:
But mark the traitor his high crime glossd oer . . .
He strikes a bargain with his countrys foes,
And joins to wrap America in flames. (p. 10)
In a manner designed to encourage the Patriot side that their cause was
just and that they could and should take armed military action against the
British, Warren portrayed the British leaders in increasing uncertainty. She

again hinted at the creation of a new and separate nation called Columbia,
and implied that those who helped to establish it would be considered as
heroes by their people, rather than traitors and rebels. After the Tories
and military leaders utter successive bombastic threats and sniffling fears,
a lady (the only female character in the play), who is described in stage
directions as nearly connected with one of the principal actors in the group
(p. 22), delivers an impassioned epilogue in which she predicts victory to
the Americans over the British:
Till British troops shall to Columbia yield,
And freedoms sons are Masters of the field;
Then oer the purpld plain the victors tread
Among the slain to seek each patriot dead,
(While Freedom weeps that merit could not save
But conqring Heros must enrich the Grave)
An adamantine monument they rear
With this inscription Virtues sons lie here! (p. 22)
The publication history of The Group gives an insight into some of the
factors involved in writing pamphlet plays at the time. James Warren sent
the play to John Adams in installments as Mercy wrote it. Enclosing the first
two acts on 15 January 1775, Mercys husband asked in veiled terms if Adams
thought it was publishable. If you think it worth while to make any Other
use of them, than a reading you will prepare them in that way and give them
such Other Corrections and Amendments as your good Judgement shall
Suggest.40 His allusion to a reading of the play suggests that the custom
with her work may have been for it to be read in clandestine gatherings
rather than performed in public.
Like her previous plays, The Group appeared anonymously. The first part
was printed in the Boston Gazette on 23 January 1775, in the Massachusetts
Spy on 26 January 1775, and in New York by John Anderson three months
later. The full play was published as a pamphlet on 3 April 1775, only two
weeks before the outbreak of war. Among the reasons for the delay was
Mercy Warrens concern as to whether her attacks on public figures were
justified, and her fear that she was being publicly identified as the author of
the already published first part of The Group. When Adams did not reply
to a letter in which she expressed her worries, James Warren wrote again to
Adams in February 1775 about her anxiety that she was being identified as
the author.41 James Warren apparently sent the second part of the play to
John Adams on 15 March 1775 for him to pass on to the publisher. He revealed
that he had had difficulty persuading his wife to finish the piece without
reassurance on the two matters: With some difficulty I have Obtained
the Inclosed. Some scruples which you have not resolved, and some fears,
and Apprehensions from Rumors Abroad have Occasioned the delay, and
reluctance.42 Hinting that his wife might be in danger if she were identified
as the author of the play, he cautioned, do with it as you think proper,
haveing as I dare say you will, a proper regard to prudence under present
Circumstances.43
Adams wrote at length to Mercy Warren on the same day, apparently in
reaction to James Warrens letter, encouraging her to continue her satirical
attacks on public figures. He effusively congratulated Warren on her style of
writing: Classical Satyr, such as flows so naturally and easily from the Pen of
my excellent Friend had all the Efficacy, and more, in Support of Virtue and
in Discountenancing of Vice . . . Of all the Geniuss which have yet arisen in
America, there has been none, Superiour, to one, which now shines, in this
happy, this exquisite Faculty.44 Two months later, while he was attending
meetings of the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Adams wrote
to Warrens husband of the popular success of the piece. One half the Group
is printed here, from a Copy printed in Jamaica. Pray send me a printed Copy
of the whole and it will be greedily reprinted here.45 It was subsequently
published in the important cities of New York and Philadelphia.46
After the war began, American Loyalists and Patriots continued to
write pamphlet plays to sustain morale and justify their positions. Also the
British military produced theatre performances in Boston, New York and
Philadelphia, including an afterpiece in Boston called The Blockade of Boston,
purportedly by General Burgoyne, that satirized the American rebellion
but whose performance was disrupted by the Americans attack on Bunker
Hill.47 Perhaps the most significant play in support of the War of Independence was The Fall of British Tyranny; or, American Liberty Triumphant.
Like Mercy Warrens plays, The Fall of British Tyranny was a parody on the
British government and military, and a defense of the actions by American
Patriots. Written early in 1776 under the alias of Dick Rifle (and later
attributed to John Leacock), the play reviewed the political and military
events in Britain and the American colonies between 1774 and 1776, including the recent battles at Bunker Hill and Quebec. Like Warren, Leacock
disguised the names of the British politicians and military figures, such as
Lord Paramount for Lord Bute (the former British Prime Minister), Lord
Boston for General Gage (the military Governor of Massachusetts), etc.,
but in contrast he used the actual names of Patriot leaders like George
Washington and Ethan Allen.
The playwright blamed the problems in the American colonies on the
Scotsman Lord Bute, who, he suggested, had contrived an elaborate plot
to take over the British throne and convert England back to Roman
Catholicism. According to the play, Lord Bute fomented the military conflict between Britain and America so that Britain would have to send troops
and ships to America, thereby becoming vulnerable to an attack from an alliance of Scottish, Irish, French and Spanish soldiers. Using this somewhat
far-fetched Catholic conspiracy theory, the playwright explained recent
events and justified the American military response. He showed that not
only American but also many British politicians opposed the new policy,
and that the war for independence was the only option to avoid political
and religious tyranny.48
The preface of the play asks what King Solomon would have done in
such circumstances and answers that he would have been persuaded by the
logic of Common Sense, Thomas Paines pro-independence pamphlet, which
had just been published in January 1776.
Would [Solomon] not have wondered at our patience and long-suffering,
and have said, Tis time to change our master! Tis time to part! And
had he been an American born, would he not have showed his wisdom
by adopting the language of independency? Happy then for America in
these fluctuating times, she is not without her Solomons, who see the
necessity of hearkning to reason, and listening to the voice of common
sense. (p. 61)
Like Mercy Warren, the playwright identified Americas friends and

enemies. He depicted Lord Bute as planning to overthrow the British
monarch, buy off the clergy, and impose draconian law on the American
colonies, and the first act ends with Bute plotting to become the next King
of England. The second act portrays the Whig opposition in Britain (Lord
Chatham, the Bishop of St. Asaph, Lord Camden, John Wilkes, Edmund
Burke, and Colonel Barre) that supports the rights of the colonists. They
justify American independence and predict that the Americans will win the
war. Barre says, I should not be at all surprisd to hear of independency
proclaimd throughout their land, of Britains armies beat, their fleets burnt,
sunk, or otherwise destroyd (p. 82). The third act moves to America and
depicts the British blockade of Boston during which Americans are shown
to be giving up the luxuries of British imports. Interestingly, a Protestant
minister views the military struggle as a holy war and echoes the Catholic
conspiracy theory in warning citizens of the dangers that lie ahead if they
do not take up arms.
Your estates are to be confiscated; your patrimony to be given to those who
ever labord for it; popery to be established in the room of the true catholic
faith; the Old South [meeting-house], and other houses of our God,
converted perhaps into nunneries, inquisitions, barracks and common
jails, where you will perish with want and famine. (p. 86)
After an amusing scene that shows a Whig outing a Tory because of his
opposition to military action, the play moves to British army headquarters
where Lord Boston, who has dispatched his troops to Concord, confidently
awaits the arrest of John Hancock and Samuel Adams. When a messenger
arrives to report that the British troops have been attacked and are in retreat,
Lord Bostons composure falls apart and he is shown to be incompetent and
in fear for his life.
The next scene portrays two American shepherds discussing the recent
events at Lexington and Concord in metaphorical terms that cast the
Americans as innocent victims. One shepherd tells the other of an attack by
British wolves on American lambs, and how the shepherds took revenge.
The two characters bask in their victory over the British as they recall the
rout. Well pleased, Roger, was I with the chase, and glorious sport it was:
I oft perceivd them tumbling oer each other heels over head; nor did one
dare stay to help his brother but, with bloody breech, made the best of his
way nor ever stopped till they were got safe within their lurking holes [in
Boston] (p. 98). The scene ends with a song which demonstrates that the
loyalties of the Americans have firmly shifted to their side of the Atlantic
and compares the British symbols of authority unfavorably with those of
the American Indians. The Sachem Chief Tammany is presented as a more
legitimate saint and king than St. George, George III or Lord Bute. By contrast with the British who wish to impose unjust laws and measures upon the
colonies, Tammany is lauded for his conciliatory approach to Pennsylvania
settlers in the seventeenth century. He is also painted as a superhero in terms
of his sexual and hunting prowess and his love of liberty.
What country on earth, then, did ever give birth
To such a magnanimous saint? (p. 100)
By depicting the Indian Chief as a hero and a saint, the play legitimizes
America as an independent land with its own figures worthy of veneration,
and shows its citizens to be no longer dependent on British symbols of

authority.
At the end of act iii, Clarissa the wife of General Joseph Warren is
shown waiting for news of the battle of Bunker Hill and the fate of the
males in her family. When she discovers that not only her husband but also
her brother and her son have all been killed, she at first despairs but after
being told of their bravery, she rallies and reflects on their sacrifice in the
name of liberty. Act iv once again depicts the British officers as immoral,
devious and incompetent. The action moves to Virginia where the British
Governor Lord Kidnapper (Lord Dunmore) has taken refuge from rebellious Americans aboard a military vessel. Kidnapper, who is scandalously
satisfied by two women below deck, takes on board runaway slaves to whom
he promises freedom in return for fighting on the British side.49 Using the
divide and rule tactic, he plans to use the slaves to attack their former masters
and burn down their towns. He argues,
These blacks are no small acquisition, them and the Tories we have
on board, will strengthen us vastly; the thoughts of emancipation will
make em brave, and the encouragement given them by my proclamation, will greatly intimidate the rebels . . . this is making dog eat dog
thief catch thief the servant against his master rebel against rebel.
(p. 113)
When the scene moves back to Boston, the British military leaders
Lord Boston, Admiral Tombstone, Elbow Room and Caper (Gage, Graves,
Howe and Burgoyne) argue amongst themselves, blaming each other for
cowardice and incompetence. They are gloomy about the future of their
Boston blockade, and hope to be recalled to London so that they do not
have to stay and fight. Act v shifts the action to Montreal where the Patriot
hero Colonel Ethan Allen has been taken prisoner after the battle of Quebec.
The British General Prescot (whose name unlike the other British officers
in the play is not disguised) is shown to mistreat Allen by casting him in a
dungeon, by comparison to the civil treatment Allen had given to British
prisoners that he had captured. Allen is portrayed as brave and generous,
asking to be killed and for his fellow prisoners (who were only following
his orders) to be released. He shows his frustration that he cannot die a
heros death as a patriot for the wrongs of my country, (p. 122) but is confined to an ignominious dungeon where he predicts that he will be tortured.
Significantly, Allen reacts bitterly when he is called a rebel by Prescott.
Through him, the playwright once more affirms the righteousness of the
Patriot cause:
We despise the name of a rebel With more propriety that name is

applicable to your master tis he who attempts to destroy the laws of the
land, not us we mean to support them, and defend our property against
Paramounts and parliamentary tyranny. (p. 122)
In the final scenes of the play Generals Washingon, Lee and Putnam confer
about such recent events as the imprisonment of Allen and the death of
General Montgomery at Quebec. By contrast with the British generals in
Boston who wish to return to England, they are optimistic and predict
victory in Quebec. Of the fallen Patriots, Putnam says, Out of their ashes
will arise new heroes and Washington adds, I have drawn my sword,
and never will I sheathe it, till America is free, or Im no more (p. 131).
In the epilogue, a character named Mr. Freeman urges his fellow citizens
to proclaim independence and not be intimidated by British proclamations, threats and force. He also hints at a new form of government that
is not dependent on monarchy: Kings are but vain! Let justice rule, and
independence reign (p. 132).
Although The Fall of British Tyranny was probably most influential as
a pamphlet play (having been published in Philadelphia, Providence and
Boston in 1776), it is more stageable than many of the other pamphlet
plays, and there is evidence that it was performed for a live and inspired
audience. Claude Robin, a chaplain in the French army during the War of
Independence, mentions it in his description of wartime performances at
Harvard:
Their pupils often act tragedies, the subject of which is generally taken
from their national events, such as the battle of Bunkers-Hill, the burning of Charlestown, the Death of General Montgomery, the capture of
Burgoyne, the treason of Arnold, and the Fall of British Tyranny. You will
easily conclude, that in such a new nation as this, these pieces must fall
infinitely short of that perfection to which our European literary productions of this kind are wrought up; but still, they have a greater effect upon
the mind than the best of ours would have among them, because those
manners and customs are delineated, which are peculiar to themselves,
and the events are such as interest them above all others: The drama is
here reduced to its true and ancient origin.50
Summary
Although controversial from the early days of the British colonies for religious reasons, drama was developed into a political weapon that made didactic comments about current events in an attempt to clarify the self-image
of the colonies. In the early 1760s settlers used dramatic forms to ensure
loyalty to the British Crown and to encourage self-reliance in the suppression of rebellion in order to preserve the status quo. Towards the 1770s,
anti-colonial nationalists began to use dramatic dialogues to highlight their
legitimate rights and aspirations and redefine the status of the American
colonies. The theatres, which had been established by a touring company
of British actors, became politicized as the debate over the rights of the
settlers versus the authority of the empire grew more intense. By the early
1770s, Americans were using drama to instruct settlers about their role in
determining the future of the country. Loyalist plays reinforced the values
of the status quo and urged Patriots to recant and remain loyal to the British
Crown. Patriot plays and dialogues began to encourage settlers to see the
British as an unjust and hostile other, and to justify rebellion and armed
struggle. Before the war started, the prime exponent for using drama to
foster the notion that the American colonies should oppose British rule
was Mercy Otis Warren.51 Once the war started, other plays such as The
Fall of British Tyranny justified American actions in the war and depicted
the British as corrupt, devious and tyrannical. In portraying an image of
Americans as an oppressed and victimized people whose only legitimate
course of action was to revolt, such writers as Warren and Leacock helped
formulate a new national identity and promoted a nationalist struggle for
independence.52

Federalist and Democratic Republican
theatre: partisan drama in
nationalist trappings
T
he 1790s were an important decade for clarifying
the values of the new nation. Following the establishment of a Federal constitution and the election of George Washington as the first President, political factions in America used the theatre to promote contradictory political
agenda. Leading theatre scholars have described many of the plays from
this era as nationalistic. However, rather than simply uniting the audience
in proclaiming the virtues of their heritage, some of these plays were partisan
and divisive. This chapter will look closely at the rhetoric of four of these
plays and at their political and social context. By contrasting their rhetoric, it
will become clear that each play contributed to a dynamic political discussion
about the future of the country and helped to define the values of the nation
in a particular manner.
Bunker-Hill
John Burks Bunker-Hill; or, The Death of General Warren, which was performed in Boston and New York in 1797, ostensibly celebrates American
bravery in the American War of Independence.1 During the course of
the play, General Joseph Warren gallantly leaves home to take up arms
against the British after the military incidents at Lexington and Concord.
A great battle scene ensues, and Warren dies defending Bunker Hill and
the American cause. The actors and manager accompanied President John
Adams, who attended a performance of the play in New York, out of the
theatre afterwards. Asked what he thought of the performance by the actor
who played Warren, Adams replied tersely, My friend, General Warren,
was a scholar and a gentleman, but your author has made him a bully and a
blackguard.2 Likewise, William Dunlap, a Federalist theatre manager and
playwright, described the play as deplorable and execrable when it played
successfully in his theatre in New York. To understand these two reactions

to a seemingly nationalistic work, one has to investigate the political and
cultural context.3
By the mid-1790s, political factions had formed to support either Federalist or Democratic Republican policies. These factions grew out of the discussions over the Federal constitution in the late 1780s, with many politicians
averse to a constitution that would transfer power from individual states to
a centralized national government. But in the 1790s these opposing camps,
which essentially divided over states rights versus a powerful centralized
national government, were affected by the repercussions from the French
Revolution and the subsequent war between Britain and France. The Federalists of the 1790s would align with the British and support a strong central
government modeled on the British constitution, whereas the Democratic
Republicans would defend states rights, decentralized authority and the
egalitarian principles of the French Revolution.4
John Adams, who spent much of the 1780s in Paris and London as
an American envoy, was a leading Federalist who believed in a bicameral
legislature patterned after the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Referred to as the Duke of Braintree by his detractors, Adams published
a Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America
in 1787 which seemed aristocratic in tone, suggesting for example that the
Senate should be composed of the rich, the well-born and the able.5 He
also tried to establish pompous ceremonies in Congress, and to introduce
the title of his Elective Majesty for the President.6 Mercy Otis Warren,
a close friend who became an anti-Federalist, wrote in her History of the
Revolution (published in 1805) that Adams
became so enamoured with the British constitution, and the government, manners, and laws of the nation, that a partiality for monarchy
appeared, which was inconsistent with his former professions of republicanism . . . After Mr. Adamss return from England, he was implicated by
a large portion of his countrymen, as having relinquished the republican
system, and forgotten the principles of the American Revolution, which
he had advocated for near twenty years.7
Alexander Hamilton, another prominent Federalist who believed in a strong

central government, formulated constitutional plans in the 1780s for an
American President who would serve for life and maintain an absolute veto
over legislation (similar to a monarchy). He argued,
FEDERALIST AND DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICAN THEATRE
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first
are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people. The voice
of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The
people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.
Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government . . . Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of
democracy.8
In the late 1790s Hamilton hatched a plan to conquer the Spanish in Florida,
Louisiana and Mexico and return like a Napoleonic hero to become First
Citizen of America.9
The Federalists represented American shipping and mercantile interests
and encouraged the creation of a loyal plutocracy and close links with
Britain. They feared democratic influences from the French Revolution
of 1789, worrying that the accumulation of wealth and land in the hands
of a small number of individuals would be threatened if the Democratic
Republicans took power in America. Fisher Ames, one of the more outspoken Federalists, wrote of the dangers of the barbarous, infuriated, loathsome mobs of France.10
By contrast, Thomas Jefferson, a leader of the Democratic Republican
faction, took a more egalitarian stance, supporting in 1791 Thomas Paines
pamphlet, Rights of Man, which defended the French Revolution. Jefferson
called the French Revolution the most sacred cause that ever man was engaged in11 and, in an introduction to the pamphlet, denounced the political
heresies of John Adams.12 The political divisions in the country became
more pronounced during the mid-1790s when the British and French went
to war. The Federalists attracted northern merchants, ship owners and professionals who depended on trade with Britain and who approved of Jays
Treaty with Britain in 1794 and the establishment of a national bank. The
Democratic Republican movement gained the support of the planters in
the south, the farmers in the west, and the laborers and artisans in the
north and called for closer ties with France.13 The Federalists under John
Adams won the 1796 election, enforced Federalist principles of a strong
central government, packed the judiciary with partisan supporters and in
1798 introduced the Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle Democratic Republican dissent. Such Federalist measures were regarded as oppressive, however,
and they led to a groundswell of support for Jefferson, who replaced Adams
as President in 1801.
The 1790s were a significant decade in American history for formulating

a national identity. During this period, Americans began to write plays to
record and eulogize the heroic acts of their compatriots during the War of
Independence. This early form of nationalistic theatre served to reinforce
the legitimacy of the new nation-state, but some of the plays, rather than
uniting the audience in proclaiming the virtues of their heritage, commented
on the events in order to legitimate partisan viewpoints. This can be seen
especially in the work of William Dunlap and John Burk who were on
opposite sides of the political fence.
Both the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans used the theatre as
a public forum in the 1790s to expound their respective ideological positions.
Often symbols of British or French allegiance on the stage caused disruption
to theatrical events. Dunlap, for example, recalled that when the actor John
Hodgkinson appeared in New York in Miss in her Teens as Captain Flash,
dressed in an English military uniform, he:
was hissed and called upon by the French party, who could not look at an
English officers coat without being in a rage, to take it off. He came
forward, and, to the satisfaction of the French partisans, said he represented a coward and a bully. Unfortunately, this was running on Charybdis
to avoid Scylla, and the English partisans threatened vengeance on the
actor.14
The theatres in Boston and New York that presented John Burks BunkerHill were particularly affected by political and socio-economic divisions,
and in Boston so much so that, in the 17967 season, its two theatres competed in an intense battle for audiences. Theatre was outlawed in Boston
from 1752, but in 1792 actors began to flout the law. In 1794, Federalist shareholders built the Federal Street Theatre, and, in order to attract a large
audience, tried to cater to all tastes. As party divisions became more acrimonious, politics began to disrupt the performances. As in other theatres,
the audience often asked the orchestra of the Federal Street Theatre to
play popular songs at the start of an evenings entertainment. However,
this practice offered an opportunity for partisan songs that appealed to
one faction or the other. In theatres in other towns, such as Philadelphia,
a similar practice had occasionally led to riots.15 At the Federal Street
Theatre, the display of factional loyalties caused disturbances.16 In 1795 the
manager wrote a poetic address to the audience to leave their politics at
home:
Let mirth within these walls your souls employ,

Like brothers worship at this shrine of joy;
Let Feds and Antis to our temples come,
And all unite firm Federalists in Fun;
Let austere politics one hour flee,
And join in free Democracy of glee!17
A rival theatre called the Haymarket was built in Boston in 1796 with
financial help mainly from Democratic Republicans and those of a lower
economic status, and the two theatres developed a concerted rivalry for
audiences during the opening season.18 The Federal Street Theatre shareholders, who were members of the Boston elite, took pride in personally
covering the expenses of the theatre for an evening and ensuring that the
auditorium was full. If they were not able to sell all the tickets, the shareholders would apparently give the remaining tickets away on condition that
the recipients would refuse to patronize the rival Haymarket Theatre.19 The
shareholders also encouraged the manager of their theatre occasionally to
present pieces that would annoy the Democratic Republicans, and they permitted the actors (who in most cases were from England) to make jokes at
the expense of the French with whom England was at war. Such politically
motivated actions led to serious disturbances in the theatre, such as during
the run of Poor Soldier. According to Dramatic Reminiscences,
The anti-federal, (or, as it was then called, the Jacobin) party, were so
extremely sensitive, that they took great offence at the representation of
the Poor Soldier pretending that the character of Bagatelle was a libel on
the character of the whole French nation. They were encouraged in this,
by the French consul, then residing in Boston. A pretty smart quarrel
was excited between him and the editor of the Boston Gazette; and
the controversy, at last, became so bitter, that a mob, on one occasion,
attempted to stop the performance of this farce, and did considerable
damage to the benches, doors, and windows of the theatre.20
Subsequently, the manager deleted the character of Bagatelle when presenting the play.21
Later, during a performance of the comic-opera Lock and Key, a similar
row occurred because of a song that praised the heroism of the English in
a battle with the French. According to William Clapp,
The song was encored, and repeated with general applause and partial
hisses, which by the lively jealousies of party spirit, then dominant, was
construed into mutual insult. The first night was only a first rehearsal; the
second night more clamor occurred, and on the third night the heroes
of the sock became passive spectators and the audience the principle
actors, and presented a medley entertainment in its finished state, so far
as disorder can approximate to perfection. The attempt to stop the song,
was ineffectual; for the friends of the theatre prevailed.22
While the Federal Street Theatre encouraged some plays which annoyed
the Jacobins, the Haymarket Theatre fostered a program to appeal to a
broader audience. As the theatre was being built, it became clear that the
people subscribing money for its construction expected a different policy
from it than from the Federal Street Theatre.23 The Federal Street Theatre
was regarded as catering to the Boston upper crust and looking askance not
only at the French but also at local tradesmen and artisans. Many of the
workmen involved in building the Haymarket Theatre provided their services for free in return for becoming shareholders and obtaining free tickets.
According to William Clapp, The Boston mechanics were not partial to
the Federal Street, and favored the [new theatre] project . . . and those who
were not able to pay the money, also subscribed for shares, and paid in labor,
furnishing the material for constructing the building.24 A tradesman,
writing to the editor of the Boston Gazette on 9 May 1796, confirmed the
expectations of certain members of the community that the theatre would
cater to common people and accused the patrons of the Federal Theatre of
personal abuse as well as immorality:
I am highly pleased with the prospect of having a new Theatre established
upon a cheap and liberal plan, that we Tradesmen can go with our families
and partake of a rational and pleasing amusement for a little money, and
not be hunched up by one [sic], and the nose of another Aristocrat turned
up at us, because we are Tradesmen. The present theatre is an imposition
on the Town it is only a School of Scandal and Aristocracy, and of late
the Slip Galleries are no better than Brothels.
During the Haymarkets first season, the manager of the competing

Federal Street Theatre hinted at the political and class divisions that affected
the theatres, declaring that the prevailing Jacobin spirit in the lower ranks
prevented the Federal Street Theatre from gaining a larger audience. After
the first week of competition, the Federal Street Theatre lowered its prices
for the pit and gallery seats in order to increase its audience. However,
competition from the new theatre, particularly new American plays such as
Burks Bunker-Hill, badly affected attendance and income.25 The Federal

Street Theatre manager complained,
They have brought out a new piece, called Bunkers Hill, a tragedy, the
most execrable of the Grub Street kind but from its locality in title, the
burning of Charlestown and peppering the British (which are superadded
to the tragedy in pantomime), to the utter disgrace of Boston theatricals,
has brought them full houses.26
The author of the play, John Burk, was a colorful figure. The son of a
Protestant schoolteacher from County Cork in Ireland, he attended Trinity
College, Dublin in 1792. Accused of republicanism and deism, he was
expelled27 and became involved in the Irish rebellion (which would be aided
by the French) to overthrow British rule in Ireland. Burk later claimed
that he attempted by every means in [my] power to effect [Irelands]
emancipation.28 After failing to rescue a rebel from execution, Burk was
reputedly chased by the police through the city. He ducked into a shop
where he was given womens clothes by a young woman and, thus disguised,
escaped to America.29 He held strong Democratic Republican views which
he expressed increasingly as a newspaper editor in Boston and later in New
York.30 In 1798 he was arrested under the Sedition Act along with other
editors of Democratic Republican newspapers, and he was threatened with
possible deportation under the Alien Act of the same year.31 He avoided
prosecution by agreeing to leave the country, but with the help of Aaron
Burr and James Monroe, he moved to Virginia where, for a while, he lived
under an assumed name.32 He briefly became Principal of the new Jefferson
College in Amelia County, but was accused of adultery and had to resign.
In 1808, when he was still in his mid-thirties, having written several plays, a
history of the Irish rebellion of 1798, and a three-volume history of Virginia,
he was killed in a duel with a Frenchman.
Burks adherence to Democratic Republican principles was clearly expressed in Bunker-Hill, which he dedicated to Aaron Burr (a leading Democratic Republican who became Vice President in 1801 under Jefferson). The
rhetorical strategies that he employed in the play appealed to Democratic
Republican sentiments. He depicted General Warren, the hero of the melodramatic tragedy, as an altruistic patriot who does not demand a privileged
social position but wants to do whatever he can to help his countrymen.
Called to serve in the revolutionary army, Warren offers to act in any
capacity:
Whether as private, or as leader rangd;

My post is honor and my countrys good. (p. 41)
Furthermore, when the battle commences, he stands in the front lines with
his men rather than asserting the usual privilege of a commanding officer
to stay behind the lines and away from the danger of combat. As his men
retreat from battle, he bravely remains to supervise their exodus.
I will not stir till every soul be safe,
Who fought with me this day. (p. 74)
As he is ensuring their safe retreat, he is shot and mortally wounded by a

British sniper.
Within the political context of the day, it was clearly a Democratic
Republican strategy to represent the British as adversaries.33 A spectacular battle scene, which lasted approximately fifteen minutes, was mounted
in the theatre to depict the gallant struggle by the American patriots against
the British military.34 In a letter to the manager of the John Street Theatre
in New York requesting another production of the play, Burk described the
effects in the Boston production:
The English marched in two divisions from one extremity of the stage,
where they ranged, after coming from the wings, when they come to the
foot of the hill. The Americans fire the English fire six or seven of your
men should be taught to fall the fire should be frequent for some minutes.
The English retire to the front of the stage second line of English
advance from the wing near the hill firing commences they are again
beaten back windows on the stage should be open to let out the smoke.
All the English make the attack and mount the hill. After a brisk fire,
the Americans leave works and meet them. Here is room for effect, if the
scuffle be nicely managed. Sometimes the English falling back, sometimes
the American two or three Englishmen rolling down the hill.35
In addition to representing the British military as the enemy, Burk emphasized the difference between American and British values. For example,
Burk used a scene in which a British officer tries to negotiate a truce with
Warren as an opportunity to attack British justice. (Being a fugitive from
British justice himself, Burk clearly had a vested interest in the subject.)
Warren asks the officer,
What are your boasted English laws to us,
Or any laws, which sanctify injustice?
Is it an English law, to rob the weak,
To wring his pittance from the shivring poor,

To levy taxes like a Russian czar . . . (p. 60)
Moreover, Burk signaled to the audience, not simply American values, but
more specifically Democratic Republican values. Earlier in the play, Warren
asserts the political rights of all individuals: Those sacred rights, which
nature hath designd / Alike, for all the children of this earth (p. 39). Echoing
contemporary Democratic Republican rhetoric, which identified the Federalists as monarchists and the Democratic Republicans as democrats, Burk
used Warren to denounce monarchy as a political system. Warren asks:
What are kings?
Kings form a horrid junto of conspiracy,
A Catilinian compact, gainst the lives,
The rights, the peace, the freedom of the world. (p. 61)
Furthermore, Burk availed of the emotional climax of the play as the

moment to attack the notion of aristocracy. In his dying words, Warren
pleads:
O might I look into the womb of time
And see my countrys future destiny:
Coud I but see her proud democracy,
Founded on equal laws, and stript entire,
Of those unnatural titles, and those names
Of King, of Count, of Stadtholder, and Duke,
Which, with degrading awe, possess the world. (p. 79)
Warrens funeral, performed with pomp and ceremony, also employed

rhetorical emblems, with Democratic Republican slogans being carried
beside Warrens coffin, reminiscent as much of the French as the American Revolution, such as: the rights of man, liberty and
equality, and hatred to royalty (p. 81). The play ends with a
panegyric in which two virgins sing of Warrens heroism and patriotism:
You sons and daughters of the land,
From all his virtues tears demand,
You soldiers and you farmers, hear
Your heros glories with a tear.
And you of Boston, who have seen
Oft in your streets his warlike mien,
Join in the general song of grief,
Which freedom gives to freedoms chief. (p. 82)
By referring to farmers and soldiers in the funeral audience (which by

extension included the theatre audience), Burk again employed a rhetorical
device that would appeal to the common people rather than the Boston
elite.
The play, however, was not narrowly partisan. By setting it during the War
of Independence, Burk integrated his partisan politics into a nationalistic
frame in order to appeal to a wide audience. Furthermore, by featuring a
Massachusetts hero and a local historical event, he played on the chauvinistic
sentiments of the Boston audience. Although the Democratic Republican
symbols that were deployed in the staging of Warrens funeral (such as the
Rights of Man) were in a sense anachronistic (as they were associated with
the French Revolution which occurred more than a decade after Warrens
death) and offensive to ardent Federalists, their effect was muted by the
emotional moment of mourning for a local hero. By placing the rhetoric of
the Jeffersonian faction of the 1790s within the era of the Revolutionary War,
Burk sought to legitimize Democratic Republican principles as founding
values of the nation-state.
In retrospect one might view this political debate as a petty and transitory squabble between individuals who were ambitious for power, but it
concerned major ideological differences over the system of government in
the new country. In the 1790s it seemed quite possible that the United
States would become a monarchy or an oligarchy, with repressive legislation
such as the Sedition Act to stifle opposition. Adams, for example, informed
friends that monarchy was inevitable for the United States. He wrote to
Benjamin Rush in 1789 that monarchy and aristocracy were the only institutions that can possibly preserve the laws and liberties of the people,
and I am clear that Americans must resort to them as an asylum against
discord, seditions and civil war, and that at no very distant period of time.36
Jefferson recalled the period of the 1790s as involving contests of principle
between the advocates of republican and those of kingly government.37
As a political strategy to thwart Federalist policies, it was important
therefore for the Democratic Republicans not simply to appeal to a narrow
factional following but to gain the support of the majority and win the
next election. Furthermore, the political leaders of the day did not regard
their factions as permanent oppositional forces in the political system (like
political parties today), but believed that the temporary political divisions
in the country would ultimately be reunited under one banner. Therefore
it conformed to Democratic Republican policy to represent their views
as national rather than factional. Arguably, Burks play employed such a
rhetorical strategy. That Burk succeeded in Boston can be inferred from his
letter to the John Street Theatre. In asking Hodgkinson to produce the play
in New York, he downplayed any concerns that the play might be viewed
as partisan, maintaining that it had succeeded in appealing not only to the
gallery and pit but also to all sections of the audience:
It was played seven nights successively, and on the last night was received
with the same enthusiasm as on the first it revived old scenes, and united
all parts of the house. Mr. Powell [the manager] intends it for a stock play,
and it will be represented on all festivals such as 4th July, 19th June [the
anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill], etc. It will be played here in
a few nights again, immediately after Columbus. . . . There will no doubt
be some who will call in question your prudence in getting up this piece,
as being not in favour of England. Those are blockheads, and know not
the public opinion in America. Boston is as much divided as New-York
party was forgotten in the representation of it.38
The play successfully served as a patriotic reminiscence, which could

unite the house (particularly in Boston) despite its Democratic Republican
ideological coding. Even the Federalist newspaper, the Columbia Centinel,
praised the play after its sensational first night performance. It recorded
that Bunker-Hill was performed to a larger and more respectable auditory
than perhaps was ever contained in any other theatre on the continent. The
numbers present on this occasion could only be determined by calculating
the dimensions of the house; for there appeared to be hardly a nook or
corner in it unoccupied.39 The critic commented on the united response of
the audience, who had been anxiously looking forward to the play because
of its title:
Approbation was universal and instantaneous not merely the calm,
deliberate sanction of judgment, it was expressed in a language of passion
in a high degree of incitement a language in which box, pit and gallery
were perfectly concordant. Since the memorable event on which the plot
of the piece is founded, we presume there has seldom been so unaffected
an expression of the genuine American spirit of 75. For a moment the
audience seemed lost in the fiction, and to have imagined the flames
of Charlestown, and the death of W arren, something more than a
delusive description of events that had passed.
In a spirit of patriotism, the reviewer concluded, On the whole, it must be

confessed, that Bunker-Hill is not less unrivalled as a play, than it has been
in reality unequalled in the history of military glory.
After a relatively long run of four performances with full houses, the
same Federalist paper predicted on 1 March 1797 that the play could run
much longer with equal success and urged everyone to see it, suggesting it
might be unpatriotic not to do so:
The uncommon success attending the Bunker-Hill tragedy exceeds the
expectations of the most sanguine. Four crowded houses have witnessed,
by the loudest plaudits, to its excellence; and if given out for four times
more will still fill the house. Not to have seen Bunker Hill tragedy will
fix on the delinquent a want of taste, and a deficiency of patriotism.
When Burk approached the Old American Company at the John Street
Theatre in New York about the possibility of performing it, the management
(which included William Dunlap) turned it down. However, the French
producer John Sollee40 later performed it when he was resident at the John
Street Theatre in the autumn of 1797. This production played to substantial
houses for several nights. Dunlap recorded an income of $500 for the first
night and $200 for the second, compared with Sollees takings of $200 for the
entire previous week. Despite having an interest in the success of the John
Street Theatre, Dunlap resented the popularity of Burks play, especially
amongst those of lower social status. Revealing his own political and social
prejudices, Dunlap described the play in his diary as deplorable, and the
audiences who came to see it as mere rabble as opposed to the first and
most respectable of our people who attended a rival performance of Romeo
and Juliet at the Greenwich Street Theatre by leading English actors.41
Dunlap recorded in his History of the American Theatre that the fire and
smoke of Burks play pleased the public more than Romeo and Juliet, and
so the Greenwich Street Theatre had to introduce a more American piece,
Columbus, to compete with Bunker-Hill.42
In order to appreciate the historical significance of Burks play and its
meaning to its contemporary audience, one needs to situate it in a complex series of national and international political controversies. Bunker-Hill
was not simply a patriotic or nationalistic play. It affirmed Democratic
Republican principles and attacked values held by the Federalists. Although
patriotic, it was clearly putting across the views of the Democratic Republican faction. Arguably, when the play was staged away from the emotionally
charged locality of Boston, its rhetorical strategy became more apparent.
Certain members of the New York audience who were particularly sensitive to the political rhetoric of the day, such as John Adams and William
Dunlap, criticized the play severely because they recognized the aims of
the writer that Burk was representing Democratic Republican egalitarian
principles as the founding values of the nation, that he was recasting Britain
as the enemy rather than the friend of America, and that he was attempting
to reverse the drift towards aristocracy and monarchy.
Andre
Before considering a second play by Burk, it is useful to contrast this first
work with a play by William Dunlap during this same period. Dunlaps
father served with the British army in the French and Indian War and settled
in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where William was born. During the War of
Independence, the Dunlaps remained loyal to the Crown and moved to
New York where William Dunlap saw numerous plays presented by British
soldiers. (Major John Andre, who acted and designed sets for some of these
productions, would later feature as the hero of Dunlaps play.)43 After the
war, William Dunlap studied to be an artist in England. He returned to
New York to work in the theatre as a playwright and theatre manager, where
he helped run the John Street Theatre and later the Park Theatre. After
declaring bankruptcy in 1805, he continued to write plays, paint portraits,
and work in theatres. He died in 1839, after writing an important twovolume History of the American Theatre.
One of his early dramatic efforts, an interlude based on OKeefes Poor
Soldier called Darbys Return (1789), gave an indication of his Federalist
persuasion, with the eponymous hero mocking the French Revolution:
I went to France. I always did love quiet,
And there I got in the middle of a riot.
There they cried vive la nation, and liberty,
And all the bag and tails swore theyd be free;
They caught the fire quite across the ocean,
And to be sure, theyre in a nice commotion:
(Down with the Bastile tuck up the jailor.
Cut off my lors head, then pay his taylor.)
Oh bless their hearts, if they can but get free,
Theyll soon be as fat and jolly as we;
Some took the liberty to plunder others,
Because equality is more like brothers.
You may be sure I didnt stay there long.44 (p. 12)
In 1797, when Burks Bunker-Hill was staged, Dunlap was working on a

Federalist novel tentatively called Anti-Jacobin (which he never finished)
while helping to run the John Street Theatre. He also wrote a satirical
afterpiece called Fractura Minimi Digiti about a French surgeon living in

New York that resulted in his being assaulted by the insulted Frenchman
as he came out of church.45 On a visit to Boston to oversee his theatre
company in November 1797, Dunlap made friends with ardent Federalists.
In his diary, he described a political atmosphere that was reminiscent of
the period prior to the American Revolution but oddly transformed, with
Federalists performing the roles formerly played by Loyalists to the Crown.
Much political conversation, high federalists, much exasperated against
the French . . . [Samuel] Cooper gave me an account of the party conflicts
of the Town in which he was the Federal Champion, cutting down french
flags & liberty poles at the risque of his life, fighting mobs &c &c and
writing down Governor [Samuel] Adams in the News papers.46
Dunlaps most notable play at this time, Andre (1798), was a tragedy
about the British officer John Andre who colluded with Benedict Arnold
in an attempt to capture the American fort at West Point. The theatre
scholar Gary Richardson has recently argued that Dunlaps political perspective in the play remains fundamentally nonpartisan47 and that his
willingness to nudge the early Republican theater audience beyond its
expectations and prejudices does demand our respect.48 However, like
Bunker-Hill, Andre was also engaged in a partisan debate, and lent support
to the opposing faction. Although tackling a historical subject which could
have displayed gung-ho American patriotism, Dunlaps Federalist sympathies played a strong part in his writing, with the subtext of the play
calling for reconciliation between England and America rather than (as in
Bunker-Hill ), emphasizing past grievances between the two nations.49 The
rhetoric of Andre suggests that there were errors on both sides, and that
the British suffered as well as the Americans. In the final lines, MDonald
(who represents the voice of reason in the play) cautions against blaming
the present generation for the misdeeds of the past: Never let memory of
the sires offence / Descend upon the son (p. 108). MDonald also hints
at what Federalists saw as the danger of French influence on domestic
politics.
May, in times to come, no foreign force,
No European influence, tempt to mistate,
Or awe the tongue of eloquence to silence. (p. 108)
Dunlap also used MDonald to echo the Federalist call for centralized government in America (especially because of the dangerous example of the
French Revolution) with his rhetorical question
Are other nations in that happy state,

That, having broke Coercions iron yoke,
They can submit to Orders gentle voice,
And walk on earth self-ruled? I much do fear it. (p. 90)
Instead of denouncing the treachery of Arnold and Andre and celebrating the American discovery of their plot (as one might expect in a
nationalistic play), Dunlap emphasized the honorable character of Andre
and his misfortune in being hanged for espionage. In the play, several characters visit General Washington to plead for mercy to no avail, and the
play ends as Andre goes to the gallows. Dunlap represented Andre as a
mistreated victim of war, and Washington as somewhat hard-hearted in his
refusal to commute the death sentence. The most surprising character in
the play is a passionate American officer and friend of Andre named Bland,
who threatens to change sides and fight for Britain if he cannot obtain
Andres pardon. In pleading with General Washington, Bland emphasizes
the virtues of Englishmen:
Yet, let not censure fall on Andre.
O, there are Englishmen as brave, as good,
As ever land on earth might call its own;
And gallant Andre is among the best! (p. 96)
When Washington refuses to pardon Andre, Bland removes the American

cockade (which represented the alliance between the American and French
forces) from his helmet and throws it on the ground with the words,
Thus from my helm
I tear what once I proudly thought, the badge
Of virtuous fellowship. (p. 97)
Given the political debate in the late 1790s, the cockade scene was clearly
an attack on the ongoing alliance with France as well as an indication of
support for closer links with Britain. By denigrating the badge of fellowship and emphasizing the worthiness of English gentlemen, Bland was
implicitly questioning French and American egalitarian values and reinforcing notions of social hierarchy. Dunlaps prologue, which appeared in
the Commercial Advertiser on the day after the premiere (31 March 1798),
underlined the didactic purpose of his play and appealed for a non-partisan
audience response (presumably because he was afraid of a Democratic
Republican reaction):
O, may no party-spirit blast his views,

Or turn to ill the meanings of the muse:
She sings of wrongs long past; men as they were;
To instruct, without reproach, the men that are.
Like Bunker-Hill, Andre created great interest as a new American drama

about the recent War of Independence. According to an article in The Argus
that appeared on the day after the performance, there has no Theatrical performance appeared in New-York, which has attracted such general attention
as that of Andre. However, Dunlap misjudged his eager audiences sentiments. The spectators reacted to the cockade scene with hisses on a crowded
opening night and threatened mass action at the second performance.50
Observing in his diary, I am told that the people are so offended at the
Cockade business as to threaten to hiss off the play to night,51 Dunlap
rewrote the act to make it less controversial. He showed Bland in a subsequent scene apologizing for his actions, praising Washington and graciously
retrieving the cockade. Nevertheless, the box-office takings dropped from
$800 on the first night to $271 and $329 on the last two nights, and the play
was removed from the repertory.52
A critic attacked the play in the New York Democratic Republican newspapers The Argus and The Time Piece.53 The Time Piece had been co-edited by
the well-known Patriot writer Philip Freneau who resigned on 19 March 1798
(two weeks before the play opened) and was replaced after a short interim by
none other than John Burk as chief editor.54 Its review, which was a slightly
modified version of a piece that had appeared on 3 April in The Argus, began,
Of all the dramatic pieces ever exhibited on the American stage, T he
death of M ajor A ndr e, as performed on Friday night, the 30th
March, is the most insulting. From the tenor of the piece it is evident that
the authors object was, not to perpetuate American greatness, American
humanity or American generosity. No: but, as far as in the small compass
of his abilities lay, to depreciate it in public estimation, and convert one
of the greatest characters that ever adorned the historic page into an
unfeeling, obdurate monster.55
The review tore the play apart for political reasons and questioned the
patriotism of the author.
The eulogiums on major Andre are great indeed: It would seem a spy
is to be looked upon as an honourable character . . . [Andres action] was
a cool, deliberate, and well-digested plan, which had for its object the
annihilation of liberty and the slavery of millions; and wonderful, this
man, the instrument of so black a deed, is held up as a martyr whose

every action was counted a virtue.
Both The Argus and Time Piece reviews ended with a threat to the actor
playing Bland not to repeat the cockade incident which was made worse by
the zeal . . . evinced when trampling the insignia of liberty under foot.56
It is expected he will hereafter forbear offering such insult to an American
audience, for all those who fought and conquered in the American cause
are not yet extinct; nor should such an insult, if again repeated, go
unpunished.57
Dunlap rewrote his play several years later, retitling it The Glory of Columbia
and changing the underlying political rhetoric for reasons that will be discussed at the end of this chapter.
Female Patriotism
Clearly Dunlap and Burk were on opposite sides of the fence politically, and
this had a significant effect on the types of plays that they wrote and on the
audience response that their work received. As opposed to producing simply
nationalistic work, they used their plays to some extent as political propaganda in support of particular ideological attitudes and evidently maintained
an awkward personal relationship with each other while working at the same
theatre. Burk apparently tried to circumvent Dunlap in attempting to stage
his second major play, Female Patriotism, in New York. In his diary notes of
13 February 1798, Dunlap revealed his annoyance on discovering that Burk
had avoided him and had persuaded his partner Hodgkinson to perform the
play and a company actress to play the lead. From this it is plain that Burke
[sic] has been told that his play should be done, without consulting me and
no obstacle presented but obtaining Mrs Johnsons consent to play Joan.58
Dunlap confronted Hodgkinson, saying, I have never read his play, and
do not know that I should approve of it.59 Hodgkinson told him to take
it home and look it over.60 Dunlap described in his diary how he read it
with much disgust61 but later relented and allowed it to be performed two
months later, after his own play Andre had been staged.
Female Patriotism displays many of the same ideological concerns as
Burks earlier play, but, although it is a better-crafted piece than BunkerHill, it failed to appeal to popular sentiment. Dunlap recorded that Female
Patriotism was not well attended on the first night and that it was laughed at
and hissed.62 To understand the very different audience response compared

with the packed houses of Bunker-Hill in Boston, one needs to analyze the
ideological content of the play and the changing political circumstances in
the days leading up to its production.
Although England is again the enemy, the circumstances of Female
Patriotism are quite different. Essentially the play is a rewriting of Henry
VI Part I from an anti-English and anti-monarchist standpoint. Burk borrowed thirty lines of Shakespeares play in the first act before he diverged
into a very different portrayal of Joan of Arc.63 Unlike the sorceress of
Shakespeares play, Burks Joan is an ordinary shepherdess with extraordinary political commitment and strength of character. Rather than practicing
witchcraft and claiming noble parentage as in Henry VI, she is a populist,
a strong proponent of Democratic Republican values, and proud of being a
commoner. Bishop Beauvais64 assures Bedford, who is trying to determine
the nature of Joans powers, that they are not of divine origin but have
developed through diligent political study:
Within my diocese this maid was born,
And tho her father was a peasant swain,
She had a kinsman who was deeply read
In all the learning of the wisest times:
This sage did much affect the young Pucella,
And finding her of quick and ready genius,
From time to time, he did enrich her mind
With precepts good, and high conceptions
Drawn from the Roman and the Grecian bards;
And such effect hath this upon the maid,
That she applied the tyranny of Tarquin
To our invasion. (p. 21)
Not only has she used her study of social and political organization to
understand the implications of Englands incursions into France, Burks
version of Joan of Arc has also tried to politicize other peasants in order to
rouse them to take up arms against the English. In a monologue that seems
almost Brechtian, the Bishop describes her earlier political activity:
Oft have I seen her eer she joind the foe,
Collect the wondring peasants in a group,
With reasoning most profound and sensible,
Explain their rights and duties in society;
Describe the crimes of tyranny and kings,
And glories which await the patriots name,

In language so sublime and forcible,
That the rude throng seemd borne above their level,
And I myself did half incline to join
The Dauphins standard. (p. 21)
Burk also used Joan to demonstrate what he considered to be one of

the main lessons of the American and French Revolutions that ordinary
people can take power into their own hands and change society for the better.
In so doing he wanted to undermine the notion that she had been guided
by voices from God or that she was a saint. He represented her as a mere
mortal who operates on her own volition without divine assistance. After
winning a battle against the English, Joan confesses that she has invented
the story about having divine visions so that people will have confidence in
her and believe in her power to lead them:
I am no more of heaven than yourselves;
Nor inspiration do I feel, beyond
The stretch and compass of the human mind,
Developd by its own innate exertions,
No visions had I more than one of you:
I saw no sights but all of you did see:
France torn by feuds and foul dissentions;
France desolate beneath a stranger sword.
I saw the fairest kingdom on the earth,
The gallantest and proudest people,
And these my country and my countrymen,
Groan in the bondage of a meaner state.
This only was my inspiration;
And it was not enough Forbid it heaven,
The time should ever be, when France doth look
For a more powerful, sacred call than this,
To rouze her to resistance. (p. 19)
At the same time as he emphasized her humble background and secular

powers, Burk portrayed Joan as a fierce fighter and a woman of great physical
strength and stamina. By contrast with the sword duel in Henry VI in which
the famed English warrior Talbot heroically forced Joan to retreat, Burks
Joan humiliates Talbot by wounding him and pursuing him offstage. She
returns to explain to her friend Chastel that she was prevented from killing
him because others came to his aid:
Wounded he lies within the English camp,

And had been killd, but that a host of foes
Rousd by his danger came at once upon me,
Just as my sword uplifted high to strike
Thirsted to slake its fury in his blood. (p. 15)
When Chastel regrets that he was not there to prevent her from getting into
danger, she answers combatively, How! dost thou envy this poor deed to
me? (p. 15). But, lest she appear too bloodthirsty, Burk interposed a glimpse
at her compassionate qualities, with her expressing regret at having to kill
so many men and concluding,
O Chastel tis a dreadful state of things
When tyranny doth force the good to battle. (p. 16)
Later, after she has been captured by the English and is about to be executed,
she again demonstrates her enormous physical strength and courage when
she tries to defend herself in prison. Realizing that she has no sword, she
looks around for a weapon and yanks one of the metal bars out of the
prison window with such force that, according to the stage directions, brick,
mortar and splinters of wood follow (p. 31).
Although Joan helps restore the French monarchy, Burk leaves the audience in no doubt that she does this as a necessary and temporary expedient
in order to overthrow the British forces in France and in the belief that
a more desirable form of republican government will ensue. In the procession scene (act 4 scene 1) to crown the Dauphin in Rheims as King of
France, Joan makes a surprisingly anti-monarchist speech in front of the
Dauphin and a detachment of the French army. After explaining that the
crowning of the Dauphin is a necessary symbolic act to remove English
sovereignty over France, she promises that a golden age of democracy
will soon replace the inferior system of autocratic rule. Burk, moreover,
interspersed the rhetoric of the French Revolution in the anachronistic
crowd responses of Liberty and equality to Joans call for equal rights
(p. 23).
As a further demonstration of the hazards of monarchy, Burk depicted a
transformation in the character of the Dauphin once he is crowned. At the
beginning of the play the Dauphin seems somewhat egalitarian in outlook.
He and Chastel agree that the lack of initiative from individuals to save
France in its hour of need stems from the influence of monarchy. Chastel
asserts that under monarchy personal ambition is stunted:
In commonwealths alone,
We find this soaring dignity of mind,
That loves the vast and aims at the sublime. (p. 4)
Surprisingly, as an heir to the throne, the Dauphin agrees with these antimonarchist sentiments and suggests that man is reduced to a machine under
autocratic rule. However, once he is crowned and the English capture Joan,
the French king begins to display his true colors as a bigoted aristocrat.
Burk heavily emphasized his tyrannical and ungrateful nature and his
class attitudes in the final scene. When Chastel criticizes the monarch for
not trying to save Joan by sending an emissary to ransom her life, the king
replies that it would demean the crown to beg for the life of a peasant.
Chastel then mocks the king by asking why he has accepted the crown from
this same peasant, and accuses him of forgetting the common people of
France:
Art thou not he who late with cap in hand
Did court the favour of the lowest kind?
That strikes with wooden shoe the soil of France?
Who wood all orders of the state with smiles?
Who talkd of freedom and the rights of man?
Who eulogizd Republics by the hour? (p. 35)
When the Dauphin resorts to the ultimate weapon of monarchy, Take him
to execution, (p. 35) Chastel mocks him and monarchy further, and the king
is made to appear ridiculous when his courtiers refuse to carry out his orders.
The final pronouncement of the play denouncing monarchy, affirming
democratic values and predicting the American and French Revolutions as
well as eventual harmony amongst nations arrives in the form of a message
which Joan has written before she has been burned at the stake as a witch
(p. 39).
As in Bunker-Hill, Burk was seeking to project pro-Democratic Republican, pro-French, anti-English and anti-Federalist sentiments on the
stage in the guise of a historical drama. He used the political conversion of the Dauphin (from professing egalitarian values in the early part
of the play to becoming a hostile autocrat by the end) as an elaborate
metaphor for the change of Federalist attitudes (such as those of John
Adams) in the 1790s. He hinted that the Federalists talkd of freedom and
the rights of man, and Did court the favour of the lowest kind during
the War of Independence and in order to gain office. But when the British
were overthrown and they gained power for themselves, the Federalists
(in the opinion of the Democratic Republicans) abandoned their concerns
for the common people. Anticipating the Alien and Sedition Acts, Burk
used the kings threat to execute Chastel as a means of subtly warning the
audience that the Federalist government might try to suppress the right of
free speech and the freedom to criticize government policies.
There were several major differences from Burks earlier play that reduced
the popular appeal of Female Patriotism. First, it did not celebrate American
heroic actions in the manner of Bunker-Hill, and therefore it could not
easily play on the patriotic sentiments of a local audience. Second, it would
have been presumably much harder for an American audience to identify
with the cross-cultural archetype Joan of Arc, than with the local military
hero General Warren. Furthermore, a female military heroine must have
seemed somewhat alien to a society where gender roles were quite strictly
defined. Moreover, the constant attacks on the English, the glorification of
the French and the denigration of the concept of monarchy were designed to
encourage a continuing liaison with France. However, in the week before the
play opened, the support for the French dropped dramatically in the United
States as a result of the X, Y, Z affair. On 3 April 1798, the Secretary of State
released to Congress the dispatches from the American envoys that had been
sent to Paris to reach a peace treaty with France. The dispatches revealed
that the envoys had been badly treated; that the French had demanded an
enormous loan at unreasonable rates before discussion of a treaty would
be considered; that the US government would be expected to assume the
private American claims against the French government for the seizure of
ships; and that Talleyrand expected a personal bribe of 50,000 in order to
facilitate negotiations.
The American people were shocked by this news, and it caught the
Democratic Republicans completely by surprise. Most Democratic
Republican newspapers, not knowing what else to do, printed the correspondence without comment. The Time Piece, with John Burk as co-editor,
tried to suggest that the dispatches were a forgery and a Federalist plot.
But public support for the Democratic Republican faction dwindled, and
the United States began to prepare for war with France. According to the
historian John C. Miller,
The publication of the X, Y, Z dispatches electrified the country as had
no other event since the Revolutionary War. The champions of national
rights against foreign aggression, the Federalists now reaped the reward
for their long crusade against revolutionary France; they were acclaimed
as patriots and heroes while their opponents, in the words of Fisher

Ames, were confounded, and the trimmers dropt off from the party like
windfalls from an apple-tree in September.65
Adams, who had been suffering from a lack of popularity, was suddenly
lauded by the American public. When he entered into the Philadelphia
theatre, He brought down the house as audiences cheered themselves
hoarse at the sight of the portly little man. Adams and Liberty and The
Presidents March became the popular songs of the day. Anyone who dared
call for a French tune was likely to be thrown out of the windows, or from
the gallery into the pit.66
With that kind of hysteria sweeping the country, it is not surprising
that Female Patriotism fared poorly. Dunlap in his History of the American
Theatre, which he wrote thirty years later, suggests that the play did badly
because of a poor male cast. But this explanation seems incomplete, and his
diary is more revealing. It indicates that Dunlap was out of town at the time
of the play, and he was informed that the final speech by Joan, in which
she predicts the French Revolution and the harmony between nations, was
hissed. Regardless of the acting, the audience was evidently not willing at
that time to listen to pro-French sentiments.
Amidst printing diatribes in his newspaper against the President and
the Federalists for trying to put the United States on a war footing against
France, Burk tried unsuccessfully to promote his play. In the same column
as an article denouncing the warmongering of the Federalists Every
artifice will be adopted to persuade the people into an opinion, that war is
necessary67 advance publicity was inserted for Burks play:
Tis whispered that a new play, entitled, Joan of A rc, is in study,
and will make its appearance in a few nights. If we consider the grandeur
of the subject, the noblest in French history; the generous sentiments
and fine situations of which such a subject is susceptible, we confess our
expectations are high . . . Such a drama ought to elevate the minds of the
audience to enthusiasm, and literally drown the stage with tears. The
gentleman said to be the author, we believe capable of making his play
all we have supposed of it.68
After a lackluster premiere, Burk fought the changing tide of public

opinion and promised more with a second performance a fortnight later. By
that time, the clamor against the French had only grown worse. On the same
page as an announcement that Congress was engaged in deciding whether
to create a provisional army as a preparation for war, an advertisement for
a revised version of his play appeared in his newspaper. As it was to be his

benefit night, Burk had a vested interest in selling the performance and
promised that it was improved and amended from the experience of the
first night.69 The paper also advertised that the play is published, and will
be sold on the night in the boxes and ticket office. However, according to
Dunlaps diary, Burk was unable to persuade a friend (who advised him not
to risque the rep[et]ition) to provide financial backing to cover the costs of
the evening, and so it was canceled.70
With the introduction of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 and the
arrest of several Democratic Republican editors including Burk, support for
the Democratic Republican faction reached a low point, but by 1800 it had
returned. The French explained away the X, Y, Z affair as an unfortunate
mistake. Furthermore, the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures questioned
the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the Federalists split
over the handling of French policy. Much to the annoyance of Hamilton,
who was in line to become the commander of the army in a war with France,
Adams (who feared Hamiltons ambitions) appointed a new delegation to
France and discouraged the preparations for war.
With popular support swinging back to the Democratic Republican
faction, the election of a Democratic Republican President looked more
likely. Burks play about Bunker Hill once again became a crowd-pleaser.
When Bunker-Hill was staged in November 1800 to celebrate the anniversary of the evacuation of New York by the British, the Monthly Magazine
commented that it was attended by a very numerous audience. The periodical added, All the numerous defects of the play of Bunker-Hill were
amply compensated by the enthusiasm of the audience.71 After Jeffersons
election in 1800, Dunlap restaged it for 4 July 1802 with Hodgkinson playing
the lead, and he reported that the house overflowed to that vile trash . . . the
receipts were the greatest ever known at that time, 1245 dollars.72 BunkerHill became a rallying point for Americans, and it would be performed for
decades all over New England on nationalist occasions such as 4 July.73
The Glory of Columbia

Presumably because of the success of Burks play and the changing political climate in the country, Dunlap decided to revise Andre following
Jeffersons election. With Federalism in rapid decline, Dunlap rewrote his
play using Democratic Republican rather than Federalist rhetorical devices
and gave it a different title that emphasized its new Democratic Republican
character The Glory of Columbia: Her Yeomanry. He introduced new scenes

and characters, emphasized the virtuous actions of American common
soldiers and reduced Andres status from a martyr and victim to a man
responsible for his own fate.
In the earlier work, Andres noble character was constantly reaffirmed
in spite of his mistaken action. His execution seemed a major injustice,
particularly in view of Blands rhetorical question Shall worth weigh for
nought? One could argue that upper class rhetoric pervades Andre, carrying
with it the implication that an honorable gentleman such as Andre should
have been merely reprimanded for his misdeeds. One could also argue that
the execution of Andre in the earlier version of the play would remind
Federalists of the public executions of the nobility in France in the early
1790s.
In The Glory of Columbia: Her Yeomanry, Dunlap represents Andre as
ignobly participating in espionage activities with Benedict Arnold and
trying to bribe American soldiers when they capture him. Instead of ending
the play with Andres noble march to his death, Dunlap replaced the final
execution scene with an enactment of the battle of Yorktown, depicting
General Washington and the common American soldiers heroically encircling the British and winning the war. Dunlap dropped the cockade
incident, and, although there remained an underlying suggestion of reconciliation between the English and the Americans, he provided the French
with a key role. In Andre, the French did not appear as characters and
were indirectly criticized by MDonald. However, in The Glory of Columbia,
Dunlap credited the French General Rochambeau and the French common
soldiers in the last battle scene as jointly responsible with the Americans for
the final victory.
Emulating Bunker-Hill, The Glory of Columbia was performed as a nationalist pageant for 4 July 1803.74 Like Burks play, the British were cast
as the military enemy and the Americans (but also the French) as military
heroes. Despite denigrating Burks battle effects in his earlier criticism of
Bunker-Hill, Dunlap imitated them. The advance publicity, appearing in
the New York Evening Post on 3 July 1803, predicted,
A View of Yorktown. With the British lines, and the lines of the besiegers. Nearer the audience are the advanced battalions of the besieged.
Cannonading commences from the Americans upon the town, which is
returned. Shells thrown into the town. Explosion of a powder magazine.
The French troops advance towards the most distant of the advanced batteries; the battalion begins to cannonade, but is carried at the bayonets
point. (This is done by artificial figures in perspective.) While this is yet

doing, the nearest battalion begins to cannonade, and the American Infantry rushing to the charge, they attack and carry it with fixed bayonets.
(This is done by boys completely equipd and of a size to correspond in
perspective with the machinery and the scenery.) The British are seen
asking quarter, which is given.75
Interestingly, Dunlap may have benefited from some of the criticism

that appeared in the Democratic Republican newspapers in 1798. Decrying
Dunlaps one-sided treatment of the story, The Argus critic had argued,
The brave and heroic veterans who apprehended [Andre], are carefully
left out; men who preferred the sacred cause in which they embarked
the liberty of their country to sordid Lucre that demon to which
some of the great men of the present day bow their knee with reverential
awe, bartering the liberty of their country, purchased with the blood of
patriots, for that accursed dross. Yes, I say that part of the scene was
carefully avoided, for there the American character would shine in its
native lustre, & the audience be gratified with the representation of an
action unparallelled [sic] in the annals of history, for virtue, fame and
honor.76
Significantly, the individual hero of The Glory of Columbia is no longer

Andre, but the common American soldier, the yeoman of the title. David
Williams, one of several new characters in the play, uses his intuition and
common sense to frustrate Arnolds and Andres devious actions. Moreover, he displays a laudable sense of responsibility in looking after the
welfare of his sister and his family farm while carrying out his duties as
a soldier. Dunlap transformed his tragedy about a maligned English officer
and gentleman (that included what the critic in The Argus [3 April 1798] had
called a panegyrick on British humanity! ), into a eulogy on the virtuous
American common soldier. As such it became a popular success, and it was
revived for many years to come.
Summary
Many of the new American plays of the 1790s retold history for ideological
reasons. While major theatre scholars have categorized the work of Burk and
Dunlap as patriotic and nationalistic, it is important to distinguish the underlying rhetoric and appreciate the partisan nature of these plays in order
to understand their effect on the audience of the period. The American
theatre spoke to a society that was dividing into two major political factions
during the 1790s. In certain cases, such as Bunker-Hill, Andre and Female
Patriotism, the theatre was used as a public forum to further the political
principles of one faction over the other. It is also important to note the
rapid political changes during this period, and to recognize that the timing
of performances bore a crucial relationship with the audience reception. For
example, Female Patriotism might have fared much better had it been staged
in February 1798, when it was first scheduled by Burk and Hodgkinson,
rather than when it was produced two months later. Furthermore, Dunlaps
revision of Andre as The Glory of Columbia was clearly aimed at capitalizing
on a new political climate. While Burk was more ideologically consistent
than Dunlap, both writers used the theatre to encourage particular social
attitudes, to clarify the relationship of the United States with foreign countries, and generally to help construct a self-image of the new nation. Plays
such as Bunker-Hill, Andre and Female Patriotism were designed, not just to
foster a spirit of nationalism, but also to represent what the writers hoped
would become the core values of the country.

Independence for whom? American Indians
and the Ghost Dance
or centuries, the indigenous people of North

America have used their religious and performance traditions to help construct an image of themselves and their place in the world.1 When the
advent of the white settlers began to affect their lifestyles, the American
Indians devised numerous strategies to cope with their new circumstances.
This chapter focuses on the Ghost Dance religion, which spread across the
United States in the late nineteenth century, and examines especially the
ways in which the Lakota (known also as the Sioux) practiced it.
Although the Ghost Dance was far from theatre in the conventional
sense, it can be considered as manifesting similar performative features. In
anthropology and in the growing area of performance studies which attracts
anthropologists as well as theatre specialists, scholars have studied rituals,
religious ceremonies, plays, dance, carnivals and other kinds of public events
for their common elements. For example, Richard Schechner has written,
Performance is no longer easy to define or locate: the concept and structure
has spread all over the place. It is ethnic and intercultural, historical and
ahistorical, aesthetic and ritual, sociological and political. Performance is
a mode of behavior, an approach to experience; it is play, sport, aesthetics,
popular entertainments, experimental theatre, and more.2
Millennial cults like religious ceremonies and rituals have also been included in this field. The anthropologist Weston La Barre in The Ghost
Dance: Origins of Religion has shown that such phenomena arise out of the
community in times of crisis.3 Victor Turner has theorized that they can be
classed as examples of social drama, that result from conflicts ranging from
family disputes to major problems in the community and are united by their
quality of liminality, i.e., being on the threshold between secular living
and sacred living,4 their improvisory aspects and their reflexive metalanguages (p. 32) which are not necessarily verbal and involve the community
AMERICAN INDIANS AND THE GHOST DANCE
looking back on itself. The great genres, ritual, carnival, drama, spectacle,
possess in common a temporal structure which interdigitates constant with
variable features, and allows a place for spontaneous invention and improvisation in the course of any given performance. The prejudice that ritual
is always rigid, stereotyped, obsessive is a peculiarly Western European
one . . . Anyone who has known African ritual knows better or Balinese or
Singhalese or Amerindian (p. 26). Because he felt that Turner paid insufficient attention to the rhetoric of cultural performances, the anthropologist
Clifford Geertz recommended Kenneth Burkes notion of symbolic action
as a means of examining the discourse embedded in such events.5 Analyzing
such discourse involves, Ania Loomba suggests, examining the social and
historical conditions within which specific representations are generated.6
Gananath Obeyesekere further clarifies that discourse is not just speech; it
is embedded in a historical and cultural context and expressed often in the
frame of a scenario or cultural performance.7
Thus religious rituals can be read as performance texts that are rooted
in cultural practice and related to social and historical conditions and in
certain cases help to redefine that society. Jean and John Comaroff have
taken this idea further and have demonstrated that ritual can be a site and
means of experimental practice, of subversive poetics, of creative tension and
transformative action; that, under its authorship and its authority, individual
and collective aspirations weave a thread of imaginative possibilities from
which may emerge, wittingly or not, new signs and meanings, conventions
and intentions . . . Ritual is always a vehicle of history-in-the-making: at
times it conduces to sustain and legitimize the world in place; at times
it has the effect of changing more-or-less pervasive features of that world;
at times it does both simultaneously.8
In the case of the Ghost Dance, one can draw on such scholarship to understand the sudden spread of this religion not just as a crisis cult that was
responding to a particular problem in society but also as a form of cultural
performance that was conveying a complex message to the community. This
chapter argues that, like some of the more conventional plays and theatre
productions previously discussed in the first two chapters of this book, the
Lakota Ghost Dance reconfigured the nation, but from a Lakota perspective
and in a Lakota idiom.
From an initial position of political independence, American Indian
tribes became more and more hemmed in by US government legislation and
settler expansion. From the 1780s, the US government negotiated treaties
that initially recognized Indian tribes as independent and sovereign nations.
But as the white population grew to outnumber the Native Americans and
gradually pushed them further west, the US government reneged on many
of the established agreements and in 1871 abolished the policy of issuing
treaties.9 Despite the fact that the American colonies had rebelled against
the oppressive legislation of the British Empire to establish an independent
nation-state in the eighteenth century, the US government developed its
own imperial policy in the nineteenth century. Justified later as its Manifest
Destiny, the US government conquered new lands and employed the military to enforce oppressive measures against the native inhabitants. In 1865
General John Pope observed, The Indian, in truth, has no longer a country.
His lands are everywhere pervaded by white men; his means of subsistence
and the homes of his tribe violently taken from him; himself and his family
reduced to starvation, or to the necessity of warring to the death upon the
white man whose inevitable and destructive progress threatens the total
extermination of his race.10
In the 1860s, many of the Lakota bands resisted the aggressive policy
of territorial conquest and assimilation. When the US government tried to
sign a treaty with the plains Indians in order to secure the Bozeman road
through Lakota hunting lands to Montana, Red Cloud and certain other
chiefs refused and went to war for several years to prevent white intrusion
on their lands. However, the government eventually colonized their whole
territory and subjected the Indians to its authority.
The US government developed a program of restricting Indians to certain
areas of the country and of transforming their way of life. Specifically, the
government imposed a system of private property that atomized Indian
communities and undermined their values.11 Indians, who in some cases
had roamed the prairies and shared land, food and wealth, were forced to
live in confined areas. After the Lakota began to be moved onto reservations
in 1853 and 1854, a government agent summarized the policy as follows:
The theory, in substance, was to break up the community system among
the Sioux; weaken and destroy their tribal relations; individualize them
by giving each a separate home and having them subsist by industry
the sweat of their brows; till the soil; make labor honorable and idleness
dishonorable; or, as it was expressed in short, make white men of them. 12
The imposition of the settlers values affected many facets of Native

American society. For example, in order to end the Indian practice of sharing goods, the Court of Indian Offenses (established in 1882) made the distribution of private property a crime. Likewise, Indian religious expression
was prohibited from 1883 and the settlers sought to replace Indian spiritual
practices with their own.13
The Lakota in particular were facing a cultural crisis, or what Clyde
Holler has described as cultural genocide.14 The Lakota had originated
from the head of the Mississippi River, but had been driven out of their
homeland by the Chippewa who had been supplied with guns by the French
in the early eighteenth century. The Teton Lakota (which consisted of a
confederation of seven tribes: Oglala, Sicangu, Hunkpapa, Minneconjou,
Itazipco, Oohinumpa and Sihasapa or Blackfeet) went west to become a nomadic tribe, basing their culture around hunting buffalo.15 The main annual
ritual of the Lakota, the Sun Dance, brought numerous bands together for a
physically and spiritually unifying celebration that lasted several days. When
the US government banned the Sun Dance in 1883, it drove underground a
pivotal event in their cultural calendar. According to Holler,
The religious value of the Sun Dance was the attainment of power and
strength for the community and the winning of divine favor for the continuance of the tribe and its food supply. Its social value was to publicly
reaffirm solidarity with the tribe and band and to reward the behavior
sanctioned by Dakota culture . . . In this sense, it could be said that the ban
succeeded too well, by completely demoralizing the community . . . By
removing the sanctioning mechanism for social control, the ban clearly
contributed to social disintegration.16
In addition to banning the Sun Dance, the government prohibited the

practice of giving away property to honor the dead. Short Bull later explained that this regulation forced the Lakota to impoverish their own
Indian afterlife.
Now the white people wish to make us cause the spirits of our dead to
be ashamed. They wish us to be a stingy people and send our spirits to
the spirit world as if they had been conquered and robbed by the enemy.
They wish us to send our spirits on the spirit trail with nothing so that
when they come to the spirit world, they will be like beggars . . . We give
to the departing spirits what they need on the trail and in the spirit world.
If we enrich the spirits with our gifts, they will go into the spirit world
with pride and honor and all we give will be there for us when our spirits
come there. If we give nothing to the dead, then their spirits will come
into the spirit world with only shame.17
At the same time as restricting Indian religious expression, the whites

were imposing their own religion on Indians, often in a demeaning manner.
The daughter of a well-known spiritual leader Black Elk recalled a typically

humiliating experience:
In 1904 my father was called to doctor a little boy in Payabya . . . When he
got there, he found the sick boy lying in a tent. So right away, he prepared
to doctor him. My father took his shirt off, put tobacco offerings in the
sacred place, and started pounding on his drum. He called on the spirits
to heal the boy in a very strong action . . . My father was really singing
away, beating his drum, and using his rattle when along came one of the
Blackrobes, Fr. Lindebner . . . He took whatever my father had prepared
on the ground and threw it all into the stove. He took the drum and rattle
and threw them outside the tent. Then he took my father by the neck and
said: Satan, get out! . . . then administered the boy communion and the
last rites . . . After he got through, he came out and saw my father sitting
there down-hearted and lonely as though he lost all his powers.18
In addition to religious intolerance, the white settlers and the government

expressed a general attitude of racial superiority that threatened not only
the culture but also the lives of the Indians. In Montana in 1867, a local
newspaper looked forward to the country being cleared of every sign of
Indians but their graves,19 and in Colorado a mass meeting subscribed five
thousand dollars for the purpose of buying Indian scalps, and $25 each is to
be paid for scalps with the ears on.20 Rather than punishing this behavior, the
government condoned it. The New York Times reported that Gov. Hunt
himself sanctions all this fiendishness, and in his orders authorizing the
enrollment of cut-throats, he promises that each shall be allowed to retain
whatever plunder he may secure.21 The military leaders often expressed
similar attitudes. General John Pope, who was sent by President Lincoln to
suppress a Dakota uprising in 1862, instructed a fellow officer to show no
mercy to the rebels:
It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux if I have the power to
do so . . . Destroy everything belonging to them . . . They are to be treated
as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties
or compromises can be made.22
General William T. Sherman, fresh from burning Atlanta, also favored a

policy bordering on genocide. Following the Fetterman Massacre in 1866,
Sherman instructed General Philip Cooke that the Indians should be punished with vindictive earnestness, until at least ten Indians are killed for each
white life lost . . . It is not necessary to find the very men who committed
the acts, but destroy all of the same breed.23 The following year he ordered
General Christopher Augur to punish [all the Lakota near the Powder
River and Yellowstone] to the extent of utter extermination if possible.24 In
trying to reach a peace agreement in 1867 with the Indians (who opposed the
building of the Bozeman Road through their lands and had been fighting to
prevent it), Sherman threatened that this Commission is not only a Peace
Commission but it is a War Commission also. He warned the Indians
that if it was not successful, the Great Father, who, out of love for you,
withheld his soldiers, will let loose his young men, and you will be swept
away.25
All the elements of a coercive program for assimilation converged on
the Native American communities of the Plains, Plateau, and Great Basin
during the 1880s. The government and settlers employed military, legal,
religious and educational measures to impose their own values. In addition,
the American buffalo, the traditional source of food and clothing for the
Lakota, had been over-hunted and virtually become extinct.
At a time when many tribes were facing the prospect of cultural and even
racial genocide, the Ghost Dance religion appeared on the scene offering a
way forward. James Mooneys exhaustive four-year study (18904) describes
how the Ghost Dance religion, which was disseminated by the prophet
Wovoka from 1889, spread over thousands of miles.26
The religious practice of the Lakota had emerged from core religious
concepts that formed a fundamentally open system of belief. By the late
nineteenth century, if not before, a large contingent of Indian peoples of
the Plains, Plateau, the Great Basin and elsewhere shared the basic elements
that made up this open system. The ability to incorporate new ceremonies
and visions into the existing tribal religious framework represented one
component of this openness, and facilitated the borrowing of ritual forms
throughout a wide region. The transmission of the Ghost Dance over huge
distances to tribes from the Dakotas to California, like the borrowing of Sun
Dance elements over an almost equally large area a century or so earlier,27
exemplifies this openness.
Wovokas vision predicted a world in which the Indians would prosper
and not be encumbered by white settlers.28 Representatives of numerous
bands visited Wovoka, of the Paiute tribe in Nevada, and learned the divine
prophecy and the Ghost Dance directly from him and then passed them on
to their own people.
The Ghost Dance religion tapped into a clearly felt need, particularly
among the Lakota.29 Whereas the Paiute had remained self-sufficient after
the incursion of white settlers and the introduction of reservation life, many
of the Lakota had been reluctant to take up farming and had grown increasingly dependent on government rations. In 1889 the government broke up
the Great Sioux reservation and removed 11,000,000 acres of the best land.
At the same time, without first allocating parcels of land or farming implements to the potential farmers, the government reduced the size of the
rations in order to encourage the Lakota to take up farming. The Lakota
faced the prospect of starvation.30 Beard, a Lakota who was interviewed by
James Walker five years after the massacre at Wounded Knee, recalled why
the Ghost Dance attracted the interest of his family:
The buffalo were gone and the Indians were hungry. I sat with my father
in his tipi when a messenger came and told us that a Savior for the
Indians had appeared to an Indian in the far land of the setting sun, and
promised to come and bring again the buffalo and antelope and send the
white man from all the land where the Indians hunted in the old times.
This messenger was holy and told us that if we would dance and pray
to this Savior he would appear and show us things that were sacred. My
father said, My sons, we will go and see this thing. We went and saw
the Indians dancing the ghost dance on the White Clay Creek and I and
my father and all my brothers danced.31
The Ghost Dance religion spread widely and rapidly. It has been estimated that over thirty tribes (representing about a third of the entire
Indian population, from the Missouri River to California and from southern
Canada to Texas) adopted the ritual.32 Instead of it being performed for
three or four days and repeated periodically, e.g. once every three months
as Wovoka had suggested,33 some tribes performed it daily. For example,
in September 1890, 3,000 Indians (including Arapaho, Cheyenne, Caddo,
Wichita and Kiowa) attended a Ghost Dance in Oklahoma where, according to Mooney, they remained together for about two weeks, dancing every
night until daylight.34
By encouraging Indians to return to Indian values through Indian religion (even though it contained syncretic features), Wovoka provided an
important vehicle for resisting assimilation and asserting a separate Indian
identity.35 On this level, the act of performing a Native American ritual was
as important as the ritual content and significance of the specific religion.
Moreover, as I will try to show, this Indian belief helped to create a social
movement that contradicted the white settlers notion of the nation-state,
countered the work of white missionaries and threatened the general assimilation project. Thus, the Ghost Dance represented a major challenge
to the dominant society.
The doctrine of the Ghost Dance varied from one tribe to another.
Whereas Wovokas tribe, the Paiute, seem to have interpreted the religion
as accommodating white settlers in the coming millennium, other tribes
(notably the Lakota) predicted the demise of the whites and a return to
pre-Columbian life.36 Mooney explained that among the Lakota, already
restless under both old and recent grievances, and more lately brought to the
edge of starvation by a reduction of rations, the doctrine speedily assumed a
hostile meaning.37 Unlike the Paiute who apparently preached co-existence,
the Lakota danced to rid themselves of the white settlers and to usher in a
new independent nation in which the Indians would rule over a rich and
plentiful land.
This does not necessarily mean that the Lakota were intending to kill
the white settlers and that the Ghost Dance was a kind of war dance. The
Lakota seem to have been instructed that their dancing would eventually
cause a miracle, and that by continuing to dance they would help to bring
forward the date of this miracle. Kuwapi, a Yankton Lakota38 who was
arrested for spreading news of the Ghost Dance to a neighboring band,
expressed in an interview with William Selwyn, a Yankton Lakota who had
arrested him, his vision of the coming millennium:
q: You said something about the destroying of the white race. Do you
mean to say that all mankind except the Indians will be killed?
a: Yes.
q: How, and who is going to kill the white people?
a: The father is going to cause a big cyclone or whirlwind, by which he
will have all the white people to perish.39
Moreover, a white man who visited the Standing Rock Agency in October
1890 observed that he was not threatened at all by the Lakota, despite the
message implicit in their version of the Ghost Dance doctrine. According
to a local newspaper, The Mandan Pioneer, he regarded this as evidence that
the Indians believed that the destruction of the whites would occur as a
result of Divine mediation rather than Indian actions.40
On the other hand, as time went on, the dogma preached by some of
the Lakota leaders seemed to become more threatening to the whites. In a
sermon given in December 1890, shortly before the massacre at Wounded
Knee, Short Bull described a peculiarly violent scenario that would transpire
as a result of the Lakota performance of the Ghost Dance:
My father has shown me these things, therefore we must continue this
dance. If the soldiers surround you four deep, three of you, on whom
I have put holy shirts, will sing a song, which I have taught you, around
them, when some of them will drop dead. Then the rest will start to run,
but their horses will sink into the earth. The riders will jump from their
horses, but they will sink into the earth also. Then you can do as you
desire with them. Now, you must know this, that all the soldiers and that
race will be dead. There will be only five thousand of them left living on
the earth.41
Not only the dogma itself, but also the physical characteristics of the
dance were ideologically meaningful, provided a sense of empowerment
and varied from tribe to tribe. In listing the different names that were given
to the dance, Mooney reveals some of its features which were accentuated
by a particular tribe or which were significant to them:
In its original home among the Paiute it is called Nanigukwa, dance in a
circle (nuka, dance), to distinguish it from the other dances of the tribe,
which have only the ordinary up-and-down step without the circular
movement. The Shoshoni call it Tanarayun or Tamanarayara, which
may be rendered everybody dragging, in allusion to the manner in which
the dancers move around the circle holding hands, as children do in their
ring games. They insist that it is a revival of a similar dance which existed
among them fifty years ago. The Comanche call it Ap-anekara, the
Fathers dance, or sometimes the dance with joined hands. The Kiowa
call it Manposoti guan, dance with clasped hands, and the frenzy, guan
a kakmbawiut, the
a dalka-i, dance craziness. The Caddo know it as A
prayer of all to the Father, or as the Nanisana ka au-shan, nanisana
dance, from nanisana, my children, which forms the burden of so many
of the ghost songs in the language of the Arapaho, from whom they
obtained the dance. By the Sioux, Arapaho, and most other prairie tribes
it is called the spirit or ghost dance (Sioux, Wanaghi wachipi; Arapaho,
Thigunawat),
from the fact that everything connected with it relates to
the coming of the spirits of the dead from the spirit world, and by this
name it has become known among the whites.42
One of the distinctive common features, as seen in this description, was

the holding of hands.43 This characteristic was symbolically linked to the
inter-tribal nature of the ritual. Like the Sun Dance, which was useful
in reuniting the tribe and in joining with other friendly tribes, the Ghost
Dance ceremony convened members of different tribes.44 The holding of
hands could be seen as a reaching out not only to ones immediate neighbor
in the dance but to all Indian peoples.45 Thus the Ghost Dance of 1890 was
an inter-tribal event as well as an inter-tribal phenomenon.
Religious elements in Lakota belief traditionally functioned simultaneously on multiple levels: physical, symbolic and cosmological. The Sun
Dance incorporated a myriad of physical and ritual details that interlocked
to tie the human participants firmly to the event at countless junctures, and
on symbolic and cosmological levels. Black Elk explained that in constructing the Sun Dance lodge, we are really making the universe in a likeness,
as in the sweat lodge and bowl of the sacred pipe.46 The pole of the sacred
tree in the center of the dance ground connected the center of the sacred
hoop where pledgers take upon ourselves much of the suffering of our
people to the prayers borne to Wakan Tanka by the smoke of the sacred
pipe. As Bruce Lincoln observed, In its pattern of spatial organization,
and in the underlying intent that finds expression in this pattern, the Sun
Dance thus closely resembles the smoking of the sacred pipe, which also
formed a crucial part of the ceremony.47
Like the Sun Dance, the physical configuration of the Ghost Dance was
symbolically significant for the Lakota. The circle represented the sacred
hoop of the nation and had echoes in various ceremonies and natural forms.
According to Clifford Geertz,
Again and again the idea of a sacred circle, a natural form with a moral
import, yields, when applied to the world within which the Oglala lives,
new meanings; continually it connects together elements within their experience which would otherwise seem wholly disparate and, wholly disparate, incomprehensible. The common roundness of a human body and
plant stem, of a moon and a shield, of a tipi and a camp-circle, give them
vaguely conceived but intensely felt significance. And this meaningful
common element, once abstracted, can then be employed for ritual purposes as when in a peace ceremony the pipe, the symbol of social solidarity, moves deliberately in a perfect circle from one smoker to the next, the
purity of the form evoking the beneficence of the spirits or to construe
mythologically the peculiar paradoxes and anomalies of moral experience,
as when one sees in a round stone the shaping power of good over evil.48
Many of the songs of the Ghost Dance (especially among the Lakota)
were also ideologically significant, evoking, as they did, a sense of spiritual rebirth to a threatened Indian identity. Mooney recorded hundreds of
Ghost Dance songs amongst the various tribes.49 The Lakota songs often
contained an empowering message to replace the despair and loss of power
that the Indians had experienced. One of the songs, which provides a specific image of the reconfiguration of the nation, was translated for Mooney
as follows:
The whole world is coming,

A nation is coming, a nation is coming,
The Eagle has brought the message to the tribe.
The father says so, the father says so.
Over the whole earth they are coming.
The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming,
The Crow has brought the message to the tribe,
The father says so, the father says so.50
Other songs equally comforted the performers with an empowering sense

of nation building, such as:
I love my children Yeye!
I love my children Yeye!
You shall grow to be a nation Yeye!
You shall grow to be a nation Yeye!
Says the father, says the father.
Hayeye Eyayoyo! Hayeye Eyayoyo! 51
In addition to nation building, certain songs reasserted a claim to the land

and its resources (in contradiction to the US government laws of private
property):
This is to be my work Yo yoyo!
This is to be my work Yo yoyo !
All that grows upon the earth is mine Yo yoyo !
All that grows upon the earth is mine Yo yoyo !
Says the father Yo yoyo !
Says the father Yo yoyo !
Eya Yo yoyo !
Eya Yo yoyo !52
The Ghost Dance face-painting and regalia also provided a sense of

empowerment, especially among the Lakota.53 The Lakota sometimes used
red ochre paint that was issued by Wovoka and said to have special sacred
properties. According to Mooney, the painting included numerous designs,
each design being an inspiration from a trance vision. Usually the dancer
adopts the particular style of painting which, while in the trance, he has
seen worn by some departed relative. If he has not yet been in a trance, the
design is suggested by a vision of one who does the painting.54
The Ghost Dance shirts and dresses likewise contained important images and messages for their wearers. While maintaining certain common
features, they differed in design from one tribe to another. According to

Mooney,
Although the shape, fringing, and feather adornment were practically
the same in every case, considerable variation existed in regard to the
painting, the designs on some being very simple, while the others were
fairly covered with representations of sun, moon, stars, the sacred things
of their mythology, and the visions of the trance. The feathers attached
to the garment were always those of the eagle, and the thread used in the
sewing was always the old-time sinew. In some cases the fringe or other
portions were painted with the sacred red paint of the messiah.55
The Lakota were careful not to carry implements of the white men with
them when they danced, presumably as a signal that they were abandoning
the white mans ways.56 Furthermore, amongst the Lakota, the Ghost Dance
regalia were said to have special powers. George Sword, an Oglala Lakota
who served with the Indian police and became a judge of the Indian court,
described the appearance and function of the Lakota regalia as follows:
All the men and women made holy shirts and dresses they wear in
dance . . . They paint the white muslins they made holy shirts and dresses
out of with blue across the back, and alongside of this is a line of yellow
paint. They also paint in the front part of the shirts and dresses. A picture of an eagle is made on the back of all the shirts and dresses. On the
shoulders and on the sleeves they tied eagle feathers. They said that the
bullets will not go through these shirts and dresses, so they all have these
dresses for war.57
Whether the Indians were preparing to go to war or whether they saw

the shirts as protection in case the military tried to interfere with their
performance of the Ghost Dance is unclear. The invulnerability provided
by the ghost shirt appears in numerous accounts relating to the Lakota.
According to Mooney,
When one of the women shot in the Wounded Knee massacre was approached as she lay in the church and told that she must let them remove
her ghost shirt in order the better to get at her wound, she replied; Yes;
take it off. They told me a bullet would not go through. Now I dont want
it any more.58
At what point these extra powers became associated with the Ghost
Dance shirts, however, is somewhat open to conjecture. Mooney suggests
that it was the Lakota who added the notion that they would stop bullets and
would prevent the Indians from being harmed by the white man. Perhaps
the Lakota Indians added this additional feature because they felt that the
dance performed by other tribes was too passive.59
Other important empowering features of the ritual were the trance and
vision. Those who fainted or fell into a trance reported on the visions that
they achieved in that state. Their visions were important elements in the
success of the dance and, as previously mentioned, became part of their face
painting and their songs in subsequent performances of the ritual. Mooney
indicated that the apostles of the religion were often factors in inducing the
trance. According to him, an Arapaho religious figure named Sitting Bull
induced the first trances amongst the southern tribes. At the great Ghost
Dance in September 1890, Sitting Bull announced after two or three nights
of dancing that he would perform a great wonder in the sight of all the
people. Mooney recorded that on the following night, after some hours of
dancing,
Sitting Bull stepped into the circle, and going up close in front of a young
Arapaho woman, he began to make hypnotic passes before her face with
the eagle feather. In a few seconds she became rigid and then fell to the
ground unconscious. Sitting Bull then turned his attention to another
and another, and the same thing happened to each in turn until nearly a
hundred were stretched out on the ground at once. As usual in the trances
some lay thus for a long time, and others recovered sooner, but none were
disturbed, as Sitting Bull told the dancers that these were now beholding
happy visions of the spirit world. When next they came together those
who had been in the trance related their experiences in the other world,
how they had met and talked with their departed friends and joined
in their oldtime amusements. Many of them embodied their visions in
songs, which were sung that night and afterwards in the dance, and from
that time the Ghost Dance was naturalized in the south and developed
rapidly along new lines. Each succeeding dance resulted in other visions
and new songs, and from time to time other hypnotists arose, until almost
every camp had its own.60
The trance and the associated vision seem to have been a crucial factor in
convincing the participants and observers of the authenticity of the religious
message. The dancers were looking for a sign that a better life was coming.
For example, Black Elk recalled in his first experience of the Ghost Dance,
As we started to dance again, some of the people would be laughing. And
some would be crying. Some of them would lie down for a vision and we
just kept on dancing. I could see more of them staggering around panting
and then they would fall down for visions. The People were crying for the
old ways of living and that their religion would be with them again.61
Arguably, they were looking for knowledge and power, the kind of power
that in 1890 could help their people out of their predicament, and bring about
a more viable lifestyle. Beard, for example, described his disappointment
when this search proved fruitless for him and his family:
When we danced some Indians acted as if they died and some acted as
if they were holy. When they did this they told that they saw mysterious
things and some said they saw the Savior of the Indians and that he
promised them to come and bring the good old times again. But I observed
that it was bad Indians and Indians that no one used to pay any attention
[to] and the medicine men who saw these things.
The spirit would not come to me nor to my father nor to my brothers
and my father said, My sons, I hear that they dance the ghost dance
better away from here. We will go to the camps of the Indians on
the Cheyenne [River] Agency and we may see the Holy One there.
Kicking Bear also went with us, and my father and all his sons went
to the camp of Big Foot who was on the Cheyenne [River] Reservation.
The Indians were dancing the ghost dance there every day, but it was
the same, and nothing mysterious [wakan] would come to any of my
fathers family.62
The religious leader or hypnotist, who (like a priest at the oracle of

Delphi) sometimes acted as an interpreter or intermediary for the dancers
vision, held an important position in the ceremony and on the development
of the dogma associated with it. The apostles or religious leaders could have
a major influence on the ritual as it was being conducted. There is abundant
evidence that Wovoka and his apostles were not merely passive observers of
those entranced. They appear to have used various devices to increase their
own credibility and the credibility of the religious message, and they often
acted as interlocutors for those in trances.
Furthermore, they could amplify or change the doctrine as a result of their
own personal reflection or vision. Short Bull (who had received the wisdom
directly from a trip to Wovoka) indicated that, because of local conditions,
he would revise some of the divine message. In his sermon, he announced
that the millennium would arrive earlier than previously prophesied. I have
told you that this would come to pass in two seasons, but since the whites
are interfering so much, I will advance the time from what my father above
told me to do, so the time will be shorter.63
Sitting Bull, the Lakota warrior who had fought at the Battle of Little
Bighorn, seems to have used his role as religious leader and as interpreter
of Ghost Dance visions as an effective means of retaining his authority
over a disintegrating tribe. In the 1860s, Sitting Bull had fought with Red
Cloud against white incursions. Following the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868,
Red Cloud accepted reservation life while Sitting Bull and others continued
to resist it. The dissident Indians decided to suspend their custom of the
autonomy of individual bands and choose a leader who would organize their
fight against the whites. In 1869 Sitting Bull was elected war chief, leader of
the entire Sioux nation.64 According to Robert Utley, To him more than
any other falls the distinction of holding together the coalition of tribes
that stood firm against the United States for seven years.65 Following his
defeat of Custer in 1876, Sitting Bull fled to Canada. He surrendered in
1881 and was imprisoned and later released. Despite performing in Buffalo
Bills Wild West show during the 1880s, Sitting Bull continued to maintain
a hostile attitude towards the US government and to oppose the policy
of assimilation, especially after the splitting up of the Sioux reservation in
1889. By the summer of 1890, Sitting Bull was looking for an opportunity
to fight back and seems to have seized on the Ghost Dance as a vehicle.
In October he invited Kicking Bear to his camp to introduce the Ghost
Dance. According to Mooney,
While the dance was being organized at his camp, Sitting Bull had deliberately broken the pipe of peace which he had kept in his house since
his surrender in 1881, and when asked why he had broken it, replied that
he wanted to die and wanted to fight.66
Although he initially reserved judgement about the Ghost Dance religion, Sitting Bull began to take an important role in the ritual and to
agitate against the US government. The Mandan Pioneer of Mandan,
North Dakota reported at the end of October that during the previous four
weeks Sitting Bull has been inciting the Sioux Indians . . . to an uprising.67
McLaughlin, the government agent, believed that Sitting Bull was misleading his people by encouraging them to engage in the ritual day after day. He
also did not approve of the manner in which Sitting Bull used his position
as a religious leader to interpret the visions of those who fell into trances.
In his autobiography, McLaughlin, who needed to justify his later actions,
presented a very unsympathetic portrait68 of Sitting Bull interpreting the
vision of a woman who had collapsed during the Ghost Dance.
The woman, still in a swoon, was laid at Sitting Bulls feet, and Bull Ghost
announced in a loud voice that she was in a trance and communicating
with the ghosts, upon which announcement the dance ceased, so that
the dancers might hear the message from the spirit world. Sitting Bull
performed certain incantations, then leaned over and put his ear to the
womans lips. He spoke in a low voice to his herald, Bull Ghost, who
repeated to the listening multitude the message which Sitting Bull pretended to receive from the unconscious woman. Sitting Bull had all the
tricks of the fake spiritualist. Knowing his people intimately, he knew all
about the dead relatives of the woman who had fainted, and he made a
tremendous impression on his audience by giving them personal messages
from the Indian ghosts, who announced with great unanimity that they
were marching east to join their living kinsmen the following spring.69
According to McLaughlin, this activity by Sitting Bull in front of some 100

Indian dancers and 200 observers clearly enhanced his stature by demonstrating his access to the spirit world.70 It could be argued that it also allowed
him to formulate prophecies that were politically useful to him. Moreover,
Sitting Bull was not only using the Ghost Dance to empower himself but
also to empower his whole band by enabling them to achieve the kind of
spiritual power that Indians had experienced by piercing their bodies and
appealing to Wakan Tanka in the Sun Dance.
To the government agent, it seemed possible that Sitting Bull was using
the Ghost Dance to prepare his band for a major act of rebellion. When
McLaughlin urged him to stop the Ghost dancing, Sitting Bull refused
and prepared to leave the reservation with his band to join other dissident
Lakota who had left their reservations.71 McLaughlin ordered his arrest,
and, in the struggle while resisting arrest, Sitting Bull was killed. Whether
Sitting Bull was actually intending to mount an armed uprising or whether
he was simply exploiting a new means to resist assimilation is debatable.72
In any case, Sitting Bull had consistently remained opposed to white rule
and had used the Ghost Dance to reassert Indian independence. Shortly
afterwards, the military engaged in the massacre of Big Foots band of
Minneconjou Lakota at Wounded Knee. With Sitting Bulls death and the
massacre at Wounded Knee, the resistance by the Lakota lost focus.73 In
the 1960s, with the growth of the Red Power movement (see chapter 5), the
Lakota once again took concerted action against the US government and
in 1973 at the second battle of Wounded Knee performed the Ghost Dance
in an effort once again to liberate their land.
Summary
The US government had reversed its policy of regarding Indian tribes as
separate and sovereign nations, and by the 1880s it was acting like an imperial
power, forcing the aborigine population to submit to its method of colonial
control. The Ghost Dance was a new Indian ritual that functioned on many
levels but fundamentally served as a vehicle by which Indians could resist
white cultural imperialism and perpetuate a Native American lifestyle. The
religious leaders of numerous tribes adapted the religion and the religious
ritual to their individual needs and cultures. Just as the Sun Dance did among
Plains Indians before and during reservation life (until it was banned by the
US government) and as powwows continue to do today, the Ghost Dance
brought disparate Indian people together to revive their cultures, strengthen
their notion of identity and increase their collective sense of self-importance.
As the government agent at Rosebud summed up, the Ghost Dance had the
effect of binding [the Indians] to the customs of their ancestors from which
the government was spending large sums of money to wean them away.74
The performance history of the Ghost Dance indicates that it originated
in the far west and moved eastward. Its specific features among the Lakota
emanated from their social and religious beliefs, and the social and political
context in which the dance was performed. The lifestyle and the very existence of the Lakota were threatened by the easterners moving westward,
taking their land, criminalizing aspects of their culture and over-hunting
the wild game on which they depended for their sustenance and clothing.
Furthermore, the US governments decision to divide the Sioux reservation
and to encourage the Lakota to abandon their band-level organization and
adopt the lifestyle of individual farming families smacked of the British
colonial policy of divide and rule. The Ghost Dance was a performative
response to reconfigure their increasingly endangered position in American
society and reassert their identity.
Some bands of the Lakota, who had resisted white domination during the
1860s and 1870s, adapted the dogma, the regalia and the songs in such a way
as to make them more aggressive than other tribes. The nation-building
lyrics of their songs, the invulnerability of their shirts, the doctrine that
the whites would disappear, and the disregard of their religious leaders for
the authority of government agents all worried the US government. The
performance of the Ghost Dance implied a dangerous step by the Indians
towards trying to regain their independence and their sovereignty over their
former lands.
Although the Ghost Dance was a religious ritual, it was also a political
performance, especially for the Lakota. The ideology that permeated the
ceremony called for a new nation to be created, a nation that would bring
back the buffalo, that would reunite the Indians, and that would make the
whites disappear. Religious leaders such as Sitting Bull used the occasion to
foment a rebellious spirit. As in political theatre, the activities of the Ghost
Dance were designed to confirm the faith of the believers and to convert
the non-believers.75 Like Mercy Otis Warrens plays, which urged American
patriots to rebel against British colonial authority in the eighteenth century,
the Ghost Dance encouraged Indian patriots to resist assimilation and assert
their right to their own independence.

The role of workers in the nation
The Paterson Strike Pageant
uring the second half of the nineteenth century,

the industrial revolution spread across the United States, introducing
mechanized farming and mining, huge industries and the transcontinental railroad. Immigration increased dramatically, not only from northern
Europe but also from southern Europe and Asia (until checked by the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882). Thirty-five million people immigrated
into the United States from 1815 to 1920, and at the end of the nineteenth century gravitated to the cities in such numbers that overcrowding
and unhealthy living conditions resulted. Jobs in industry frequently involved repetitive tasks and, particularly with the coming of the assembly
line and the waning of craft industries, little sense of personal achievement.
Laborers complained of low wages, long hours and poor conditions, but the
ready supply of immigrant labor could be exploited to replace those who
were dissatisfied. The giants of industry and banking such as Rockefeller,
Morgan, Harriman, Gould, Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Ford acquired unprecedented wealth while workers often suffered in poverty. Labor unions,
such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL) which concentrated on
skilled workers within specific crafts, formed to demand shorter working
days, decent conditions and an adequate wage. Strikes became frequent and
industrialists resorted to scab labor and police intimidation to break them.
Disputes often led to bloody battles such as the Carnegie steel plant strike in
Homestead, Pennsylvania (1892) and the Pullman strike in Chicago (1894).
Some political leaders representing the workers such as Eugene Debs advocated socialism as the answer to the excesses of capitalism and in 1911
seventy-three socialist mayors were elected.1 From 1905, the militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organized workers throughout the
country regardless of craft, level of skill, ethnicity or gender, and became involved in major confrontations at Lawrence, Massachusetts (1912), Paterson,
THE ROLE OF WORKERS IN THE NATION
New Jersey (1913) and Ludlow, Colorado (1914), until the government jailed
many of their leaders amidst the patriotic fervor of the First World War and
its aftermath. Because of the threat of socialism and working-class revolt,
progressive legislation was introduced under Presidents Roosevelt, Taft and
Wilson to curb some of the excesses of capitalism.2
Concurrent with the clash between capitalism and socialism, and between the rich employers and the poor white, African American and immigrant laborers of diverse religions and cultures, the Chautauqua movement
helped reify the image of America as homogenous. The Chautauquas were
annual cultural events that dated from the late nineteenth century and occurred in thousands of small towns and villages across the United States.
From the early twentieth century, national touring organizations sent out
packages of events lasting from three to seven days, consisting of public
speeches, musical numbers, plays and other items. With an estimated annual
attendance of almost thirty million people at its peak in 1924, the Chautauqua
circuit was a hugely profitable enterprise for the organizers. However, the
shows were sold to the communities as morally uplifting events rather than
as commercial entertainment. While professing such foundational ideas
as freedom of religion and equality, the dominant values expressed in the
Chautauquas were Protestant and capitalist.3 A standard feature was the
Acres of Diamonds speech by Russell Conwell that extolled the opportunities in America for people with initiative like Rockefeller, Carnegie and
Astor, and assured the audience that the independent hard-working (white)
American could be rewarded financially through his diligent efforts.4 A
businessman turned Baptist minister, Conwell delivered this speech more
than six thousand times in forty years, promoting a national stereotype
reminiscent of the independent and individually resourceful pioneer and
frontiersman. Israel Zangwills The Melting Pot (1908), which introduced
the description of America as a melting pot, became a popular play on
the Chautauqua circuit from 1914 and supported the dominant ideology by
showing that European immigrants could be assimilated in America if they
denied their former values, adopted American ways and melted into the
dominant culture.5
Like the Chautauquas and Zangwills The Melting Pot, patriotic pageants
became a popular form for promoting the assimilation of the immigrant into
American society. Percy MacKayes 1915 pageant for the naturalization of
citizens ended with a stirring proclamation about the joys of labor during
which a symbolic figure of Liberty unfurled the American flag above the
nationalized immigrants heads.6 Although there were occasional pageants
that advocated a political program, such as the suffragette pageant The

Allegory in Washington in March 1913 (see chapter 6), and William Du
Boiss The Star of Ethiopia about African American history in October of the
same year,7 most pageants conformed to a particular pattern. Esther Willard
Bates proclaimed in her 1912 instructive Pageants and Pageantry, American
pageantry will be so ordered as to possess a constructive influence on the
people . . . The spectacle will stimulate pride in town, state and nation . . .
there will be a definite educational aim to make real the great deeds of the
fathers and to quicken the aspirations of the sons for right living and for
devotion to country.8
Contrasting with rural Chautauqua events and the historical pageants of
the early twentieth century, American drama and theatrical productions
increasingly responded to the agitation for improved working and living
conditions, and following the crash of the stock market in 1929, featured
the plight of the industrial and farming worker as a major theme on the
stage. Rather than glorifying the American dream of the (usually male) individual attaining success on his own, many of the plays of the depression
era represented the nation as consisting of working people uniting with one
another to overcome the oppressive conditions created by the capitalist system. One of the best known examples was the 1935 performance of Waiting
for Lefty by Clifford Odets that advocated strike action in a fictionalized
version of a 1934 New York taxi dispute, of which Harold Clurman wrote:
It was the birth cry of the thirties. Our youth had found its voice. It was
a call to join the good fight for a greater measure of life in a world free
of economic fear, falsehood, and craven servitude to stupidity and greed.
Strike! was Leftys message, not alone for a few extra pennies of wages
or for shorter hours of work, strike for greater dignity, strike for a bolder
humanity, strike for the full stature of man.9
Likewise Black Pit (1935) by Albert Maltz, which was set in the coal mines
of Appalachia, portrayed the struggle of immigrant coal miners attempting
to improve their working conditions. Stevedore (1934) by Paul Peters and
George Sklar created controversy and encountered censorship problems by
advocating multi-ethnic class solidarity despite the racial antagonisms of the
south. It depicted an African American longshoreman who tries to start a
union and is wrongly accused of raping a white woman. After being pursued
by a white lynch mob into the African American ghetto, he is helped by a
white union organizer who calls out the white union members to join forces
with the African American longshoremen. Similarly, Langston Hughess
popular play Dont You Want to be Free? (1937), a montage of Hughess

poetry and African American history, also promoted interracial workers
solidarity.10
This chapter focuses on a seminal event that heralded the power of theatre to promote the cause of workers democracy in America: the Paterson
Strike Pageant of 7 June 1913. For the purposes of analyzing the startling
impact of this event, it is useful to contrast it with a more normative pageant
that occurred on the same day at the Henry Street Settlement in New York.
Both pageants reflected social history, but one idealized American civic life
while the other portrayed an urban battleground. The New York Tribune
carried photos and commentaries of each event on the following day. In
the Henry Street Settlement pageant photo, with a caption announcing,
Campfire of early colonial days, actors were shown dressed in Indian and
settler costumes, and smoking peace pipes, while the photo of the Paterson
Strike Pageant depicted a funeral scene with the caption, Strikers portraying funeral of man killed by policemans bullet during riot.11 The Tribune
report on the Henry Street event listed the moments in the history of
Manhattan covered by the pageant, all of which were designed as positive
and uplifting. In the first episode (which was photographed in the newspaper), Indians welcomed the paleface strangers with gifts of wampum and
skins. They received in return bright colored trinkets and strange garments
from over the seas. The peace pipe went around and the hatchet was buried.
Then, with a grave farewell, the chief left the Dutchmen in possession of
the island of Manhattan. The next episode depicted the merry gambols
of a Dutch strawberry picnic . . . [with] a bevy of comely maidens, tripping
in to bleach their linen. It ended with a series of dances and songs of
various countries, reflecting the cosmopolitan peoples who make up the
present population of the great East Side.12 Confrontational topics such
as Indian/settler rivalry, the War of Independence, the Civil War, ethnic
conflict, or housing and labor problems, were significantly absent. By contrast with the headlines Henry Street Again Gay With Pageant for the
normative event, the Tribunes headlines for the iconoclastic performance
were in sharp contrast: Paterson Silk Workers Portray Episodes of Fifteen
Weeks Labor War. The headlines emphasized that the Paterson pageant
was not depicting peaceful unity but strife, and not over a dispute with a
foreign enemy but with the internal oppressive force of the capitalist system.
An editorial in the New York Times on 9 June 1913 that compared the
two events welcomed the message of national unity projected by the Henry
Street pageant, by contrast with the class warfare theme of the Paterson
pageant. It juxtaposed the uplifting Henry Street spectacle in which no

discordant note was sounded, and the joy of living, of doing something
worth doing, inspired the throng, with the sordid and cruel incidents of
the Paterson Strike Pageant. The Times found the nationalist spirit gratifying: Such neighborhood pageants as this . . . exert a wholesome and a
permanent influence on our municipal life. In this case the good work of
Miss Wald and her Settlement House in uplifting and developing in body
and mind the poor of the district, which was once the centre of Manhattans
fashionable life. The Henry Street pageant celebrated unity, and fostered
the Cinderella myth of rags to riches for the immigrants. It was harmonious and full of nationalistic folklore: Their own costumes from correct
models, and music, illuminations, and richly blended colors enhanced the
charm of the spectacle. Lauding the underlying rhetoric of the superiority of American values expressed in the pageant, the Times patronizingly
described the recent arrivals to the US as Russian immigrants and their
children, who have profited by the educational advantages offered to them,
have acquired knowledge of the history of this country and the meaning of
its institutions, and are [on] the way to overcome the obstacles of poverty
and become good and thrifty citizens. By contrast the editorial impugned
the motives of the IWW whom it said, had no more sympathy with laborers
than they have with Judges and Government officers and concluded, In the
Henry Street celebration the motive was to exalt progress, intellectual development, and the triumph of civilization. In the other the motive was to
inspire hatred, to induce violence which may lead to the tearing down of
the civil state and the institution of anarchy.13
The preparation of the Paterson Strike Pageant

The Paterson silk workers strike, which sought shorter working hours and
higher pay,14 was organized under the banner of the IWW. After dragging
on for several months in Paterson, New Jersey, during which two workers
had been killed and almost 1,500 workers and supporters had been arrested,
Bill Haywood, one of the IWW leaders, met with radical intellectuals in
New York to discuss possible tactics. He expressed concern that assistance
from New York workers was vital for the success of the strike, but that
the strike was being ignored by the press because of threats of reduced
advertising from the manufacturers. In her memoirs, Mabel Dodge, a rich
New Yorker, recounts her suggestion to Haywood at the meeting, Why
dont you hire a great hall and re-enact the strike over here? Show the whole
thing: the closed mills, the gunmen, the murder of the striker, the funeral.
And have the strike leaders make their speeches at the grave as you did in
Paterson.15 Although Dodge had no practical experience of this kind of
event, she was actively involved in promoting avant-garde artistic work and
had spent several hours with the theatre designer Gordon Craig a few years
earlier discussing the possibility of staging a pageant in Florence, with no
audience and with the inhabitants playing themselves in a former time.16
According to Dodges memoirs, John Reed immediately jumped to the idea:
Well make a Pageant of the Strike! The first in the World!17 Reed was
a left-wing journalist, who had recently graduated from Harvard and also
possessed little theatrical experience. Arrested while reporting on the strike,
he later explained its radicalizing effect on him: That strike brought home
to me hard the knowledge that the manufacturers get all they can out of
labor, pay as little as they must, and permit the existence of great masses
of the miserable unemployed in order to keep wages down; that the forces
of the State are on the side of property against the propertyless.18 (Reed
witnessed the Russian Revolution in 1917, publishing his account as Ten
Days that Shook the World, and helped found the American Communist
Party in 1919.)
After Haywood gained the agreement of the strike committee to the
idea, Reed engaged Robert Edmond Jones, his classmate from Harvard, to
design the set. Jones, a budding set designer who would introduce the staging
ideas of Craig and Appia to America in the 1915 performance of The Man
Who Married a Dumb Wife,19 conveyed early indications of an innovative
style in the pageant. Jones opted for what Dodge called a Gordon Craig
approach to the staging, erecting a massive bare stage with a huge (200 feet
[60 meters] wide) painted backdrop depicting life-sized textile mills with
a large doorway in the middle of the central mill. According to the New
York Times, the scenery, which cost $ 1,200 . . . showed a dozen Paterson
silk mills, one big one taking up all the canvas on the Fourth Avenue side of
the Garden. The other mills, all smaller ones, formed the wings.20 He also
designed a ramp down from the front of the stage into the center aisle of the
auditorium so that the aisle could be used as a street which would bring the
actors and spectators in closer proximity to one another.21 Reed rehearsed
the strikers for three weeks in scenes that recreated moments that they had
experienced in real life. As a former cheerleader at Harvard football games,
he also added some idiosyncratic touches such as a strike song to the tune
of Harvard, Old Harvard.22 Mabel Dodge enthused, Imagine suddenly
teaching [over 1,000] people of various nationalities how to present their
case in a huge, graphic orderly art form! Imagine planning an event to

fill Madison Square Garden, a whole city block, where we were used to
going to see Barnum and Baileys Circus, with three rings and two bands
going at once, and have it audible, visible, and composed enough to be
convincing!23
One of the most significant aspects of the Paterson Strike Pageant was
the expression not just of the ideas of the Greenwich Village intellectuals about the working class but also of the strikers own ideas, voices and
experiences. Rather than preparing the scenario in advance and imposing
it on the strikers, Reed developed it with Haywood and the strikers, and
shared some of the responsibility for directing with Haywood and Hannah
Silverman, a seventeen-year-old Paterson textile worker who became one of
the more militant agitators.24 Both local and national strike leaders delivered
their own speeches in the pageant, and the strikers composed some of the
songs that they sang.25 Moreover, Reed utilized their individual experiences
rather than creating an undifferentiated mass action. In rehearsal he asked
volunteers to try out a scene such as going to work and then asked for comments from others who disagreed with the performance. He then asked for
new volunteers to show how it should be done until they were all satisfied.
According to Edward Hunt, a classmate from Harvard who assisted Reed,
The strikers were actors, managers, critics, and public thrown into one.
And they took to their roles like birds to the air.26 Bill Haywood, for example, recalled the differentiation of the actions such that in the first scene
the workers appeared in groups, singly and by twos an occasional one
glancing at a newspaper, another humming a song, some talking, all with
small baskets, buckets or packages of lunch in their hands or under their
arms.27 Commenting on the individuation that was evident in the production and in the faces and bodies of the actual strikers themselves, Bernadine
Kielty Scherman later wrote, No one who saw the Paterson strike pageant
was likely ever again to think of the working class as an indefinable mass.
It was the tragedies of individuals that were enacted before our eyes.28
Nevertheless, the direction of mass actions, and particularly mass verbal
abuse was a conspicuous dimension of the rehearsal process. The Globe and
Commercial Advertiser reported,
In Haledon the 800 women and children are being taught their parts in the
great pageant. All of them have at least one speaking line, and they have
had splendid opportunities for practising this during the past few weeks.
It consists of the one word Boo! Boo! is the battlecry of the strikers.
Paterson has rung with it these last few months. Strikebreakers ears have
been deafened by the low, mournful (mournful or vindictive, according to

the pathos or triumph of the moment) word, hissed or shouted at them
as they have passed between double lines of bluecoats to work the looms
left idle by the strikers. More meaning, more expression, say the strike
leaders, can be put into Boo! by the wives and little children of idle
workers than is possible in other words.29
John Reed sought to re-enact in the pageant the strikes grassroots expression of the need for social change. In his view the hero of the piece was
not an individual leader but the whole workforce.30 When Haywood announced the pageant and introduced Reed at a mass meeting, Reed told the
audience, Every man or woman who has been arrested is a hero, and he or
she will be mentioned as such. This is the first labor war in the country . . .
and the capitalists are beginning to know that fact.31
The staging of the pageant

On 7 June 1913, over 1,000 workers from the strike traveled from Paterson,
New Jersey in a specially hired train and marched up Fifth Avenue to
Madison Square Garden where they acted mass scenes on the huge stage
in front of the sell-out crowd of an estimated 15,000 spectators. The first of
six episodes started with the lights in the auditorium going out and the
lights coming on the bare stage indicating early morning. The strikers band
began playing, the whistles in the mills called the workers to their jobs and
1,000 people entered from the wings and down the aisles. According to the
Times, They walked as if they were ill fed. Some were reading newspapers
and the pantomime showed that all were talking strike. The Tribune described the laborers as trooping sadly and reluctantly to . . . work. After
they disappeared into the mill, according to Bill Haywood, The thump,
chug, rattle and buzz of machinery was heard. Then the wide aisle the
street was deserted. All were at work. Two hours were supposed to elapse,
when voices inside the mill were heard shouting Strike! Strike! The workers came rushing out pell-mell, laughing, shouting, jostling each other.32
As the lights brightened to indicate morning (and symbolically the dawning of a new age), The stage was crowded by a mob of excited men and
women, all shouting the news that the big silk-mill strike had started. As
a climax the band struck up the Marseillaise, and the strikers both on and
off the stage joined in the singing. The workers, Shouting and dancing
with the intoxication of freedom,33 came down the front of the stage and
into the main aisle of the auditorium. As the scene ended, the strikers,
still singing the Marseillaise, were seen marching away from the mills.34 In
the next scene the set appeared the same except the lights had gone out in
the mills. Haywood described the mills as ominously silent. No lights, not
a sound. They stood like monstrous specters.35 The workers appeared on
picket duty, singing their strike songs, and an exuberant Italian strummed
his guitar. According to the New York Times report,
The strikers were marching up and down in front of the mills by twos and
threes, their eyes searching the crowds that passed for a possible worker
who was not of the IWW and who might want to stay at work. Such a
person finally appeared. He was under police escort and was on his way
hoping to earn a days pay. He was booed all the way across the stage,
but the police managed to get him into the mill. Then the strike actors
turned to the police and unmercifully booed the Captain in charge
and the men under his command. The police those in the show got
angry, and charged the crowd, beating men and women with their clubs,
and when it was all over forty strikers [including Hannah Silverman]
were under arrest. The prisoners were marched to the Paterson Police
Headquarters, the strikers following, a thousand strong, cheering the
prisoners and booing the police at every step.36
Haywood, remembering a moment in this scene that the New York

Times surprisingly omitted from their report, wrote that, Shots rang out.
A Striker fell. The police had killed one. Another limped out of the crowd
wounded. The dead man was carried away.37 The shooting was of Valentino
Modestino, an innocent bystander. (The program clarified that Modestino
was not a striker or a silk-mill worker and was shot by detectives hired by
the manufacturers while stand[ing] on the porch of his house with one of
his children in his arms.38 ) The next scene re-enacted Modestinos funeral.
Several newspapers considered this to be the most impressive scene.39 With
bowed heads, the strikers in funeral procession to the strains of the Dead
March,40 followed the coffin covered with the red emblem of the IWW and
carried by six men up the central aisle and onto the stage.41 Re-enacting a
theatrical moment in Modestinos actual funeral, the coffin was then opened,
and the mourners filing past on either side, placed red carnations or ribbons and twigs of evergreen on the coffin, until it was buried (in the words
of the program) beneath the crimson symbol of the workers blood.42
While the actors on stage gathered around the coffin facing the audience,
Tresca (speaking in Italian) and Haywood then repeated their actual funeral
orations. Tresca, according to the Tribune, outdid Marc Antonys funeral
oration, with a repetition of his own famous Blood for Blood speech that
got him into jail in Paterson when he delivered the original.43 Haywood
told the audience that Modestino had been killed by the bullet of a hireling
of the capitalists,44 and pledged the IWW to care forever for Modestinos
widow and child.45 The speakers also call[ed] upon those present to remember the incident and for the sake of Modestino to stay out and fight until
the bosses yield.46 Afterwards the funeral procession formed again and
carried the coffin off stage as the curtain fell.
The following scene depicted a mass rally at the nearby town of Haledon
(which allowed mass meetings because it had a Socialist Mayor who refused
to be intimidated by the Paterson mill-owners).47 The rally was introduced
by the strikers 26-piece brass band marching up the aisle and featured different groups singing in Italian, German and English.48 According to the
Press, the scene moved with unusual briskness because of the singing of
an Italian bard, Toto Ferrazzano, who gave his verses in Italian with the
choruses in English. The thousand strikers and as many more in the audience were carried away with the lilt of the song, that brought in inimical references to the mill-owners and praises for Haywood, Miss Flynn
and the other organizers. There were more than a half dozen encores for
Ferrazzanos effort.49 Strike leaders Lessig, Tresca, Flynn and Haywood
again gave speeches. At Haywoods request, the strikers voted to denounce
the convictions of their strike leader Patrick Quinlan and the journalist
Alexander Scott and also voted for the continuation of the strike, and the
scene ended with a chorus of strike songs.50 This rally was followed by a
May Day parade in Paterson which ended with an emotional scene in which
the children of the strikers were sent away to safety. Dressed in red sashes
or ties, the children were handed over by their parents to supporters from
other cities, despite the orders of the authorities,51 so that their parents
might go on and fight and starve and struggle unhampered by their little
ones.52 After the parents had given their children away with all the details
of farewell embraces and tears, and finally shouts of enthusiasm breaking
through the sadness of parting, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn made a consoling
speech to the weeping mothers, and roused their spirits once more to the
blind determination to fight on.53 She predicted that in their new homes
the children would have the roses put in their cheeks and class solidarity
in their hearts.54 Flynn, who played a large part in the scene, taking the
hundreds of boys and girls55 from their parents and delivering them to
strike mothers, remembered that the children were enthusiastic over the
adventure, the parents sad but resolute, willing to part with them because
they knew they would have loving care, food, clothes and security with their
adopted families.56 The children departed, singing the Red Flag.
The pageant concluded with the strikers marching down the aisle to a
final meeting in Paterson where Bill Haywood explained the goals of the
strike including the demand for an eight-hour working day. The strikers
swore to stay out on strike until the strike was won,57 and the strikers
(with the audience joining in) sang various songs including Viva Tresca,
Haywood and Flynn, The Internationale and the Marseillaise to the
bands accompaniment.
The rhetoric of the pageant

The Paterson pageant subverted the conservative pageant form for revolutionary purposes.58 By contrast with normal pageants emphasizing national
unity and instilling national pride, the Paterson pageant dramatized class
warfare. Comparing it to the normative pageant which was in its heyday,59
the Independent wrote: Pageant? Oh, yes, you say. A pretty thing antique
costumes and gay palfreys, a picturesque procession winding across a leafy
lawn, the most eligible young men and girls of the village presenting the
stirring scenes of their great-grandfathers days. But this was a pageant of a
different order. It was not pretty. There were no brilliant costumes . . . It was
not a pageant of the past; but of the present a new thing in our drama.60
Rose Pastor Stokes, previewing the show for the socialist paper New York
Call, wrote, Here, then, is a pageant, oh Daughters of the Revolution, that
will set forth in thrilling episodes, not the glory and courage, the aspirations
and struggles of a dead past . . . but a pageant that gives us history fresh from
the hands of its makers and more thrilling marvel still with the makers
themselves as the actors in the play. Hail the new pageantry! Hail the red
pageant the pageant with red blood in its veins.61
Class identity loomed much larger than national identity. Red flags and
emblems decorated the inside of the arena, and the American flag was
conspicuously absent.62 For example, the New York Times remarked that,
although There was not an American flag in the whole scheme of decoration, a scheme that covered every inch of the Garden except the floors
and the roof, there were red IWW emblems everywhere.63 The absence
of American flags partly reflected an earlier incident in the strike when the
manufacturers had, according to Haywood, attempted a patriotic stunt by
displaying the American flag prominently at all the mills and in the local
stores to show the strikers up as un-American. The strikers, who produced
flag cloth in the mills, reacted by organizing a parade in which every striker
and his family wore a flag under which was printed:
We weave the flag.
We live under the flag.
We die under the flag.
But damnd if well starve under the flag.64
The performers sang inspiring songs irrespective of national origin such as

the Marseillaise, the Red Flag (the Internationale) and Italian and German
songs, instead of the American national anthem in the show.65 In so doing
they indicated their adherence to a transnational rather than an assimilated
nationalist identity. The songs in various languages also reflected the multilingual group on stage. At a rehearsal, one reporter testified to the presence of
more than twenty nationalities.66 The program that was distributed to the
audience reinforced the message of class solidarity and class-consciousness:
The Pageant represents a battle between the working class and the capitalist class conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) . . . It
is a conflict between two social forces the force of labor and the force of
capital.67
The pageant tried to project an image of class solidarity in order to preserve the strikes strength in unity. One of the four scenes that was cut from
the pageant (ostensibly for financial reasons), would have undermined the
notion of class solidarity and may have been omitted partly to avoid revealing
the disharmony amongst the unions. In announcing the idea of the pageant
for the first time to the strikers, Bill Haywood described a proposed scene
which shows the meeting of the American Federation of Labor in Armory
Hall, and you greet the speakers with yells for the IWW. The Mayor is
there, the police, and soldiers with guns and bayonets. There are also the
manufacturers, and Mrs. Conboy and John Golden and John Matthews of
the AFL.68 This scene was to recreate a contentious moment in the strike
when the AFL called a meeting that was supported by the manufacturers in
order to try to settle the strike on a craft-by-craft basis and thereby undermine the influence of the IWWs plan for a global settlement. Strikers who
were members of the IWW attended the meeting in force and disrupted
it so that the AFL had to abandon their efforts. Haywood described the
actual meeting in an article in the International Socialist Review: where
John Golden and Sarah Conboy, of the American Federation of Labor, escorted by manufacturers and policemen, came to try to repeat the infamous
strikebreaking tactics they attempted a year ago in Lawrence. Haywood,
recounting the event, wrote that the AFL leaders, came heralded by the
local press, by the civil authorities, by the clergy, and the employers as the
instruments through which the great silk strike would be settled. The armory had been obtained for them through state officials. The state militia
had been called out and stood in the ante-rooms with guns loaded for action. Chief of Police Bimson and his entire force were on hand. The fire
department had been ordered to hold themselves in readiness and had their
hose attached to hydrants in the immediate vicinity. The IWW leaders
had arranged that the strikers would attend in a body and listen to what
the A.F. of L. had to say, providing that they would be given a chance to
reply to state the position of the strikers and the principles of the Industrial
Workers of the World. When the IWW organizers appeared, they were
given a thunderous reception and, after ascertaining that they would not
be allowed to speak, the crowd departed and a second crowd from outside
came in and filled the hall. This time the IWW sympathizers drowned
out the AFL speakers. For an hour and three-quarters Golden and
Mrs. Conboy tried to speak, only to be drowned down by the unceasing
cheers that the audience sent up for the IWW. In desperation Mrs. Conboy
tried the appeal-to-home-mother-and-patriotism stunt and seizing an
American flag, waved it from the stage, which act was greeted by another
outburst of derisive cheers. When Golden finally made himself heard about
300 persons stayed to listen, the hall having been cleared by police clubs.69
Clearly, if such a scene had been presented on stage, it would have given
a different complexion to the issue of workers solidarity and shown that
there was an ongoing dispute between the AFL and the IWW over the
tactics to win the strike.70
In addition to class and multi-ethnic solidarity, the pageant attested to
a sense of solidarity between different ages and genders. The New York
Tribune alluded to the age and gender differences of the workers as they
came sadly to work in the first scene men, women and children; some
mere tots, others decrepit old people71 which, in addition to signaling
the diversity of the workforce, displayed for the audience the child-labor
practices at the time. The status of women in the strike pageant was counternormative with the female strike organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the
leading agitator Hannah Silverman, a teenage Paterson textile worker who
had been arrested several times for picketing, playing important roles, and
with 500 other women on stage signaling their importance as wage earners.72
Unlike the prevailing American stereotype of the hard-working and prosperous white male English-speaking Protestant individualist as featured in
Chautauqua events, the immigrant workers in the strike pageant displayed

an alternative vision of America as a multi-ethnic and multilingual mass of
men, women and children cooperating to overcome oppressive conditions
of employment. The solidarity of different ethnic groups was an important
factor in sustaining the strike action and this aspect was clearly conveyed
in the pageant. The IWW tried to maintain a united front of all workers,
rather than allowing individual groups to settle separately with the management. The mill-owners on the other hand were constantly seeking ways
of dividing the workers, and, for example, exploiting ethnic divisions.73 By
contrast with the Paterson sheriff who described the foreigners a lower
order of animals, unfit for free speech,74 The Survey commented on the
absence of race prejudice in the strikers.75 In mass meetings, Bill Haywood
called on strikers of various nationalities to tell their stories. At a meeting
early in the strike, he encouraged speakers representing about twenty-five
different nationalities to address the crowd, reminding the audience, when
some of the speakers were less articulate than might have been hoped, that
the hardest workers are not the best talkers.76
After the pageant, the organizing committee, proudly attesting to its
value, boasted, No such spectacle, presenting in dramatic form the class
war in society, has ever been staged in America, and in its scope and the
number of its actors and spectators, it is like most other American achievements without parallel in the world.77 Hutchins Hapgood stressed that
the unprecedented effort of thousands of workers not only to realize their
creative liberty in industry, but also to get it over into drama . . . is a democratic act of almost unexampled interest . . . which inspires one with the
hope that a true, self-controlling, self-educating democracy is a possibility
on earth.78 The dream of democratic self-management of industry became an exciting prospect to the workers as well as a major threat to the
manufacturers.79 Flynn later summarized the strike effort: We have given
them a class feeling, a trust in themselves and a distrust for everybody else . . .
They have no more use for the state. To them the statue of liberty is personified by the policeman and his club.80
The pageant constructed the identities of the workers (regardless of age,
gender or ethnicity) as heroic and their employers and the police as the
enemy. Resisting the notion that working-class culture was inferior, the
pageant celebrated it in performance. Rather than staging patriotic values as
liberating, they staged them as imprisoning, and showed that overthrowing
the oppressive instruments of authority and power and conventional social
structure led to a spirit of liberation.
Fiction or reality
In some ways the pageant overlapped and extended the reality of the strike
rather than simply representing it. The rehearsals were conducted at locations where strike meetings also occurred, and, after rehearsing the songs
for the pageant, the strikers used the same songs in other meetings to reinforce the commitment to the strike. As the strike meetings were designed
partly to sustain morale, singing the songs were as much rehearsal for the
pageant as they were part of uplifting the spirits of the strikers, and in at
least one case the rehearsal occurred in the middle of a strike meeting.81
According to the press, the rehearsals of the picket scene sometimes took
place in front of the mills so it became difficult to distinguish between the
strikers who were picketing and those who were rehearsing as pickets.82 This
seems to have caused difficulties for the police who were used to arresting
pickets, but were not sure what to do about amateur actors rehearsing their
parts as pickets. When the police tried to move them on, Haywood told
them there is nothing in even the New Jersey law that prohibits rehearsals
of amateur presentations in the open.83 Moreover, a boy who was arrested
in Paterson for booing at the police defended his action in court by saying
that he was only rehearsing for the pageant.84
The pageant also acted as an extension of the regular strike meetings in
terms of clarifying the position of the strikers. What Hutchins Hapgood
called, Their growing understanding of themselves and their cause and
their situation,85 over the course of the strike, was further developed while
they were preparing for and performing the pageant. In analyzing the history
of the strike, simplifying it into the scenario of the pageant, and rehearsing
and replaying the events, the strikers could put in perspective their role in
the process of social change.86 When Haywood first suggested the idea of a
pageant to a massive strike meeting in Haledon, he described how it would
end with the last and greatest scene which will be a stage picture of this
great meeting at Haledon.87 In that moment the present was underscored
as historical, and reality merged with re-enactment.
Obviously the actors looked the parts that they were playing since they
were acting as themselves. The New York Press commented that by wearing their own mill togs as costumes, they achieved the last word in
verisimilitude.88 But this effect was accentuated by the physical deprivation they had been suffering since the beginning of the strike. According
to the International Socialist Review, in the absence of wages, the strikers
were surviving on one meal a day, provided by the union soup kitchen in
Paterson.89 When they arrived in New York for the pageant in which they
sang the Internationale about being prisoners of starvation, it was clear to
observers that they had been starving for weeks. Upton Sinclair remarked
on how they ravenously disposed of the lunch that had been prepared for
them.90 The New York Press commented that in performance, under their
smiles were the lines that had been drawn in by poverty, low wages, the
privations of the strike and the necessity for finding food for their large
families;91 and the New York Herald described them in the first scene as
shivering and ill clad, and not a few of them ill fed.92
Hapgood was not alone in acknowledging the significance that, rather
than a performance about the strike by actors, the strikers themselves are
going to present the spectacle.93 The Survey commented that the show was
not transformed into a professional spectacle by the organizers with trained
actors or with a Broadway production style but kept to a level of reality
that would allow the strikers to emerge as real human beings rather than
performers: The pageant was without staginess or apparent striving for
theatrical effect. In fact, the offer of theatrical producers to help in putting
it on was declined by those who wanted the workers own simple action to
impress the crowd.94
Actually, the performers were called on to act other parts as well. But
because they were so caught up in their own positions in the strike, they
were initially reluctant to play the roles of anyone from the other side of the
struggle such as policemen, detectives and scabs.95 Ultimately they relented
and in fact became so involved in acting the parts of policemen forcefully
beating workers that many actors suffered bruises in rehearsal. A reporter
visiting a rehearsal described how he saw twenty or thirty stout men charging against a mass of men and women huddled in one corner, flinging them
to right and left, knocking their heads together, striking women to their
knees, yelling ferociously, while all the time those attacked gave vent to
the long, anguished, scornful cry of Boo! When he asked if the actors
minded this treatment, he was told by an emaciated young woman in a
cheap print dress . . . See what I got yesterday! . . . and [she] turned up her
sleeves to above her elbow, where a big, ugly bruise could be seen. Aw, that
aint nothin, she went on, we expect to get knocked about in these here
rehear[s]als, an we dont care. Its all for the cause.96
Both the strike leaders and the newspapers emphasized the authenticity
of the cast. The Times reported that Every man, woman, and child who appeared on [the stage] was, according to the strike management, a bona-fide
Paterson silk mill striker or the child of a striker.97 The New York Evening
World commented on the great meeting of desperate hollow-eyed strikers

and said that the pageant unrolled with a poignant realism that no man
who saw them will ever forget.98 The New York World called the pageant a
review of their experiences within the last few weeks . . . They didnt need
to act, but merely to go about in their normal fashions.99 Likewise, the
International Socialist Review commented, Nowhere was there a suggestion of acting, of going through a part. The people on the stage had long
ago forgotten the audience. The audience had long ago forgotten itself. It
had become a part of the scene. All simply lived their battles over again.100
The Tribune indicated that, at the end of the show, fiction again merged
with reality as the strikers return to their places and the picket line, determined that no silk shall be woven in Paterson until their demands are
granted. And from the way they brought the pageant to an end with this
announcement, they meant it just as much in actuality as they made believe
in the play.101
The pageant served both as re-enactment of recent history and as a
massive strike meeting with the strike leaders addressing the whole crowd
(including the actors and audience) in their speeches, an effect that was
enhanced in the final scene by the actors on stage turning their backs to
the audience and surrounding a platform on which stood Bill Haywood for
his final speech so that the whole of Madison Square Garden became one
mass meeting. Moreover, by announcing that they were going to continue
the strike, they were reaffirming their commitment to that action.
The audience, being predominantly working class, created a strong sense
of class solidarity and commitment to the ongoing strike as in a strike
meeting.102 The unity between actors and audience was reinforced by
the physical staging of the performance through the audience. Moreover,
the presence of Mrs. Modestino and Paterson strikers in the audience as
well as the strikers and union leaders on stage and in the center aisle blurred
the normal distinction between spectators and actors. The New York Press
reported that, It was such a mixed grouping that at times they converged
and actor became auditor and auditor turned suddenly into actor.103 In
the second scene when the police arrested forty strikers (including Hannah
Silverman) and led them down the long center aisle, not only the actors but
also the audience booed.104 When the funeral cortege passed her coming
up the center aisle and on to the stage to the tune of the Dead March,
Mrs. Modestino, who was sitting in a box seat, became hysterical and
many others in the audience cried.105 Like the rally scene, the re-enactment
of the funeral turned into a real event, a kind of memorial celebration for a
friend or neighbor who had died in which, according to the New York Press,
the gruesomeness of the . . . scene left nothing to the imagination.106 The
Tribune commented that the scene worked the actors themselves and their
thousands of sympathizers in the audience up to a high pitch of emotion,
punctuated with moans and groans and sobs.107 The Press reported that
Many of the women in the march were weeping real tears that dripped
on their worn mill clothing . . . There was an impressiveness that made the
Garden still as a tomb in that scene the only sounds were those of intermittent sobbing . . . It was a scene too sacred for a spectacle ever of such
poignancy as on the stage.108 Dodge reflected, They were one: the workers who had come to show their comrades what was happening across the
river, and the workers who had come to see it. I have never felt such a high
pulsing vibration in any gathering before or since.109
The actuality of the pageant with the real life of the actors ghosting their
performances on stage added a sense of drama and danger to the whole
event.110 The visible presence of the chief of police in the front row and the
onstage presence of prominent strike leaders who had been portrayed in
the press as celebrated agitators (or notorious rabble rousers depending on
ones viewpoint) added to the high stakes involved and helped differentiate
the performances. The newspaper reporters, who were obviously keen to
pick out celebrities, commented that several of the speakers in the pageant
were under indictment (such as Haywood, Gurley Flynn, and Lessig) or
had been convicted (such as Tresca and Quinlan) and that others had been
imprisoned, such as John Reed and Hannah Silverman (who, according
to the New York Call, had been jailed so often that she herself has lost
track of the number and who was released from jail on Friday.)111 That
the audience was watching a performance given by criminals and outlaws
(my quotes) added to the excitement, as did the popular perception that
the IWW recommended violence as a tactic. This was heightened by the
New York sheriff greeting the press with the words, Just let anybody . . .
say one word of disrespect to the flag and I will stop the sho[w] so [q]uickly
it will take their breath away.112 The Tribune, obviously impressed with the
realism of the event, emphasized that in the funeral scene, Tresca himself
appeared and gave his Blood for blood should be your motto113 funeral
oration in Italian that had landed him in jail. Moreover, they hinted at the
potential for violence. Weeks of dreary fighting, privation and hope for
victory deferred have made their marks on the faces of the strikers, and they
are on the verge of desperate things, either of giving up in hopeless despair
or of going out and tearing the town to pieces.114
While the rehearsals and performance echoed reality, the pageant also
worked on a fictional and symbolic level. The workers did not simply present
themselves on stage. As already mentioned, they not only impersonated
themselves but also other characters. But in addition to this, by placing
their actions on the stage, they framed them as a performance that held
a wider significance than simply their own strike, and which was not just
expressive but constitutive as well.115 The performance itself was an act of
social resistance. By marching through the city, advertising the IWW inside and outside the building, and performing the events of their strike, the
strikers were defying the norms of society. Moreover, in the performance,
the strikers were acting out an alternative, carnivalesque behavior pattern
and a different set of relationships from the normative hierarchy of boss and
worker, policeman and citizen, male and female, citizen and foreigner. To
the audience, they represented not only their own strike but the strength
of the working class in general in trying to overthrow their oppressive conditions and to establish new rules and ways of working in society. Predicting
this effect, Hapgood wrote that the pageant was designed to give the whole
of New York an idea of the meaning of the great industrial and social happenings which are taking place in Paterson and all over the country.116 The
performers represented not only the events of their strike, but also in a more
symbolic sense the ability to strike, to take action and seek redress. Their
re-staged actions not only referred backward to originary real actions but
also forward to future possible actions and to similar situations. Their symbolic actions transformed the spectators into active participants in the same
struggle for a new social order; the performance became what Jean and John
Comaroff, in their analysis of ritual, have called a vehicle of history-in-the
making and a site and a means of experimental practice, of subversive
poetics, of creative tension and transformative action.117 Responding to
this ritualistic or symbolic dimension, the International Socialist Review described how the performance engaged the sympathies of its audience and
caught them up in a vicarious struggle for their own liberation.
The lives of most of us are sordid and grey. So tightly are we tied to the
petty round of toil to which our galley-masters bind us, that most of us
probably are born, live and die without experiencing one deep-springing,
surging, devastating emotion. We are either afraid to feel or we have lost
the capacity. The Paterson pageant will be remembered for the sweeping
emotions it shot through the atmosphere if for no other reason. Waves
of almost painful emotion swept over that great audience as the summer
wind converts a placid field of wheat into billowing waves. It was all real,
living, and vital to them.118
Evaluating the success of the pageant

The massive event created a sense of euphoria in the crowd that many
commentators expressed as a liberating experience, a social revolution in
the making by the workers invading New Yorks prime location, Madison
Square Garden, and taking over the means of cultural production from
the establishment. An air of celebration of the workers cause abounded in
the hall even before the event began. The Socialist Party New York City
convention, meeting that day to select candidates for a municipal election,
suspended business at six oclock so that all 200 delegates could attend the
pageant en bloc to take their place on the firing line in behalf of people
who have been mistreated.119 According to their paper, the New York Call,
they marched into the Garden carrying the partys banner and chanting the International. They were recognized at once and greeted with
tumultuous applause.120 Likewise, during the pageant, the audience was
deeply involved, Enthusiasm ran high . . . practically everybody was on his
feet all the time, men and women were humming if they didnt know
the words The Marseillaise, when they werent humming or singing, the
International, . . . and many folks were gazing at nothing at all while the
tears ran down their faces . . . The applause . . . was one chronic roar.121 In
several scenes there was considerable interactivity. For example, according
to the New York Call, the boos received from the audience by Police Chief
Bimson and [his] squad in the picketing scene were simply awful. Have
pity, shouted one in the audience when Bimsons ghost was given another
boo. Similarly, the New York Herald reported that in the rally at Haledon,
The stage was crowded with a cheering and singing multitude who sang
the Marseillaise with a fervor that evoked applause. The refrain Do We
Like the Bosses? and the reply No, no! were cheered. Applause greeted
the line, Do we like the IWW? and the stentorian Yes, yes! in which the
strikers joined with great energy.122
The spectators were not simply observing the action on stage as in a
mimetic performance that tells a story, but they became involved in the
action as in a public ritual, a process that Kimberly Benston has referred to
as methexis or communally helping out of the action by all assembled. It
is a shift from drama the spectacle observed to ritual, the event which
dissolves traditional divisions between actor and spectator, between self and
other.123
Although the audience was generally united in sentiment for the show,
it was not solely a working-class audience. For example, while the Times
reported that, It was an audience every man, woman, and child in which
seemed to be enthusiastic for the Haywood organization and all that it
stands for, it also mentioned that Every box was occupied, many of them
by fashionably dressed men and women.124 While the boxes which sold for
$20 were generally occupied by rich society people, radicals, sociologists
and others intellectuals also flocked to the unusual event.125
Thus there were at least two types of audience for the event those who
were basically insiders and who identified with the event because they were
fellow strikers or fellow workers, and those who were outside sympathizers (non-working class) who came to watch it because it was a unique and
unusual event. Neither group was a traditional theatre audience. They were
not there to see an entertaining play. Neither group expected the strikers to
be actors. In fact part of the significance of the event for both groups was the
authenticity of the performers rather than their ability to act. The workingclass spectators wanted to see their fellow workers on stage and to participate
in a communal event, and this spirit was enhanced by large working-class
organizations arriving together for the event. The non-working-class spectators were attending something similar to an educational exhibition in
which the authenticity of the performers was of greater interest than their
talent. Thus the perceived criminality of the performers was an important
dimension that added to the cultural capital accruing to this section of the
audience.126
The event was read differently by these two audiences, as one can see
from the newspapers and other reports. The socialist newspapers praised the
pageant while the more conservative papers indicated reservations which
ranged from fear about its dangerous nature and relief that it was performed with restraint and aesthetic taste. With the unusual thwarting of
authority associated with the event, some of the spectators also anticipated
a confrontation between the strikers and the forces of law and order. The
newspapermen were particularly interested in the role in the audience of the
New York Sheriff who, in their reports, became a character in the drama,
and, according to the Times, said he was present to see to it that no man
or woman said or did anything that could in the remotest way be termed
a desecration of the American flag.127 The New York Press approved of
the way that the promoters controlled the event without resort to police
reinforcement.128 Likewise, the New York Tribune commented on the way

that the IWW, which had been popularly perceived as violent anarchists,
displayed such good judgement in performing the pageant: The IWW
has not been highly regarded hereabouts as an organization endowed with
brains or imagination. Yet the very effective appeal to public interest made
by the spectacle at the Garden stamps the IWW leaders as agitators of large
resources and original talent.129
To some extent this response reflects that the expectations of some of
the audience in attending this show were similar to those attending a freak
show or a nineteenth-century display of indigenous people in, for example,
the Barnum and Bailey Circus, in which the audience were observers of the
other. Union and strike activity was still generally regarded as dangerous
and unlawful and threatening to the political, social and economic life of
the country. Therefore in attending an event that celebrated such actions,
the non-working-class part of the audience would have felt that they were
venturing into unknown and dangerous territory and regarded those on
stage to some extent as outside the natural order. But in this case, unlike the
Barnum and Bailey Circus, the other were in charge of the event and were
performing according to their own script rather than that of the promoters.
Nevertheless, the editorial in the Tribune expressed relief that the strikers
had been absorbed into the system like tamed primitives. It is gratifying
to know that the strikers have reached that stage of self-control at which
they can look at their case objectively and present it to the public with the
reasoned calculation of dramatic art. It takes coolness and self-restraint to act
well, and even Sheriff Harburger is reported as admitting that the pageant
was a successful and unobjectionable show. The Tribune made it seem as
if the strikers had been welcomed into the bosom of capitalism: Elaborate
stage settings, a literary book, special trains for the actors and a swarm
of press agents all suggest the sophistication of the modern commercial
drama. To neutralize the effect of the strikers efforts further the Tribune
quipped, Here is a new vein opened to enterprising strike managers with
their fingers on the pulse of the Great White Way. If their strikes fail they
can take the strikers on the road.130
Although dramaturgically the pageant was less didactic than the later
agit-prop performances of the 1930s that exhorted the audience to social
action such as to vote communist, the audience (both working class and
non-working class) tended to read the performance not only as a historical
retelling of events but also as an act of social resistance and, more specifically,
as a call to action to support the strike. By their collective action, the strikers
(and more generally the working class) were regarded as empowered by

the event and the manufacturers (and more generally the ruling class) as
threatened and challenged if not overtly disempowered.
Given the reaction in the New York Times editorial, and the common
perception that the IWW posed a danger to the status quo, the pageant
received surprisingly good reviews from most of the press. The papers generally praised it from an artistic point of view. An editorial in the New York
Tribune commended the innovative staging, There was a startling touch of
ultra modernity or rather of futurism in the Paterson strike pageant. . . .
Certainly nothing like it had been known before in the history of labor
agitation.131 The socialist New York Call described it as the greatest thing
of the kind ever undertaken by a labor organization and one of the most
successful events in the history of local labor affairs.132 The IWW organ,
the International Socialist Review, under its heading The Worlds Greatest
Labor Play, described it as something new under the sun, a labor play in
which laborers themselves were the actors, managers and sole proprietors,
portraying by word and movement their own struggle for a better world.133
An article in The Survey reported on the simple yet dramatic effect of the
strikers representing themselves on stage. The pageant . . . went the human document one better; it gave a real acquaintance with the spirit, point
of view and earnestness of those who live what a human document tells; it
conveyed what speech and pamphlet, picture and cartoon, fiction and drama
fall short of telling. The simple movements of this mass of silk workers were
inarticulate eloquence.134 The Press reporter commented on the impressive
staging of the first scene, Now, William A. Brady has become so identified
with stage mobs that the words mob and Brady are interchangeable, but
never had Brady in his most ambitious moments schemed anything like the
mob that flung itself from the mill at the word Strike! Shouting the strains
of The Marseillaise, they rushed across the front of the stage and down
into the main aisle of the building, rushing pell-mell, men and women alike,
until they reached the lobby, where they assembled for the next episode.135
The International Socialist Review exulted, No spectacle enacted in New
York has ever made such an impression. Not the most sanguine member of
the committee which made the preparations for the pageant believed that
its success would be quite so overwhelming. It is still the talk of New York,
most cynical and hardened of cities, and will remain so for many days.136
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn later recalled, It was a unique form of proletarian
art. Nothing like it had happened before in the American labor movement.
Nor has it happened since, to my knowledge, until the recent moving-picture
production, Salt of the Earth, in which Mexican-American mine workers

and their families graphically portrayed what actually happened in their
strike.137
The Independent emphasized the effectiveness of the actors performing
in the central aisle: It is an unequalled device for clutching the emotion of
the audience this parade of the actors thru the center of the crowd. The
dramatic liturgy of the Roman Church, in which our English drama had its
rise, the processional in the Episcopal Church, too, and even the familiar
wedding march, recognize its value. Rarely has it been used in New York
theaters in [Max Reinhardts production of ] Sumurun last year, and in
one or two other cases, but never with more effect than in this performance,
where actors and audience were of one class and one hope.138 The New York
World also lauded the dramatic effect of the pageant: It would have pleased
any dramatic critic because of the sincerity with which its simple plot was
carried out . . . On the whole, as viewed by a spectator unbiased either from
the labor or capital standpoint, their pageant was rather in the nature of a
tragedy than anything else.139 Even the New York Times in its first report
of the pageant, under the headlines Biggest Cast Ever Seen in a New York
Production Stages Its Own Show, wrote, It is doubtful if Madison Square
Garden, even at the close of the bitterest of political campaigns, ever held a
larger audience,140 and called it a spectacular production.141
While many newspapers and periodicals emphasized its artistic innovation and success, others like the Times warned of its dangerous implications.
The Times seemed threatened by the whole event and printed their damning editorial a day after their reasonably positive review. Claiming that the
pageant had been staged by a destructive organization opposed in spirit and
antagonistic in action to all the forces which have upbuilded this republic,
and whose aim is not to upbuild industry but to destroy the law, the Times
editorial described the event as having the design of stimulating mad passion against law and order and promulgating a gospel of discontent . . . The
motive was to inspire hatred, to induce violence which may lead to the tearing down of the civil state and the institution of anarchy.142 Likewise, the
New York Press began its front page story about the pageant Hundreds of
Industrial Workers of the World last evening stirred up class hatred before
going on to calling it one of the most remarkable performances New York
ever has seen.143 Current Opinion alluded to both its artistic success and its
dangerous implications, calling it truly an artistic achievement, even tho
it may be, as the Times has pointed out, a dangerous weapon for subversive
propaganda.144
In addition to the direct effect on the 15,000 spectators at the one performance, New Yorkers became more aware of the strike because of the march
through Manhattan and because of the four huge signs outside Madison
Square Garden in red electric lights that spelled out IWW in ten-foothigh letters to announce the event which could be seen from one end of
town to the other.145 The IWW organ, International Socialist Review, said
this was the first time those significant letters have ever been given so conspicuous a place.146 The publicity achieved by the pageant was immense.
Ewald Koettgen, a Paterson weaver, proudly told the IWW convention
in September that the pageant made more publicity for the IWW than
anything ever attempted before.147
Although the pageant was an artistic and initially a public relations success, it led to bitter recriminations because the anticipated revenue from
the event did not materialize, and so the workers returned to work within
two months without having gained any improvement in conditions. The
pageant had been difficult to stage financially because the costs of building
such a massive set and renting Madison Square Garden were high and the
projected revenue from a working-class audience for a once-off event was
low. However, two weeks before the pageant, the Paterson Evening News reported Bill Haywood as predicting that it would generate $100,000,148 and,
immediately after the event, the press announced profits of between $6,500
and $10,000 for the strikers.149 Unaware of the facts, the workers, according
to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, expected huge financial benefit from the strike,
especially with the papers clamoring that tens of thousands of dollars had
been made.150 There was even considerable discussion of whether to stage
additional performances.151 Therefore, the strikers were very disappointed
when the leadership gradually confronted them with the financial reality.
Haywood reported a week after the pageant that they would be receiving
only $348 from the pageant and apologized for his predictions of a large
profit. At the same time he hinted that more money (about $5,000) would
be following.152 When Reed informed them a week later that the pageant
had made a financial loss, they were clearly despondent and refused to join
him in song. The Paterson Evening News reported that the announcement . . . took the heart out of them.153 They were further disappointed
when, dressed in new clothes, he announced that he was departing the next
day for a summer vacation in Europe while they were left to carry on the
strike with little food or other provisions.154
The New York Times highlighted the financial debacle by putting the
financial news on the front page (unlike its other reports about the strike and
the pageant) and sowed seeds of discord by implying that some irregularities
must have occurred.155 The local Paterson press also exploited the news and
exacerbated the suspicions of the strikers by questioning the various trips to
Europe by members of the pageant executive committee.156 The executive
committee eventually made a financial statement to the press that helped
quell rumors of dishonesty, explaining that they had never been optimistic
about the pageant making money, that they had predicted financial difficulties from the beginning, and that they had almost canceled the event on
two occasions because of their worries. They had been persuaded to persist
with the event because of its importance not only for financial reasons but
also for its propaganda and publicity potential,157 and they had been given
loans by sympathizers to enable them to continue. They also explained that,
when a sell-out crowd attended the performance and the police closed the
entrances (a half hour after the event was due to start) to prevent crowding in
the standing-room areas, it appeared to the public that the financial success
of the event had been secured. However, the cost of the more expensive seats
in the front of the arena had been reduced from $1.50 to 25 cents at the last
minute because they remained empty when the cheaper seats had all been
sold, and the potential audience, many of whom had walked for miles to
attend the event, could not afford them. In addition many IWW members
had gained free entry on showing their cards, and so the box-office receipts
were much lower than anticipated.158 Although their evidence helped quell
the rumors, the IWW leadership lost credibility because of the financial
problems, and it was the last major strike that the IWW organized in the
eastern US.159
Legacy of the Paterson Strike Pageant

Two years after the pageant, a journalist for the IWW paper Solidarity
advocated a workers theatre and mentioned the pageant as an example of
what could be done. Did it not raise funds to continue the strike, break
down prejudice, arouse sympathy and cement the ranks of the strikers?160
Randolph Bourne (a Greenwich villager) also reflected, Who that saw the
Paterson Strike Pageant in 1913 can ever forget that thrilling evening when
an entire labor community dramatized its wrongs in one supreme outburst of
group-emotion. Crude and rather terrifying, it stamped into ones mind the
idea that a new social art was in the American world, something genuinely
and excitingly new.161
At the end of the 1920s, Bill Haywood praised the pageant in retrospect,
calling it the greatest labor pageant ever held in America.162 John Reed also
continued to believe firmly in the idea of the workers pageant. Not only did
he encourage the Soviet Union to stage historical re-enactments after the

Russian Revolution, but he also advocated workers pageants throughout
the United States to tell their local struggles. According to Granville Hicks,
Reed
wanted to create a theatre of the working class. Plans to give plays for
the workers, though he was interested in these, were not enough. Hiram
Moderwell, Leroy Scott, and others had conceived a theatre that would
produce, at reasonable prices, plays that workers would want or ought to
want to see. Reed had a bolder scheme: labor groups would dramatize the
principal events in their lives, just as the Paterson workers had dramatized
their strike. The idea grew: the best dramatizations from all over the
country would be presented once a year, on May Day, in New York.
Reeds friends caught his enthusiasm, and money for initial expenses was
quickly raised, but he became absorbed in other things, and, since no one
else would carry on the task of organization, the plan collapsed.163
With the demise of the IWW, the best immediate alternative seemed to
be workers drama produced by Greenwich Village intellectuals in such
venues as the Provincetown Playhouse. Many of the intellectuals and radical
leaders involved in the pageant spent summers in Provincetown, including Reed, Dodge, Hapgood, Ashley, Margaret Sanger, and Bill Haywood
and their presence directly influenced the development of the Provincetown
Playhouse and its adoption of labor themes in its drama. Wilbur
Daniel Steele, who wrote Contemporaries (about the strike leader Frank
Tannenbaum), the first labor play for the Provincetown Playhouse in 1915,
wrote to Mary Vorse after seeing the pageant, I wish you could have been
there. It was tremendous.164 Susan Glaspell, one of the founders of the
Provincetown Playhouse, also commented in her autobiography on the significance of the pageant and how afterwards, she sat late and talked of what
the theatre might be.165
Although the Provincetown Players were never a workers theatre, they
kept alive many of the radical ideas of the IWW during the 1920s, such as
in Eugene ONeills anti-capitalist play The Hairy Ape which portrayed the
IWW in a positive light. One of the first major theatre companies with a
distinct socialist bias was the New Playwrights Theatre formed in 1927 by
left-wing writers Mike Gold and John Howard Lawson and funded by a leftwing banker named Otto Kahn. They tried to engage Eugene ONeill but
he turned them down. Although short-lived and largely unsuccessful, the
New Playwrights Theatre presented working-class issues in an old musical
hall on Broadway and used Soviet-style constructivist sets for some of their
work. They presented such plays as The Centuries by Em Jo Basshe, that
dealt with slum conditions in an urban tenement building and called on the
poor to organize in order to better their conditions; The Belt by Paul Sifton
that realistically depicted the conditions of workers on the assembly line;
and Singing Jailbirds by Upton Sinclair about the imprisonment and death
of a strike leader.
With the stock-market crash and the Depression, the idea of a workers
theatre resurfaced in force. The widespread loss of faith in the capitalist
system encouraged the formation of agit-prop (agitation and propaganda)
theatre groups, influenced by Russian and German prototypes, to promote
communist and socialist performances. Numerous companies, employing
such diverse forms as agit-prop and Broadway musicals, staged plays seeking a radical transformation of society. From the German-speaking ProletBuhne and the English-speaking Workers Laboratory Theatre that produced agit-prop pro-Communist material, to the Theatre Union that staged
Popular Front plays on Broadway supporting class and racial solidarity such
as Stevedore, to Langston Hughess Harlem Suitcase theatre company that
produced his Dont You Want to Be Free?, the 1930s witnessed a proliferation
of political theatre, culminating in the Living Newspaper projects of the
Federal Theatre Project, such as One-Third of a Nation (1938) about the
need for decent low-income public housing.
Many of the ideas in the Paterson Strike Pageant would be carried into
the 1930s, such as the staging of strikes (real or fictional), the use of workers
as amateur actors, the cultivation of a working-class audience, the incorporation of the audience into the action (as in Waiting for Lefty), the use of a
current political issue (as in the Living Newspapers) and the promotion of
multi-ethnic class struggle as in Stevedore and Dont You Want to Be Free?
It also anticipated many of the financial problems of working-class theatre
in performing for a low-wage sector. Although the Paterson Strike Pageant
failed to win the strike, it provided a new form for a revolutionary theatre
and paved the way for the workers drama in the next decades.
Summary
The Paterson Strike Pageant utilized a conservative theatrical form for radical purposes. By contrast with the normative pageant that appealed to patriotic images and icons and showed the transformation of the foreigner into
the good, well-behaved American citizen, the Paterson pageant attacked
American hierarchical values and the American capitalist system. It clarified that the various immigrant groups (especially the inferior southern
Europeans) had not been assimilated into a nondescript melting pot, but still
spoke and sang in their original languages and identified with class struggle rather than the capitalist system. The Paterson Strike Pageant helped
forge a positive sense of social identity for those acting in the pageant and
their supporters in the audience that challenged dominant national values.
By analyzing and rehearsing their roles in a major industrial strike and
re/presenting themselves on stage for thousands of others, the Paterson
workers acknowledged their position as makers of history and their potential strength as part of a class that could transform the structures of society.
Rather than just representing themselves, they served as powerful symbols
for social action and social change. Rather than adhering to the capitalist
notion of the individual bettering his position and rising above the masses,
the pageant promoted pride in the working class and the communal effort to
better their conditions collectively. Although in the long term the pageant
failed to win the strike, it validated the struggle of the workers, provided
insight into their situation and, before the financial result became clear,
achieved great publicity and support for their efforts.

Staging social rebellion in the 1960s
F
ollowing the Second World War, various political
and social forces came together to reinforce an orthodox attitude towards
national identity. Notably the House Committee on un-American Activities and Senator Joseph McCarthys Committees in the Senate clarified
the danger of contesting a spirit of national consensus.1 To be labeled unAmerican in the late 1940s was to be considered a Communist, a subversive
and potentially a spy for the Soviet Union. The conviction and execution
of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 (for allegedly sending information
about American nuclear technology to the Soviet Union) emphasized the
danger of being accused of un-American activities. The American values
that were sanctioned under this Cold War culture of containment privileged the position of white heterosexual males who were to be supported
by women in domestic roles. Ethnic minorities were expected to remain
subservient or invisible, and divergent political ideologies or lifestyles were
discouraged. During the 1950s, American family life as represented in advertisements and in television shows such as Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It
to Beaver suggested an ideal sense of security, conformity and homogeneity.
As Elaine Tyler May has written, it was the values of the white middle
class that shaped the dominant political and economic institutions that affected all Americans. Those who did not conform to them were likely to be
marginalized, stigmatized, and disadvantaged as a result.2
However, this supposed social consensus was challenged in the late 1950s
by the civil rights movement that rebelled against the discrimination against
and segregation of African Americans. Bus boycotts, lunch counter sit-ins,
demonstrations and protest marches advocated the integration of blacks
into white society where previously they had been denied access. Such activities increased in strength leading to the 1963 March on Washington
at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous I have a dream
speech in front of 100,000 people. While civil rights legislation and voter
registration drives in the south as well as desegregated schooling measures
heralded minor improvements for the status of African Americans, the civil
rights movement, which under Kings leadership promoted a policy of nonviolence, encountered continual harassment and setbacks. Moreover, while
it appeared that African Americans could improve their position in society
if they adopted white values, habits and dress codes, their own values and
physical characteristics were not fully accepted.
In the mid-1960s a new wave of African American leaders questioned
the civil rights movements policy of integration. Rather than promoting
assimilation into the white culture, they advocated a separatist philosophy of
Black Nationalism. Renouncing the non-violent tactics of Martin Luther
King Jr., Malcolm X broke away from Elijah Muhammads apolitical
Nation of Islam in 1964 to form the Organization for Afro-American Unity
(echoing the Organization of African Unity). He argued, There is nothing
that the white man will do to bring about true, sincere citizenship or civil
rights recognition for black people in this country . . . They will always talk it
but they wont practice it.3 He urged the need for human rights rather than
civil rights, and alluding to the example of African liberation movements,
called for freedom by any means necessary.4 Following the assassination
of Malcolm X in 1965, Huey Newton, Bobbie Seale and others formed
the Black Panthers in Oakland, California where they openly challenged
the non-violent tactics of the civil rights movement. Adopting the role of
vigilantes to defend African Americans from police brutality, the Black
Panthers appeared in public, visibly armed and aggressively dressed in black
leather and dark sun glasses. Influenced by the rhetoric of African independence movements, the Black Panthers issued a manifesto which amongst
other things called for a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held
throughout the black colony [of the United States] in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining
the will of black people as to their national destiny.5 Stokely Carmichael,
the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),
a nationally organized students civil rights movement, announced in 1966,
after being arrested in a freedom march, This is the twenty-seventh time
I have been arrested and I aint going to jail no more! . . . The only way
we gonna stop them white men from whuppin us is to take over. We been
saying freedom for six years and we aint got nothing. What we gonna start
saying now is Black Power!6 Carmichael later formed a short-lived alliance
with the Black Panthers Party. Black Nationalists, according to SNCC
STAGING SOCIAL REBELLION IN THE
1960 s
activist Cleveland Sellers, argued that black oppression cannot be eliminated without a full-scale revolution, probably a violent one.7 From 1964
violent riots erupted regularly in major cities such as New York (Harlem,
1964), Los Angeles (Watts, 1965), Cleveland, Newark, Chicago, Atlanta
and Detroit. Following the assassination of Dr. King in 1968, there were so
many riots in one night that it seemed that the African American revolution
had arrived. By the late 1960s, a split occurred between the Black Panthers,
who believed in multi-ethnic class struggle, and the Black Nationalists, who
favored a policy of racial separatism. Neither faction, according to Sellers,
received the same broad support that was lavished on SNCC, CORE,
SCLC, the NAACP and the Urban League during the initial phases of
the [civil rights] movement, and by the early 1970s the government had
managed to undermine both factions.8
Influenced by the civil rights and Black Power movements, other ethnic
minorities protested against their inferior status in American society, notably
Chicanos/as, Puerto Ricans and Native Americans. Chicanos/as formed
El Movimiento to advance the cause of Mexican Americans living in the
United States who suffered from discrimination, poor housing and working
conditions, inadequate schooling, and harsh US immigration practices. One
of the most visible actions was the 1965 farmworkers strike in California led
by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to force ranchers to sign a contract
with the United Farmworkers Union. Other prominent actions included
the 1966 and 1969 occupation of the Kit Carson National Forest in New
Mexico by La Alianza Federal de Mercedes (The Federal Alliance of Land
Grants). Reies Lopez Tijerina, who had studied the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, argued that part of the forest had been illegally taken from the
local people. His group occupied the land twice until they were arrested
each time.9
Native Americans, likewise, reopened the issue of broken treaties as part
of increasing protests against their unfair treatment by the US Government.
Many American Indians, taking pride in their heritage, moved back to their
reservations from the cities. AIM (the American Indian Movement) became
increasingly militant and, in order to demonstrate the seriousness of their
grievances, seized such sites as Alcatraz (1970), the Bureau of Indian Affairs
in Washington (1972) and Wounded Knee (1973), resulting in a second battle
of Wounded Knee that lasted several months.
Amidst protests by ethnic minorities, students questioned educational,
social and governmental practices. In 1962 Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) was formed to agitate for democratic reform and participatory
democracy. The Free Speech movement, which started at the University

of California at Berkeley in 1964, spread rapidly across the country. From
the mid-1960s, opposition to the war in Vietnam gave further impetus to
student and ethnic minority movements. In previous wars in which the
United States had been involved (other than the Civil War), the nation had
largely united behind the war effort. But the protests against the Vietnam
War became so vociferous by the late 1960s that not only did public opinion
turn against the governments policy, but disillusioned veterans returning
from the war formed a highly visible protest group, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). In front of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran and future Senator
of Massachusetts, demanded on behalf of the VVAW activists that the government end the conflict, pledging our own determination to undertake
one last mission to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric
war.10
Demonstrations against the war, military conscription and other related
governmental policies frequently led to violent confrontations with the police such as at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. These
confrontations reached a highpoint in the 1970 killing of four students by
National Guardsmen at an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University.
This event provoked student strikes at 350 universities, the closure of nearly
500 campuses and the demand by 225 student body presidents across the
country for the impeachment of President Nixon.11
Parallel with the opposition to government policies, a counterculture of
alternative lifestyles emerged that opposed normative social and cultural
values. New social attitudes were expressed not only in political confrontations, but also in clothes, hairstyle, music, sexual permissiveness and the use
of drugs. The counterculture movement interacted with the peace movement and organized such events as a 1967 demonstration in Washington
at which draft cards were burned in record numbers and Abbie Hoffman
and Jerry Rubin of the Youth International Party (known as the Yippies),
declared the Pentagon to be an evil monster, and attempted to levitate it.12
In 1969 the gay and lesbian liberation movement was energized by the
Stonewall riot in which gay men fought back after being harassed by New
York police. With so many forms of protest manifesting themselves in
various dimensions of American society and intersecting with one another,
the possibility of social revolution affected all of the various movements,
instilling a greater awareness of the inadequacies of American society and
government and making the movements more militant in their demands for
1960 s
change. Black Power, Chicano Power, Red Power, student activism, anti-war
demonstrations, and countercultural practices sought to discredit and dismantle the structures of society, using both violent and peaceful means.
Cultural representation became one of the key elements in such counterhegemonic strategies. African Americans, Chicanos, and other ethnic
groups celebrated their distinct heritages, while the anti-war movement
challenged the military culture. African Americans reversed repressive
stereotypes by announcing that black is beautiful, wearing Afro-hairstyles,
dressing in African garments, adopting African or Muslim names, and
celebrating African American (especially musical and spiritual) traditions.
Chicanos/as likewise venerated their Native American roots, especially their
links with Aztec and Mayan cultures, as well as their Mexican traditions.
War protestors rebelled against the short hair, clean shaven, clean living
look of the military and the establishment. They grew long hair, beards and
mustaches, flashed peace signs, placed flowers in the muzzles of guns, and
urged people to make love not war.
Drama and performance played an important role in creating and fostering such iconoclastic representations of identity in the mid-1960s.13 In
particular the cultural centers run by Amiri Baraka in New York and Newark,
the Teatro Campesino collective founded by Luis Valdez in California
and the anti-militarist performances of VVAW exemplified this development. LeRoi Jones (who later changed his name to Amiri Baraka), worked
as a poet and music critic in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s before becoming recognized as a major dramatist with his Obie winning
play Dutchman (1964). Baraka increasingly aligned himself with the Black
Nationalist movement and formed the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/
School in Harlem (with government funding from a government antipoverty program). After the Federal money ran dry, he moved to Newark
where he established a second Black Arts center called Spirit House. These
two institutions, which sponsored various types of cultural events as well
as holding classes in African American culture, presented plays advocating
Black Nationalism and the overthrow of white hegemony.
Luis Valdez, whose parents were migrant farmworkers, wrote his first play
(The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa) while studying at San Jose State College
and joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe as an actor after graduating.
When the United Farmworkers (UFW) launched their strike in 1965, Valdez
left the Mime Troupe and, with the agreement of Chavez and Huerta,
formed a theater company that would provide politicized entertainment for
the farmworkers in order to strengthen the strike effort. From serving as
the cultural wing of the UFW, the Teatro Campesino progressed into an
independent theatre company, exploring and expressing Chicano cultural
identity.
Anti-war theatre took many forms, from street theatre to professional
plays on Broadway. One of the most novel approaches was that of the
VVAW. On a four-day march from Morristown, New Jersey to Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania called Operation Rapid American Withdrawal, the Veterans
enacted search and destroy scenes in towns and small communities to
bring home the war to ordinary citizens and to challenge the popular image
of the American war hero. Taking as their symbol the winter soldier from
Thomas Paines famous pamphlet (about the difficult winter at Valley Forge
in 17778 that began, These are the times that try mens souls), the Veterans
reconfigured the image of the patriotic soldier into an anti-war soldier who
fulfils his duty to his country by advocating the immediate termination of
the war.14
Black Nationalist theatre

Both Baraka and Valdez worked in close collaboration with their respective
ethnic communities to present shows that were empowering and topical.
Their work manifested an appreciation of the cultural traditions and history of their communities and also strongly reflected the political and social
context in which they were written. Community drama in America had a
long history of raising consciousness and instilling respect for individual
ethnic groups. European American (especially Jewish, German, Finnish
and Polish), African American, Asian American and Latino groups proliferated throughout the United States as early as the nineteenth century.15
For example, W.E.B. Du Bois, a leading figure in the Harlem renaissance,
formulated a policy in 1926 of presenting African American plays about,
by, for, and near their community. 16 What distinguished the ethnic theatre
of the 1960s, was a new sense of urgency that reflected the volatile social
context.17
Baraka felt the need for a group of black revolutionaries who were artists
to raise up the level of struggle from the arts sector.18 In Dutchman and The
Slave, he had already indicated the potential for Black Nationalist violence.
In Dutchman he juxtaposed Clay, an African American male poet, with
Lula, a young white woman who goads him for trying to assimilate into
white society. He reacts by telling her that she and her race do not understand black people and their culture, and that much of African American
1960 s
music and writing is based on the antagonism felt towards whites. Clay
argues that artists like Charlie Parker and Bessie Smith would not have
expressed themselves as they did if they had taken direct action and murdered those who were oppressing them. He threatens Lula with images of
an interracial battleground in which blacks who have become assimilated
as half-white trusties . . . will murder you. Theyll murder you, and have
very rational explanations (p. 391). In The Slave, Baraka depicted an urban
insurrection that he had anticipated in Dutchman in which a black leader
(loosely modeled on himself ) returns to his home to kill his white wife and
her white lover and, possibly, his mixed race children.
In 1964, Baraka became increasingly angry and abusive in his public
pronouncements against white hegemony, and formed a secret organization
called Black Arts with paramilitary pretensions19 that he later described as
probably a little too fanatical.20 Its members adopted military ranks and
armed themselves. Immediately following the assassination of Malcolm X,
he left his white wife and children in Greenwich Village and moved to
Harlem with his Black Arts group, in his words, seeking revolution.21
Commenting later on the cultural nationalist implications of promoting
the Black Arts in Harlem, he argued that black people themselves had
first moved to a political unity, despite their differences, that they were
questioning the US and its white racist monopoly capitalism.22 They were
joining others in a militant affirmation of the African American national
identity.23 Larry Neal, a fellow Black Nationalist, reflected, Implicit in
the Black Arts Movement is the idea that Black people, however dispersed,
constitute a nation within the belly of white America. This is not a new idea.
Garvey said it and the Honorable Elijah Muhammed says it now. And it is
on this idea that the concept of Black Power is predicated.24
Baraka described himself, in his move to Harlem, as a fanatical [black]
patriot!, coming back to [my] countrymen charged up with the desire to
be black, uphold black, &c.25 Linking his own efforts in Harlem with the
independence struggles in Africa, he wrote,
The emergence of the independent African states and the appearance of
African freedom fighters, fighting guerrilla wars with white colonialism,
was destined to produce young intellectuals (and older ones too) who
reveled in the spirit of defiant revolution and sought to use it to create
art. An art that would reach the people, that would take them higher,
ready them for war and victory, as popular as the Impressions or the
Miracles or Marvin Gaye. That was our vision and its image kept us
stepping, heads high and backs straight.26
In his provocative 1965 essay The Revolutionary Theatre, Baraka advocated a political theatre that should force change: it should be change.
He suggested that white men will cower before this theatre because it hates
them. Criticizing previous work such as his own Dutchman and The Slave
for portraying victims of a racist society, he predicted that the Revolutionary
Theatre . . . will soon begin to be peopled with new kinds of heroes and
would create a theatre of assault.27 An example of this kind of play was
Charles Pattersons Black Ice, which was staged by the Black Arts on the
streets of Harlem as well as indoors in 1965. The play shows the kidnapping
of a white Congressman by four black revolutionaries who hope to ransom
him for one of their jailed comrades who is about to be executed. Their
escape plan goes awry when a brother, a ship captain who is supposed
to transport them out of the country, informs on them, and the police kill
all of the gang except Martha, the only female member, who has been
left behind to guard the Congressman. While he pleads for her to release
him, saying that hell fix everything (p. 565), she coolly shoots him on the
grounds that his death should step up the pace of the revolution (p. 560).
The play ends as she brutally informs him, You didnt die very well! (p. 565).
By contrast, Barakas Arm Yourself, or Harm Yourself! shows a fight between two African Americans over whether to use violent methods to protect themselves from police violence. While they are fighting with each
other, a female character tries unsuccessfully to persuade them to join together against the police. The white policemen arrive and shoot all three
of them, with one saying, Dumb niggers . . . we oughtta send em all to the
goddam gas chamber (p. 10). His play JELLO which he says was seen by
more Black People than most plays . . . because this was one of the plays we
took out into the streets in harlem and in other streets across the country28
parodied the famous television personalities Jack Benny and Rochester from
the Jack Benny Show. In JELLO, Rochester refuses to play Jack Bennys
amiable servant any longer or tolerate his patronizing attitude. Benny fires
him and Rochester proceeds to take revenge by abusing and robbing him.
When another character from the show, Don Wilson, enters, Don thinks
it is all a joke and laughs at Jack with Rochester until he realizes that the
tables have been turned. He, Mary and Dennis, the other characters on the
show, are all eventually robbed and Rochester departs in triumph.
According to Baraka, it was usually sufficient for his group to set up for
the performance in the streets of Harlem to attract a crowd. We performed
in projects, parks, the streets, alleys, playgrounds. Each night a different
location, five nights, sometimes six, a week.29 In one instance, to attract an
1960 s
audience for Black Ice, Baraka sent one of the workers in Black Arts running
through the streets with a pistol chasing one of the characters in Black Ice.
The bloods seeing a brother with a gun chasing somebody who looked like
a white man made a crowd instantly, and the show began!30
After moving back to his birthplace in Newark, Baraka established a second cultural center, called Spirit House, where he produced plays, organized
musical and other community events and started a basement press called
Jihad Productions (using the Muslim term for struggle which has popularly
been translated as holy war) that produced cheaply stenciled publications
including his own plays and poetry. His own play Black Mass, which was
produced in Newark in 1966, presented a Frankenstein-style experiment
in a prehistoric age when Africans were the only human beings. Yacoub,
an African scientist, is engaged in an experiment to create a new kind of
human being, against the advice of his colleagues. The experiment goes
badly wrong as the newly invented creature, who is a psychopathic white
beast, turns on his creator and kills him and his associates. At the end of
the play, the beast, on his way to the northern caves, invades and threatens
the audience as he exits the theatre. A final voice-over urges the spectators to
engage in a revolutionary struggle against him and his descendants: And so
Brothers and Sisters, these beasts are still loose in the world . . . Let us find
them and slay them. Let us lock them in their caves. Let us declare the Holy
War. The Jihad. Or we cannot deserve to live.31 Larry Neal in 1968 called
this Barakas most important play. Based on the Muslim myth in which
Yacub [sic], a Black scientist, developed the means of grafting different
colors of the Original Black Nation until a White Devil was created, Neal
argued, It is informed by a mythology that is wholly the creation of the
Afro-American sensibility. 32 In addition to its cultural nationalist stance,
the play also raised questions about the practical role of art in society and
the need for politically driven work. In Yacoubs dismissal of his colleagues
admonitions, Black Mass signaled the danger of creativity for its own sake
rather than for a political purpose, and it demonstrated the hazard of using
ones creative gifts without sufficient concern for the welfare of ones fellow
humans.
Similarly, Barakas Slave Ship, which he first directed at Spirit House in
1967, was a cultural history lesson about oppression and rebellion. Set on
a slave ship in which the slaves suffer in darkness while the white seamen
laugh at them from above deck, vignettes of African American history
are shown, such as an attempted slave rebellion and a more contemporary
rebellion of African Americans against white supremacy. At the end of the
play the African Americans kill an Uncle Tom type of preacher and his
white boss and then invite the audience to join them in dancing on the
stage. In the midst of this celebration, according to the stage directions,
once the audience [are] relaxed, somebody throws the preachers head into
center of floor, (p. 16) leaving the audience to contemplate this image.
Not all the plays produced by Black Arts or Spirit House were grim.
In Ben Caldwells Prayer Meeting; or, The First Militant Preacher, a burglar
who is trying to rob a black preachers house is interrupted by the entrance of
the preacher. The preacher, not noticing the burglar, starts to pray and seek
guidance because his congregation are beginning to challenge his nonviolent
stance. The burglar scoffs at him and intends to confront him man to man.
But the preacher assumes the burglars voice to be the voice of God, and so
the burglar goes along with the illusion, ordering the preacher to change his
message and not condone police violence any more. I want my people to be
ready when they come. The shit you preachin gon get my people hurt!
(p. 421). He accuses the preacher of living comfortably while the people are
suffering. Aint nobody afraid of dyin but you. And those like you whore
so comfortable theyve forgot theyre victims. When the preacher asks if
the black people [are] your chosen people, the burglar answers: You
goddamn right! and you and everybody else better ack like it! By the end
of the burglars tirade, the preacher is ready to change his tune and gets
out his gun, which he places next to his Bible. The play finishes with him
rehearsing a revolutionary sermon: Brothers and sisters, I had a talk with
God last night. He told me to tell you that the time has come to put an end
to this murder, suffering, oppression, exploitation to which the white man
subjects us. The time has come to put an end to the fear which, for so long,
suppressed our actions. The time has come . . . (pp. 421; 422). Although
it is a comic farce because of the mistaken identity of the burglar as God
and because of the coarse dialect that he uses, the play succeeds in making
a number of serious points, such as revealing the self-interest of the black
clergy in maintaining their position of nonviolence. Furthermore, while the
burglar comically continues to steal the preachers property at the same time
as acting as God, the preachers decision to renounce nonviolence, registers
as deadly serious because of the social context in which it was staged.
The Black Revolutionary Theatre influenced numerous writers and
artists such as Ed Bullins, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange and August
Wilson. Similar theatre groups and cultural organizations developed around
the country like the Muntu reading group in Philadephia (with Larry Neal
and Charles Fuller, author of the 1981 Pulitzer prize-winning A Soldiers
1960 s
Play), Black Arts/West, later renamed Black House, in Oakland (with

Eldridge Cleaver and Ed Bullins), the Dashiki Project Theatre in New
Orleans, Concept East in Detroit, Black Arts/West in Seattle, and Studio
Watts Workshop in Los Angeles.33
By the late 1960s, a rift had emerged between the various Black Nationalist organizations. While some Black Nationalists maintained a policy of
black separatism, the Black Panthers moved towards a MarxistLeninist position, making political alliances with other radical groups including whites.
A further split divided political nationalists who, according to Cleveland
Sellers, advocated immediate confrontation from cultural nationalists who
contended that armed warfare should come after the people were educated
and united. 34 The symbols of the Black Panthers and other political nationalist organizations were the tools of warfare: rifles, bombs, bandoliers and
pistols while the cultural nationalists adopted certain symbols that they
considered representative of negritude . . . African [or Arabic] names, hair
styles, family organization and art. They opened small shops in nearly every
major city in the nation during 1968 and 1969, which sold a wide variety of
items imported from Africa.35 Ron Karenga for example, a cultural nationalist who influenced Baraka,36 wrote in Negro Digest in 1968, The battle
we are waging now is the battle for the minds of Black people, and that
if we lose this battle, we cannot win the violent one.37 Karenga in defining Black Art supported the kind of work that Baraka was doing. It must
expose the enemy, praise the people and support the revolution. It must
be like LeRoi Joness poems that are assassins poems, poems that kill and
shoot guns and wrassle cops into alleys taking their weapons, leaving them
dead with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland.38 According to Sellers,
Political nationalists were generally scornful of their Cultural counterparts.
They were convinced that the great amount of attention being lavished on
art and culture was dysfunctional and misleading. They were in favor of
armed confrontation. They frequently contended that the obligation of the
revolutionary is to make revolution. They also said that the most revolutionary act possible at the time was taking up a gun and going down on
the pigs.39 However, neither the cultural nationalists nor the political nationalists ever achieved as widespread backing as the civil rights movement.
By 1969, with the election of Nixon, repressive police measures and the
FBIs counter-intelligence program had undermined the various factions
and put most of the leadership out of action.40 Baraka himself later moved
towards a MarxistLeninist position. His play The Motion of History (1976)
retells American history as a series of rebellions by the poor white and black
populations who have been kept separate by the establishment and need to
come together to win the class struggle. In his autobiography Baraka criticized his earlier racist, sexist and essentialist approach. There was a deep
anti-white feeling I carried with me that had grown deeper and deeper since
I left the Village. I felt it was a maturing, but in some aspects it was that
I was going off the deep end. To the extent that what I felt opposed white
supremacy and imperialism, it was certainly correct. But to the extent that
I merely turned white supremacy upside down and created an exclusivist
black supremacist doctrine, that was bullshit.41
El Teatro Campesino
The Teatro Campesino, although less aggressive than the Black Revolutionary Theatres in Harlem and Newark, equally stressed the urgent need
for action and fostered a positive (and equally essentialized) identity for
Chicanos/as. In an article originally published in 1966, Valdez argued that
the UFW strike was not simply economic but concerned the deeper issue of
cultural identity: Beyond unionization, beyond politics, there is the desire
of a New World race to reconcile the conflicts of its 500-year-old history.
La Raza is trying to find its place in the sun it once worshiped as a Supreme
Being. The Raza or race, according to Valdez, had been disabled by the
intermarrying of Spaniards with Native Americans creating a nation of
bewildered halfbreeds in countless shapes, colors and sizes . . . we mestizos
solved the problem [of identity] with poetic license and called ourselves
la raza. Emphasizing the importance of unity and a sense of common
nationhood as demonstrated in the 280-mile UFW march from Delano
to Sacramento, Valdez suggested, The unity of thousands of raza on the
Capitol steps [of Sacramento] was reason enough for our march. Under the
name of HUELGA we had created a Mexican American patria, and Cesar
Chavez was our first Presidente.42 Like Baraka, Valdez predicted dynamic
social change: There are millions more where we came from, across the
thousand miles of common border between Mexico and the United States.
For millions of farmworkers, from the Mexicans and Filipinos of the West
to the Afro-Americans of the South, the United States has come to a social,
political and cultural impasse. Listen to these people, and you will hear the
first murmurings of revolution.43
Initially, the Teatro Campesino presented comic bi-lingual skits (called
actos) that reflected important issues in the strike. Developed through improvisation, the actos were accompanied by live music and used strong visual
1960 s
images and a very physical and presentational style of acting. The small collective of actors consisted mostly of farm workers, and, like the Paterson
Strike Pageant, their authenticity as such and as members of the same community as their audience, was initially as important as their message. Moreover, like Barakas Black Revolutionary Theatre, El Teatro Campesino did
not wait for an audience to come to the theatre but often took their shows directly into the fields on a flatbed truck, entertaining the farmworkers where
they worked and encouraging them to support the strike. Las Dos Caras del
Patroncito (Two Faces of the Boss, 1965), which showed a farmworker swapping roles with his employer, was a light-hearted piece about the conditions
of the Mexican American farmworker. The boss, who has been exploiting
the farmworker, wears a pigs mask and complains about the responsibilities
of his wealthy lifestyle. When he suggests changing places with his employee, the farmworker hesitates but reluctantly agrees. The farmworker,
now wearing the pigs mask, begins to enjoy his power and exploits the boss.
When the boss wants to change back to his former status, the farmworker
refuses. In exasperation the boss seeks help from the other farmworkers
and the union, and ends by finally calling for a strike Huelga (strike). 44
Similarly, La Quinta Temporada (The Fifth Season, 1966) represented, via an
allegory reflecting ancient Aztec beliefs, how the farmworker could win the
strike by depriving the employer of his earnings during the harsh winter
months. At the end of the play, after the employer has conceded defeat and
signed a contract with the worker, the character of Winter removes his sign
and declares himself to be the fifth season the season of Social Justice
(La Justicia social) and kicks the labor contractor off the stage.45
By the time of the 1966 UFW march to Sacramento, El Teatro Campesino
had built up a repertoire of short plays to entertain UFW supporters in some
twenty towns along the way. Their efforts culminated in a performance
in Freeport, just outside the state capital, at which Augustn Lira, wearing a huge fake paunch, impersonated Edmund Brown, the Governor of
California. He arrived at the rally amidst blaring sirens and flashing lights,
climbed out of his car and was helped onto the stage by the growers who
coached him to speak Spanish by teaching him such phrases as, No Huelga
and no boycoteo. Not only did Lira (as the governor) manage to speak
Spanish, but, according to Valdez, he spoke so ardently that he turned into
a Mexican and was finally dragged off the stage shouting Huelga! Huelga
much to the delight of the audience.46
Although Newsweek in 1967 quoted Valdez as saying, We shouldnt be
judged as theater, were really part of a cause,47 the Teatro Campesino
became increasingly prolific and professional, and they launched their first
national tour in 1967, receiving an Obie award for creating a workers theatre
to demonstrate the politics of survival.48 In the same year they separated
from the UFW to create a cultural center in Del Ray, California. As they
became nationally known, they spawned a host of other Chicano theatre
companies around the country which were mainly student-based, such as
Teatro de la Esperanza formed in 1969 and Teatro de la Gente in 1970. In
1971 the various teatros founded an organization called TENAZ, El Teatro
Nacional de Aztlan, to coordinate the activities of the different groups in
both the United States and Mexico, and to facilitate communication and
organize annual events.
As El Teatro Campesino progressed towards an independent professional theatre company, their work developed in scope, with longer and
more complex plays. Rather than focusing on the immediate problems of
the strike, they produced plays about Chicano identity and a wide variety of
grievances. Influenced by El Movimiento, they represented Chicanos/as
as anti-assimilationist. Valdez explained,
After years of isolation in the barrios of Great Valley slum towns like
Delano, after years of living in labor camps and ranches at the mercy and
caprice of growers and contractors, the Mexican American farmworker is
developing his own ideas about living in the United States. He wants to be
equal with all the working men of the nation, and he does not mean by the
standard middle-class route. We are repelled by the human disintegration
of peoples and cultures as they fall apart in this Great Gringo Melting
Pot, and determined that this will not happen to us.49
In his earlier play The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa, which he revised
for performances by the Teatro Campesino from 1968, Valdez depicted a
Chicano family divided over the question of assimilation. Domingo, one
of the sons, denies his heritage in order to progress in Anglo-American
society. He speaks proper English, changes his name to Sunday, dresses
in Anglo clothes, buys a fancy car and makes money as a labor contractor,
living off the earnings of his neighbors. By the end of the play he has
become a social worker and he announces, Now Im middle class! I got
out of the poverty I lived in because I cared about myself. Because I did
something to help myself (p. 204). His selfishness allows him to forget his
home and family, and he is prepared to turn his brother Joaqun over to the
police. By contrast, another brother Belarmino, the hero of the play, has a
revolutionary head (that of Pancho Villa) but no body, while Joaqun has
1960 s
a tough pachuco (gangster) body, but loses his head. In the closing lines,
Belarmino reassures the audience that the head and body will soon unite to
lead the next revolution: Pancho Villa will pass among you again (p. 207).
Similarly, El Teatros production of Los Vendidos (1967) parodied the US
government policy of assimilation. Los Vendidos (The Sell-Outs) is set in a
store selling Mexican Americans stereotypes. The salesman shows his wares
to, Miss Jimenez, who, denying her ethnic identity, wants to buy a safe type
of Mexican American for the Governor who needs a brown face in the
crowd at his luncheon. The salesman shows her his various products such
as the farmworker, the revolutionary and the pachuco all of which she rejects
until he demonstrates his assimilationist model Eric who can function
on boards. She is persuaded to make the purchase when she hears him
deliver a patriotic speech: The problems of the Mexican stem from one
thing and one thing only: hes stupid. Hes uneducated. He needs to stay
in school. He needs to be ambitious, forward-looking, harder-working. He
needs to think American, American, American, American, American! God
bless America!50 As she hands over the money to the salesman, the models
show their true colors and attack her, and, after chasing her out of the shop,
they split the proceeds. When the play was adapted for KNBC television in
1973, the Teatro changed the ending, because of criticism that it was simply
a revenge play.51 They added a new ending that indicated that the episode
was part of an elaborate plot by Chicanos to place their people in significant
points around the country to defend their interests.52
In addition to plays about assimilation, El Teatro Campesino portrayed
grievances with the Vietnam War. By 1970, over 27,000 Chicanos had been
sent to Vietnam of whom about a third (more than 8,000) had died, and
many Chicanos (including veterans) were beginning to protest against the
war. A Chicano veteran described how he became a member of the VVAW,
While I was in basic training and when I went to Vietnam . . . I really
thought we were doing something for our country. I really believed we
were stopping communism . . . I wasnt aware until after I got out how
I was used and how we all were used and what a lost cause it was . . . It
took . . . four months after I was out to really understand what was happening. It was in that period of time I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against
the War and I was in every protest . . . on Vietnam while I was in college. 53
At the National Chicano Moratorium, an initially peaceful anti-war rally in

Los Angeless Laguna Park in the summer of 1970 at which approximately
25,000 people gathered, 1,200 police in riot gear dispersed the crowd with
tear gas and killed the popular Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar, who had
been critical of police violence.54
The anti-war plays by El Teatro Campesino depicted the effects of
the war on the Chicano population. In Vietnam Campesino (1970) General
Defense, a Vietnam veteran at the Pentagon and Butt Anglo, a major agricultural producer, plot how to work together to their mutual advantage.
General Defense agrees to buy Butts lettuce crop with government money
and turn it into cigarettes for the troops, and later to soak it in ddt and
drop it on the Vietnamese. Meanwhile, the Chicanos are coerced into supporting the war effort. General Defense boasts, Mexicans are pouring into
the army. We just give em a pretty little uniform, a few pesos, a blessing from mamacita, and wham-o, theyre on the frontlines. Those boys are
just dying to show their machismo.55 The play makes clear that the war
effort is not in the interest of Chicanos/as and it exploits their sense of loyalty to the American government. Furthermore, the military conscription
policies are shown to discriminate against the poor and the minorities. An
anthropomorphic figure of the draft (dressed as a skeleton with an American
flag for a shroud) conscripts a helpless campesino against his will. But when
the draft threatens to conscript Butt Anglos son, General Defense comes
to his aid and tells the draft, Whats the matter with you, Draft? Havent I
told you to stick to the minorities? Go draft some Mexicans, some Indians,
some Blacks, some Asians, some Puerto Ricans.56
Vietnam Campesino implied that the Chicano/a farmworkers had more in
common with the Vietnam peasantry than with the American government.
The war, whose purpose is vague, endangers the peasantry in both countries.
General Defense, comparing the Vietnamese peasants on one side of the
stage and the Chicano/a farmworkers on the other, points at the Vietnamese
peasants and says, Farmworkers just like them farmworkers . . . Campesinos
just like them campesinos . . . Poor people just like them poor people . . . And
weve been killing them for ten years . . . They arent people, theyre gooks.
Then indicating the Chicanos/as, he adds, And these are greasers,
spics, chilli-ass taco benders. They deserve to die.57 The play also parallels
the use by the growers of pesticides on American agriculture that harms
the health of the farmworkers and the use by the American military of
chemical warfare in Vietnam such as napalm and Agent Orange (all of
which were being supplied by the American petro-chemical industry and
whose ill effects had still not been investigated adequately by 2000.)58 The
government authorities display a similar lack of concern for humanity in
dropping chemical weapons on peasants in Vietnam as do the growers in
1960 s
crop dusting by plane while the farmworkers are working in the fields.59
By the end of the play it becomes clear to the Chicano/a characters that
they have more in common with the Vietnamese peasants than with the
US military industrial complex and that both peoples have been subjected
to inhumane treatment by the American government. The Chicano farmworkers begin to recognize that their real enemies are not the Vietnamese
but the authorities in their own country.
padre: (To his wife.) Oye, vieja, esas gentes son iguales que nosotros.
[Listen, dear, those people look just like us.]
madre: Verdad que s? Y a ellos tambien les dicen comunistas. [Isnt it
true? And they call them communists, too.]
padre: Pero nomas son pobres campesinos. [But theyre just poor farm
workers.] (To Vietnamese.) Oye, Vietnam! [Hey, Vietnam!]
(Vietnamese turn toward campesinos. PADRE and MADRE give
them the peace sign.) (p. 115)60
At the end of the play, the Vietnamese and Chicano peasants indicate
that they should both oppose the war and support each others struggle
for self-determination. The Chicano soldier announces, The war in Vietnam continues, asesinando familias inocentes de campesinos. Los Chicanos
mueren en la guerra, y los rancheros se hacen ricos [assassinating innocent
farmworker families. The Chicanos die in the war, and the growers get
rich], selling their scab products to the Pentagon. The fight is here. Raza!
En Aztlan. Both the Chicanos and Vietnamese peasants join together in
shouting, En Aztlan, and the final stage directions read, They all raise
their fists in the air, in silence (p. 120).
This ending which implied a Marxist ideological position by hinting at an
international class struggle of workers against capitalism, promoted solidarity between Chicanos and Vietnamese in a fight for self-determination. It
also implied a rejection of American national values through the creation of
an alternative cultural nationalism based around the notion of the Raza and
the symbol of Aztlan, the ancient kingdom of the Aztecs. The play raised
the hackles of some of the community and after suffering red-baiting,61 the
Teatro Campesino produced a less controversial play called Soldado Razo
(1971), about a young Chicano who wants to fight in Vietnam and is accompanied by the figure of Death as he says goodbye to his family and his girlfriend before departing for the war. He returns shortly thereafter in a coffin.
When El Teatro Campesino moved again and settled permanently in
San Juan Bautista in 1971, Valdez encouraged the actors to explore more
deeply the cultural heritage of the Chicano people. In his poetic treatise
Pensamiento Serpentino, Valdez outlined the importance of Mayan beliefs:
In order to fully
evolve
(evolucionar con la
serpiente) [to evolve with the serpent]
the Chicano Movement
must
move
con el movement
of the Cosmos
with the nahui ollin
el quinto sol,
sol de movimiento . . . [the four solar movements (i.e. seasons), the
fifth sun, sun of movement].
As Chicanos
As Neo Mayas
we must re-identify
with that [cosmic] center and proceed
outward with love and strength
amor y fuerza
and undying dedication to justice . . .
Jesucristo is Quetzalcoatl
The colonization is over
La Virgen de Guadalupe is Tonantzn
The suffering is over
The universe is Aztlan
The revolution is now.62
Departing from the acto style and the quasi-Marxist political stance,
Valdez began to conduct ritual ceremonies with the actors and develop plays
called mitos (myths) which emphasized the links with Native American
spirituality. The actors, initially skeptical of the new spiritual practices that
Valdez introduced, came to accept them. 63 But when the company produced El Baile de los Gigantes (The Dance of the Giants), a re-creation of
a centuries-old ceremony, at the TENAZ festival outside Mexico City in
1974, members of other theatre companies (especially the more politically
oriented groups from Latin America) criticized their new direction, with
the result that Teatro Campesino withdrew from the TENAZ organization.
1960 s
In the mid-1970s, the company transformed their style again towards plays
in the folktale tradition called corridos, such as La Carpa de los Rasquachis
(The Tent of the Underdogs) and Fin del Mundo (End of the World).
Beginning with a series of images from Chicano cultural history, including
Tonantzn (the Aztec earth mother goddess), the Virgen del Guadalupe,
Pancho Villa, and Aztec dancing, La Carpa tells the story of a young
Mexican farmworker who is enticed to come to America by figures representing the devil and death. He is forced to work long hours for little pay
because he is an illegal immigrant. He marries a fellow farmworker, and
they rapidly produce a large family and take up residence in the barn of a
grower. When he is asked to go on strike he refuses and with no prospects,
he finally dies in poverty and despair. However, Tonantzn reappears to him
and enables him to return to the moment of decision. This time he chooses
to go on strike and the play ends happily.64
In 1978 El Teatro Campesino moved towards the mainstream, hiring
outside actors for their production of Valdezs Zoot Suit and downgrading
the importance of operating collectively. As a result of the commercial success of Zoot Suit, which reached Broadway and was made into a film, Valdez
spent most of the next twenty years working in Hollywood while the Teatro
became a producing house in a converted warehouse that Valdez bought for
the company with the proceeds from Zoot Suit. At the end of the millennium, the enthusiasm of his three sons reinvigorated the Teatro Campesino
(especially after one of them had suffered the indignity of arbitrary arrest
by the police), and they produced energetic renditions of earlier plays, such
as Mundo Mata (2001) based on Fin del Mundo (and rewritten for them by
Valdez) and La Carpa de los Rasquachis (2001) that reflected the historical
and ongoing struggle for social justice for Chicanos/as.
Anti-war theatre
In addition to El Teatro Campesino, theatre companies around the country
such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Living Theatre, the Bread
and Puppet Theatre, and the Open Theatre staged anti-war performances.
The war also spawned a host of significant plays that called into question
Americas role in Vietnam and challenged the dominant image of the
military, such as Vietnam veteran David Rabes The Basic Training of Pavlo
Hummel (1968), Sticks and Bones (1969) and Streamers (1976), and Daniel
Berrigans Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1969), a docu-drama about civil
disobedience as an anti-war strategy. Even Vietnam veterans took part in
anti-war performances, such as the street theatre organized by the VVAW

in their 1970 Operation Rapid American Withdrawal, a four day searchand-destroy operation.65 The VVAW in their performances created an
alternative vision of the American war hero. Rather than representing the
clean-cut soldier fighting for a moral cause, the VVAW showed the brutal tactics of American soldiers in their victimization of innocent civilians.
Likewise, they themselves played a new role in society: that of the anti-war
soldier. William Crandell, one of the VVAW who participated in the fourday protest march, described their form of street theatre: Along the route,
while veterans of other wars denounced our long hair and our message, we
staged typical Vietnam War incidents with members of the Philadelphia
Guerrilla Theater and Nurses for Peace. They played civilians whom we
roughed up, rounded up, and took away.66 The VVAW filmed the proceedings and interviewed the veterans en route from Morristown to Valley
Forge. One of the VVAW explained, What were doing with these incidents is were trying to let these people know what it feels like to be
Vietnamese trying to show them by not playing with yellow people, [but]
playing with white middle American people, let them know what its like
to have no political freedom and have someone come and impose their will
on you.67 The New York Times reported,
While passing through this rural Somerset County [of New Jersey] community, the marchers attempted to dramatize what they said it was actually like when American soldiers passed through a South Vietnamese
village. In a series of staged incidents, the marchers seized a private home
just north of here and in a mock enactment of a combat operation, terrorized its occupants, all of whom had agreed earlier to participate in
the demonstration. Less than an hour later, a search-and-destroy patrol
moved ahead of the main column into the downtown section here [in
Bernardsville, NJ] While a state police helicopter whirred overhead and
dozens of townspeople looked on, the patrol seized a young woman who
had been planted there earlier by the marchers and dragged her away,
shouting obscenities and abuse at her.68
The scenes recorded in the VVAW documentary film Different Sons

look horrific. The soldiers, wearing combat uniforms and carrying realisticlooking toy M-16 rifles, threatened people in small communities and towns,
captured planted actors who were threatened with knives, and strung up
from trees and tortured, or shot, their clothes soaked in blood. Brutally
interrogating one man who was strung up, the soldier shouted, What
1960 s
have you got in that barn . . . If youre lying, youre gonna die, pappa san.
To another who was tied up, a soldier shouted, get on your feet, gook.
After stringing him up, one of the soldiers took his sharp knife and held
it against his neck and ran it along his stomach, shouting, How many
V.C.? Beaucoup V.C.? To another one who was blindfolded and tied up,
a soldier announced, This guy is wasting our time. Weve gotta move it.
We better get rid of him. To a fellow soldier, indicating that the prisoner
was about to be murdered, he shouted, All yours sweetheart. In another
incident, the soldiers took prisoner a bystander who objected to their
killing his friend in the street. They tied and blindfolded him and dragged
him away, shouting, cut his belly open. Cut his belly open. Interrogating
him and putting a knife to his throat, a soldier repeatedly shouted, Who
you working for . . . Who are you with. To which he answered, Im with
nobody. Another soldier ordered, Kill him!
At the end of one of the incidents, a VVAW spokesman announced to
the crowd, What you have just seen is something that Vietnamese people
experience every day. Absolute repression. An infringement on all civil liberties and its done in your name. They are murdered and butchered . . . by
guys like us who are carrying out the policy of this government that you are
allowing to continue.69 Not surprisingly, one of the spectators commented,
I think it is well done. It doesnt feel like a simulation, [it] feels like the
real thing.70 Another spectator commented, It was very effective. I got
scared seeing all those guns on main street.71 By contrast, an opponent of
the demonstration, commented, Respect for law and order, respect for the
military has broken down completely.72
The scenes were not only realistic for the spectators but also for the
soldiers-turned-actors. Occasionally they evoked psychological flashbacks
for the ex-soldiers. William Crandell recalled,
During one frightening moment we realized that an ex-marine who was
using his old K-Bar knife to simulate torturing a prisoner had lost control
and was not simulating any more. His brother vets calmed him down
before he harmed anyone. Some of the detainees in our staged incidents
were treated more roughly than we intended, and I remember very clearly
my shock at how concerted an effort I had to make to keep my finger off
the trigger of my dummy submachine gun.73
As they passed through towns on the way to Valley Forge, the veterans
distributed leaflets indicating that the American conduct in Vietnam had
fallen short of the John Wayne image in Second World War films,
A US infantry company just came through here. If you

had been Vietnamese, we might have burned your house . . . shot your
dog . . . shot you . . . raped your wife and daughter . . . turned you over to
your government for torture. If it doesnt bother you that American soldiers do these things every day to the Vietnamese simply because they are
Gooks, then picture yourself as one of the silent victims. Help end
this war before they turn your son into a butcher
or a co rps e.74
When they arrived at Valley Forge, the VVAWs met with other supporters,
some in wheelchairs with limbs missing, as well as a small counter demonstration of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). One of the counter demonstrators justified the continuation of the war, saying of the Vietnamese:
Theyre not people, theyre animals . . . Any communist I dont care what
his nationality, color, or what . . . if hes a communist he is a beast he is
a godless beast!75 Another spectator, wearing a Veterans of Foreign Wars
hat, commented, I think these are a bunch of younger boys who have been
duped by higher ups . . . by reds . . . communists . . . [in] high places . . . They
know what theyre doing here today is wrong. They should be standing
here with us. A chaplain for the Veterans of Foreign Wars announced that
the VVAW were influenced by Satan and called the demonstration another
plot to divide America.76 At the end of the march, after a body bag with the
label your son? written across it was hauled into a truck, one of the VVAW
said of their actions, I think weve raised some questions. I dont think weve
converted anyone. I think weve caused them to think a bit. And I think thats
all we set out to do, to make them think. The VVAWs, including some
with missing limbs, ended their protest action with a ritual breaking of their
weapons followed by shouts of Peace Now. The following year the VVAW
staged their own war crimes tribunal at which William Crandell testified,
We went to preserve the peace, and our testimony will show that we have
set all of Indochina aflame. We went to defend the Vietnamese people
and our testimony will show that we are committing genocide against
them. We went to fight for freedom and our testimony will show that we
have turned Vietnam into a series of concentration camps. We went to
guarantee the right of self-determination to the people of South Vietnam
and our testimony will show that we are forcing a corrupt and dictatorial
government upon them. We went to work toward the brotherhood of man
and our testimony will show that our strategy and tactics are permeated
with racism. We went to protect America and our testimony will show
why our country is being torn apart by what we are doing in Vietnam.77
1960 s
Summary
The 1960s were a time of deep social unrest with widespread protest against
government policies and normative social attitudes by ethnic minorities, students, anti-war activists and counter-culturists. Theatre and performance
were used by many groups to redefine social mores and provide counterhegemonic notions of national identity. African American and Chicano
theatre staged cultural nationalist images that redefined their image in line
with the Black Power and Chicano movements. They formulated notions
of ethnic identity that helped induce strong feelings of community, and
utilized trans-coding strategies by transforming formerly negative images
(such as the names Black and Chicano) into positive ones. Although later
criticized for being sexist, racist and homophobic, these essentialized social
constructions challenged normative values and empowered African American and Chicano groups. More recently, such essentialist constructions have
been justified on the grounds that essentialism is necessary, for example, in
nationalist and anti-colonial struggles, to increase solidarity and political
power.78
Barakas Black Arts and Black Revolutionary Theatre staged performances that celebrated African American history and culture. Fomenting
revolution and urging the overthrow of the white establishment, the Black
Revolutionary Theatre played a strong part in the Black Nationalist movement of the 1960s.79 After the movement split, Baraka adopted a Marxist
Leninist stance that called for a multiracial coalition in a class struggle.
El Teatro Campesino in the late 1960s and early 70s created a large body
of work that helped solidify a notion of Chicano identity. Responding to
the impetus of the Chicano Movement, their cultural nationalist stance was
anti-assimilationist and based on the self-contradictory notion of Chicanos
as a separate race (Raza) of mixed people (mestizos/as.)80 They promoted
a reinvestigation of Mexican and Native American cultural heritage, particularly Aztec and Mayan spiritual beliefs. They instilled audiences with
a strong sense of pride in their cultural identity, contributed to the success
of the UFW strike and raised questions about US government and military
policies.
Anti-war plays and performances also challenged normative attitudes of
national consensus about the war and created counter-hegemonic representations of the American war hero. Plays such as Sticks and Bones and
Streamers by David Rabe showed confused and disillusioned American soldiers who were asked to fight in a war in which they did not believe. Likewise,
the actions of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in performing anti-war
skits through American towns on the way to Valley Forge created a strong
counter image to Thomas Paines original winter soldier or the heroic figure
of chauvinistic Second World War films. The VVAW demonstrated that
the times that try mens souls are not only the difficult moments on the
battlefield but also the moral decisions that soldiers must sometimes make.

Reconfiguring patriarchy: suffragette
and feminist plays
Imovement
n the 1960s, concomitant with the civil rights
and the anti-Vietnam War protests, women grew more conscious
of their disadvantaged position in society. The feminist movement agitated
for a variety of social improvements: advancement in employment, equal
wages for equal work, childcare facilities, measures to curb violence against
women, the right to abortion (and in some countries for contraception and
divorce), etc. The movement also mobilized around womens health issues,
and it organized consciousness-raising groups across the country to discuss
womens experiences and concerns with the body (health, body image, femininity and hygiene, etc.), and to increase awareness of the need for reform.
Feminist theatre provided support for the feminist movement, adopting
various strategies and modes for critiquing the hegemonic structures of
society. Theatre like most professions was a male-dominated medium. Male
directors and playwrights tended to gravitate towards male themes and male
characters and so the imbalance tended to perpetuate itself. Women directors and playwrights experienced difficulty in being taken seriously. Women
actors were expected to play characters within certain stereotypes the seducing, corrupting or enslaving woman who limits the males freedom, the
doting wife or girlfriend, or the irrational, unstable female who cannot cope
with reality. From the 1960s feminists tried to transform this situation by
demanding more work for women directors, writers, actors and designers;
insisting that more plays by earlier women playwrights be performed; publishing anthologies of work by women past and present; creating theatre
companies dedicated to performing new work by women and about women;
and calling attention to the inferior status of women in society as well as
in the theatrical works of male writers. A surge of activity resulted and,
according to Linda Walsh Jenkins, writing in 1987, Approximately 150
feminist groups . . . produced theatre events in the US since the 60s, and
in the mid-80s more than 30 were still active with new groups forming as
older ones closed.1 When Julia Miles requested plays by women in 1978
for her Womens Project at the American Place Theatre, she was inundated with scripts, thirty of which she presented in readings and seven in
small productions between 1978 and 1980.2 This chapter will discuss the
role of women theatre artists in attempting to de-center male dominance in
society. First, it will consider the historical origins of these ideas and discuss
the suffrage movement at the turn of the century, and then it will examine
some of the plays and performances in the second wave of feminism from the
1960s.
According to Linda Gordon, feminism provides a critique of male
supremacy, formed and offered in the light of a will to change it, which
in turn assumes a conviction that it is changeable.3 Feminist ideas in
American drama date back at least as far as the American Revolution.
Mercy Otis Warren and her friend Abigail Adams both supported womens
civil rights.4 Abigail wrote to her husband John Adams in 1776 encouraging
a declaration of independence as well as a provision for womens rights.
I long to hear that you have declared an independency and by the way,
in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to
make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous
and favourable than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power
into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if
they could. If perticular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we
are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound
by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. That your Sex
are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit
of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the
harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend.
Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless
to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all
Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex.
Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and
in immitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our
happiness.5
In her play The Group, Warren exhibited early feminist sentiments by using
the physical and psychological abuse of women by their British husbands as
a metaphor for the British governments attitude towards its colonies and
as means of vilifying the British. Describing his marriage as an example for
others, Hateall recounts,
SUFFRAGETTE AND FEMINIST PLAYS
I broke her spirits when Id won her purse;

For which Ill give a recipe most sure
To evry hen-peckd husband round the board;
If crabbed words or surly looks wont tame
The haughty shrew, nor bend the stubborn mind,
Then the green Hickry, or the willow twig,
Will prove a curse for each rebellious dame
Who dare oppose her lords superior will. (p. 15)
Mercy Warren implied that American men would (or at least should) treat
their wives with greater equality than the British. But women were denied
the legal privileges of men in the new nation-state. During the American
War for Independence, only the state of New Jersey granted women (who
owned property) the right to vote, and rescinded it in 1807. Not until
1890 would the newly admitted state of Wyoming permit that right again
(followed in 1893 by the already existing state of Colorado, where women
suffragists campaigned effectively to change the law); and in spite of the advancement of womens suffrage in the west, the eastern and southern states
(including Massachusetts, where Susan B. Anthony went to jail for voting
in the 1872 election) displayed great reluctance to change their suffrage laws
until the twentieth century.6
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, American theatre increasingly drew attention to the conditions of women and their legal and social
subservience to men. Anna Cora Mowatts Fashion (1845) posed awkward
questions about the position of women in society but provided a conventional ending in which male patriarchy reasserted itself.7 European immigration helped foster plays about the New Woman. Theofilia Samolinska, an
early feminist Polish actor, wrote The Emancipation of Women, the first Polish
play performed in Chicago in 1873.8 The work of Henrik Ibsen found
an early audience in America, both in the original language (because of
the sizeable Scandinavian immigration) and in translation. For example,
numerous productions of A Dolls House (that justifies a woman walking out
on her husband and children) were staged from 1882 onwards. Although
sometimes diluted with a happy ending, A Dolls House became a favorite
vehicle for some of the leading women actors, including Helena Modjeska
in 1883, Mrs. Fiske in 1894, Ethel Barrymore in 1905 and Alla Nazimova in
1907.
Rachel Crothers, an American playwright with twenty-seven Broadway
productions in the 1920s and 30s, wrote consistently about the status of
women in the early twentieth century.9 In 1912 she told a journalist, If you
want to see the signs of the times, watch women. Their evolution is the
most important thing in modern life.10 Such plays as A Mans World (1909)
and He and She (1912) depicted the improving status of women and the
resistance by men to that change. Crothers portrayed the new independent
career women of the period such as Frank Ware, a feminist writer who
adopts a child whose mother has died, in A Mans World and Ann Herford,
a successful sculptor who competes with and surpasses her husband, in He
and She. In 1931 she reflected: With few exceptions every one of my plays
has been a social attitude toward women at the moment I wrote it . . . I [do
not] go out stalking the footsteps of womens progress. It is something that
comes to me subconsciously.11
Likewise Susan Glaspell questioned the position of women in such
plays as Trifles (1916). Co-founder with her husband George Cooke of
the Provincetown Players that promoted new American drama from 1915,
Glaspell contributed numerous plays to their theatre. Trifles portrayed two
women, who are ridiculed by the sheriff and his men, and solve a crime
that the men cannot. However, rather than handing over the evidence, the
women destroy it, preferring to maintain solidarity with the female culprit
because they consider her murder of her husband as justifiable.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the womens suffrage movement, which was launched with the Seneca Falls declarations in 1848, used
drama and performance as vehicles to advance their cause. This was a natural
development for several reasons. First, the theatre was one of the few areas
of work where women attained a sense of independence. An 1897 editorial
in the New York Dramatic Mirror, while admitting that occasionally women
(due to the increasing availability and acceptability of higher education for
them), won distinction as doctors or lawyers, The theatre alone of all the
institutions of civilization offers to her sisters a field in which they may and
do stand absolutely on an equality with men.12 Actresses such as Mrs. John
Drew and Helena Modjeska ran their own companies and individual performers could command staggering salaries such as Lillian Russell receiving
$3,000 per week in 1906.13 As a taxpayer without a vote, Russell was fond of
quoting the slogan, No taxation without representation. In offering to run
for mayor of New York in 1915, she acknowledged her economic independence but political impotence, If I were mayor I would do my best to give
the city a businesslike administration, conducted on lines of strict economy.
As a business woman myself I know what that means. The chief reason
why I want to vote is because I pay three kinds of taxes on my property,
my income and my business and I think I ought to have something to say
about what is done with my money.14 In addition to economic independence, actresses obtained greater social freedom than most other women.
Although often the material of gossip columns, they frequently traveled
around the country un-chaperoned and formed relatively free liaisons with
men.15 Moreover, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Victorian
attitude of denigrating the acting profession abated somewhat, especially as
a result of Henry Irvings knighthood in 1895. It became more acceptable
for women of high social status to join acting companies, and the social
standing of all actors rose accordingly.16
Secondly, the theatre attracted publicity and glamour to the cause of
womens suffrage. Prominent actresses who identified with the movement
added enormously to its credibility and popularity. For example, when
Ethel Barrymore attended a suffragist meeting in 1910, the headlines of
the Morning Telegraph blared: Ethel Barrymore is a suffragist.17 Similarly
when Lillian Russell marched in a suffragist parade in 1912, a newspaper
commented, Even Lillian Russell who was accustomed to riding in handsome cabs walked the long route for the glory of womanhood.18 Mary Shaw,
a prominent actor who pursued the cause more fervently and addressed
womens organizations in cities around the country where she toured, could
be assured an audience for her suffragist and feminist stance because of her
glamour as a Broadway star. Even vaudeville performers used their stages
to agitate for womens rights as well. The famous Victoria Theatre in New
York presented a Suffragette week in 1909 that proved so popular that the
Colonial Theatre and the Fifth Avenue Theatre emulated it.19
Some of the suffragette parades introduced theatrical conventions to promote their cause. For example, in 1913 Alice Paul, of the National American
Womans Suffrage Association (NAWSA), organized a parade on the day
preceding Woodrow Wilsons inauguration in Washington that attracted
a crowd of 250,000 people. Mobilizing thousands of marchers as well as
floats depicting countries where womens suffrage had been legalized, the
NAWSA staged a pageant on the steps of the Federal Treasury Building
called The Allegory, which portrayed Columbia dressed as the goddess
Minerva, and the five virtues associated with women Justice, Charity,
Liberty, Peace and Hope.20 Unlike most pageants that featured women in
domestic roles, the parade featured women workers carrying banners indicating their many professions. Hazel MacKaye, the author of this pageant
as well as three other suffrage pageants The American Woman: Six Periods of
American Life (1914), Pageant of Susan B. Anthony for the National Womens
Party in 1915, and the Equal Rights Pageant (1923) explained this innovation,
Women are becoming more alive to the fact that the working world is manmade, and that women will have to put up a good fight to get a fair share as
bread-winners . . . Through pageantry, we women can set forth our ideals
and aspirations more graphically than in any other way.21 An angry crowd
attacked the parade and 300 women were hospitalized, but the event upstaged President Wilsons arrival in Washington for his inauguration and
provided important publicity for the movement.22
Thirdly, the British suffragists, who introduced militant tactics earlier
than in America, and the British feminist actors who formed the very successful Actresses Franchise League, writing and staging their own suffragist
plays, influenced the American movement. Fola LaFollette, the daughter of
a famous US Senator, presented Cicely Hamiltons How the Vote Was Won
(which had been performed first in London in 1909 and toured to suffrage
meetings around Britain) in a marathon series of public readings across
the United States.23 A farce reminiscent of Aristophanes Lysistrata, How
the Vote Was Won lampoons the notion that women are dependent on men.
In a mass action the women descend on their male relatives and refuse to
do any work unless they are granted the right to vote. The men, of course,
concede defeat by the end of the play.
Elizabeth Robins, Votes for Women

One of the earliest and most influential suffragist plays imported from
London was Elizabeth Robinss Votes for Women. Elizabeth Robins was an
American who left her medical studies at Vassar College for the stage. She
joined a stock company where she played (in her estimation) 300 parts in
two years and then toured with James ONeill and later Edwin Booth, the
leading actors of the day.24 After her husband, a fellow actor, ventured into
the Charles River wearing a suit of armor and drowned, she emigrated to
London. Rather than depending on the actor-managers of the day for work,
she and Marion Lea (another American exile) obtained the performing
rights to Hedda Gabler and produced the play themselves at the Vaudeville
Theatre in 1891.25 Scheduled for only five matinees, the production was
so successful that it ran for five weeks with Robins and Lea acclaimed
for their interpretations of Hedda and Thea respectively. William Archer
called Robinss performance the finest piece of modern tragedy within my
recollection. Sarah Bernhardt could not have done it better.26
Their success stimulated the two women to form their own repertory
company. Elizabeth Robins explained,
We had come to realize how essential to success some freedom of judgment and action are to the actor . . . But we had further seen how freedom
in the practice of our art, how the bare opportunity to practise it at all,
depended, for the actress, on considerations humiliatingly different from
those that confronted the actor. The stage career of an actress was inextricably involved in the fact that she was a woman and that those who
were masters of the theatre were men.27
Taking advantage of her attempt to establish a professional relationship

with him, for example, George Bernard Shaw sexually harassed Robins in
a carriage, and, in his own words, was flung out of the vehicle into the
mud with wheels flying over me this way and that and horses dancing and
stumbling on my countenance.28 In revenge he refused her the rights to
his play Candida.29
We dreamed of an escape, wrote Robins, through hard work, and
through deliberate abandonment of the idea of making money beyond
what would give us the wages of going on. We would organize a season
leading up to future seasons of that Lea-Robins Joint Management, so
dear to our hearts, that had already seen Hedda through.30 In 1892 they
produced Karin by a Norwegian woman, Alfhild Agrell, about a woman
who fights for the security of her family while her husband squanders his
money on mistresses and ultimately kills their child through neglect. Robins
next secured the rights of The Master Builder from Ibsen, receiving the play
act by act as he wrote it. It proved to be, according to Robins, my greatest
triumph.31 She felt that the play had been written about her relationship with Ibsen. The old artist, Solness, in the play receives a visit from
a young woman, Hilda Wangel, who invites him to create a masterpiece
which inspires him but eventually leads to his death. Hilda Wangel is me,
exclaimed Robins on reading the play.32 Also in 1893 Robins attempted a
play of her own, Alans Wife, which was co-written with Gertrude Bell and
staged at J. T. Greins Independent Theatre. Based on a short story about a
widow who kills her handicapped child, Alans Wife proved to be as shocking
to British critics as Ibsens Ghosts.
Votes for Women, written in 1906 and staged at the Court Theatre in
London in 1907, was Robinss second play. Set in London and Hertfordshire
following the launching of militant tactics by the British suffragette movement, the play focuses on Vida Levering, an activist campaigning for the
rights of women to vote, as well as to work and to obtain decent housing.
Surrounding her, the author juxtaposes an array of Edwardian characters of
differing political complexions including her former lover, Geoffrey Stonor,
a Unionist MP who abandoned her when she became pregnant. Impressed

with Vidas politics when she addresses a rally in Trafalgar Square in the
second act, Jean Dunbarton asks Stonor, her fiance, to make amends for his
past wrong-doing. In the end Stonor agrees to support womens suffrage in
Parliament.
Significantly the play dealt not only with middle-class characters but also
showed working-class women agitating for the vote as well as for decent
wages and working and living conditions. Vida Levering calls for justice for
all classes of women, in particular for those at the bottom of society who
are abused by men. In her maiden speech at Trafalgar Square, she reports
a touching news story, echoing her own past experience, about a young
woman who was being tried for leaving a dead infant on the steps of her
masters house:
This, as youll remember, was about a little working girl an orphan of
eighteen who crawled with the dead body of her new born child to her
masters back door, and left the baby there. She dragged herself a little
way off and fainted. A few days later she found herself in court, being
tried for the murder of her child. Her master a married man had of
course reported the find at his back door to the police, and he had been
summoned to give evidence. The girl cried out to him in the open court,
You are the father! He couldnt deny it. The Coroner at the jurys request
censured the man, and regretted that the law didnt make him responsible. But he went scot-free. And that girl is now serving her sentence in
Strangeways Gaol. (p. 71)
Vida proceeds in her speech to question the fairness of an all-male British

justice system that tries and convicts women.
Men make boast that an English citizen is tried by his peers. What woman
is tried by hers? . . . A woman is arrested by a man, brought before a man
judge, tried by a jury of men, condemned by men, taken to prison by a
man, and by a man shes hanged! Where in all this were her peers? (p. 72)
Votes for Women inspired a wave of suffragist dramas as well as the Actresses
Franchise League, formed in 1908 in Britain. Robins also rewrote it as a
novel called The Convert, which was published in 1907.
Two years after its London production, Votes for Women premiered in
New York in 1909 under the auspices of the Actors Alliance of America to
great enthusiasm. According to the theatre historian Robert Schanke, the
New York opening night was
more like a political rally than a theatrical premiere. Suffragettes representing the Interurban Council of Women Suffrage Clubs, the Union
Club, and the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women crowded the
theatre. Members of the American Suffragettes were conspicuous with
yellow buttons pinned to their lapels. Banners flew from the balcony.
Women from the Harlem Equal Rights League marched during intermission with placards reading Women vote in 4 Western States. Why
not in New York? Frequent bursts of applause accompanied entrances
and exits, the rise and fall of the curtain, and emotion-filled lines of
dialogue added to the excitement.33
While criticizing the dogmatic nature of the play, the New York Times praised
the performance of Mary Shaw, who played the heroine, Vida Levering,
and particularly commended her speech at the Trafalgar Square suffrage
rally:
In the character she is assuming it is necessary for Miss Shaw to convey
a sense of a woman shriking [sic] at an unusual task, an impulse to throw
herself heart and soul into the movement in which she believes, and, at the
same time, a natural reticence in the face of conditions she has not learned
to meet. The crowd jeers and yells, for every word of encouragement
there is a catcall of disgust, and yet, slowly but surely, the speaker is able
to win the attention. Ultimately the dissenting voices are silenced, and
she proceeds without interruption to the end. The speech is beautifully
written, and it contains passages of exquisite tenderness, made exquisitely
tender, too, by Miss Shaw.34
Like Elizabeth Robins, Mary Shaw also jeopardized a lucrative stage

career in order to present activist plays. After great success in Ibsens Ghosts
in 1899, she chose provocative roles in Hedda Gabler, Shaws Mrs. Warrens
Profession and Candida and played the heroine in the New York premiere
of Elizabeth Robinss Votes for Women. Mrs. Warrens Profession, in which
she played the brothel keeper who uses her immoral earnings to improve
her social position and educate her daughter at Cambridge University, was
closed after one night of its try-out run in New Haven because of public
disapproval. When the play moved to New York, it caused a scandal and the
entire company was arrested.35 Undaunted, Mary Shaw obtained the rights
to the play and toured it in 1907 and 1908.
Despite frequently negative critical feedback, she persisted with feminist
and suffragist drama, writing and producing her own pieces The Parrots
Cage and Impressionistic Sketch of the Anti-Suffragists under the aegis of the
Gamut Club which she had helped establish to further the appreciation
of the individual struggle every woman is making in her particular line
of endeavor.36 She later unsuccessfully tried to raise enough money to
establish a Womans National Theatre. No matter what an author says,
Shaw argued, The play is remodeled and whipped into shape by those men
in charge, who cause heroines to talk not as real women would but as men
think that women ought to talk and act.37
Other suffragist plays such as On to Victory by Hester Johnson (1915)
that shows suffragettes as attractive young women wanting to get married,
as opposed to the negative stereotype of them as man-haters and Melinda
and Her Sisters (1916), an operetta by the millionaire Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont
and her collaborator Elsa Maxwell, as well as pageants, tableaux vivants and
street parades all lent support to the struggle for womens suffrage that was
eventually won in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment
to the Constitution.38 Despite important work by such Broadway playwrights as Sophie Treadwell and Lillian Hellman, and Harlem renaissance
writers such as Georgia Douglas Johnson, the feminist movement lost momentum with the right-wing backlash in the 1920s and divisions over the
equal rights amendment.39 After the Second World War, the dominant ideology of the 1950s projected men as war heroes and women as homemakers
and beautiful objects, and the gains of the New Woman from the turn of
the century became less visible.
In the 1960s a second wave of feminism emerged that would produce
new forms of theatrical expression. Because they considered that voting
rights for women had brought little reward, leaders of the feminist CounterInaugural March on Washington in 1969 asked Alice Paul, a leader of the
suffragist movement at the turn of the century, to join with them in burning their voter registration cards. Alice Paul refused for good reasons. The
struggle for womens suffrage had been a long fight. During the latter part
of the struggle in the early twentieth century, Alice Paul, as the head of
the National Womens Party, had personally organized rallies and parades,
picketed the White House, suffered physical attack, and endured imprisonment, hunger strikes and forced feeding. While she sympathized with the
concerns of the organizers of the Counter-Inaugural March in 1969 (and had
organized a similar protest in Washington at the time of President Wilsons
inauguration), Paul refused to burn her voter registration card saying that
she had suffered too much to obtain that right to willingly sacrifice it.40
However, in asking her to do so, the organizers of the event seemed to be
indicating that the second wave of feminism was virtually starting again
from scratch, that womens suffrage had achieved little to disturb male
privilege.
The feminist movement that blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s challenged the white male patriarchy and the roles for women prescribed by the
dominant culture. The movement gained strength as a result of numerous
grievances that became more visible as a result of the general politicization of the population during the civil rights movement, student agitation,
the Vietnam War protests, the enthusiasm for alternative lifestyles and the
gay and lesbian liberation movement. Women argued that their rights as
citizens were severely limited, but men were generally dismissive of their
concerns. Feminists articulated their complaints and formed organizations
and consciousness-raising groups to generate awareness and solidarity and
to advocate that the personal is political.
In the theatre the roles for women on and off the stage were manifestly
insufficient. A study by Action for Women in Theatre determined that
only 7 per cent of the playwrights and 6 per cent of the directors in funded
non-profit theatres during 19691975 were women.41 Furthermore, according to Patti Gillespie, the roles for women in theatre were too few, and
too inconsequential . . . An analysis of Broadway and Off-Broadway plays
produced between 1953 and 1972 reveals that only one-third of the available
roles in the some 350 plays were for women.42 This imbalance would be
slow to change. By the mid-1980s, despite enormous activity by women on
the margins, conditions remained fairly constant in the mainstream. Helen
Chinoy reported that in 1986 only one new play by an American woman
was staged on Broadway Emily Manns Execution of Justice and that, out
of some two hundred regional theatres in the 19845 season, a quarter of
those theatres not specifically dedicated to womens work had produced no
plays by women and 40 percent of those theatres had produced only one
play by a woman in their season.43
The main ideological lines of feminism and feminist theatre divided
along three strands: liberal (bourgeois), radical (or cultural) and materialist.44
Liberal feminism and liberal feminist theatre challenged the domination
by men economically, socially and politically, and sought ways in which
women could achieve parity with men in those areas. According to Jill
Dolan, the general purpose of liberal feminism was to insert women into
the mainstream of political and social life by changing the cultural perception of them as second-class citizens.45 Liberal feminism promoted a
variety of issues such as the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment,
the effort to gain equal pay for equal work, a womans right to control
over her body and to choose abortion, childcare, and affirmative action.46
By contrast, radical feminism conceived of women as separate and distinct
from men, and superior rather than inferior. Their notion of a womens
culture which is different and separate from the patriarchal culture of
men emphasized the biological differences between the sexes.47 In the 1970s
womens consciousness-raising groups were formed to explore womens experiences and to articulate their concerns and sense of identity. Often, theatrical material developed out of these discussions. Materialist feminism
(also known as socialist feminism in the early days), on the other hand,
challenged the socio-economic power relations affecting gender, class, race
and sexual orientation, emphasizing the structural similarity of and links
between gender oppression and class oppression. It called attention, for
example, to the invisible and unpaid labor of women engaged in childcare,
cooking and cleaning. It also assumed that gender is a social construct, and
that patriarchal society has provided essentialized social roles and ways of
dressing and behaving that are oppressive both to men and women and can
be broken. Rather than regarding women as forming a separate and distinct
community from men, materialist feminism recognizes issues that separate
women from each other. Thus, as Audre Lorde, Cherre Moraga, bell hooks
and others pointed out, women of other ethnicities or working-class women
or lesbians might have less in common with white middle-class women than
had been previously assumed.48 In particular materialist feminism emphasizes the relationship between sexuality and social norms, suggesting that
the predominance of heterosexuality (and aggressive male and submissive
female sexuality) is a conditioned response to the material conditions of
dominant culture. Thus, materialist feminism attempts to denaturalize
the dominant ideology that demands and maintains such oppressive social
arrangements.49
Feminist theatre pursued all three strands liberal, radical (cultural) and
materialist (socialist) by attempting to achieve recognition and jobs for
female artists, representing the difference and superiority of women, deconstructing gender identity and demanding the transformation of social
structures that perpetuate class, gender and racial oppression. Consequently
it has presented a variety of forms and themes. While liberal feminists wrote
in a similar manner to male playwrights in order to gain acceptance within
the male dominated theatre where they had been neglected, radical (cultural)
feminists frequently experimented with form as critics developed the notion
of a feminine morphology.50 In the mid-1970s the feminist film critic
Laura Mulvey theorized traditional dramatic structures as sadomasochistic
with the female character generally playing the masochist who is conquered by the male. Sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and
strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and
an end.51 The French playwright Helène Cixous developed a notion of
an ecriture feminine, which has been elucidated by Jill Dolan: Writing
with the female body allows for an excessive flow of blood, birth, and sexual
metaphors in a nonlinear, florid, stream-of-consciousness style that inscribes
sexual difference as the content and form of cultural feminist theatre.52
Consequently, women theatre artists often avoided a logocentric, hierarchical structuring of material, replacing linear with circular narratives and
avoiding closure. Rather than a single male protagonist, feminists often
introduced communal female protagonists,53 as in Ntozake Shanges for
colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (1976), or a
split self, as in Marsha Normans Getting Out (1977) or Cherre Moragas
Giving up the Ghost (1986). Martha Boesing of At the Foot of the Mountain
recalled this formal development as evolving for empirical as well as theoretical reasons: We questioned the notion of a single or static personality
as we began to notice that each of us is really made up of many different
images, feelings, attitudes and styles that are constantly changing depending on who we are with and what is expected of us. And we tried to create
theatre that reflected this multitude of personalities within. We moved away
from linear plays to ones built like mosaics or patterns on a quilt.54 Rosalyn
Drexler, in differentiating female from male art, argued that the female
aesthetic is to be unaesthetic. When I think of aesthetic, I think of something too finely placed, too much in good taste. Women are trying to be a
little sloppier, changing forms, getting stronger, letting ideas come in and
that is unaesthetic.55
Feminist theatre thus encompassed a variety of approaches that overlapped and intersected. At the liberal end of the spectrum, writers and
groups produced plays focusing on more realistic women characters but
otherwise largely indistinguishable from plays by men. They also tended to
concentrate on the practical problems of the employment for women artists
and the showcasing of the work of women writers.56 Such enterprises as
Interart in New York and the Los Angeles Feminist Theatre promoted
female artists in the best artistic and financial conditions that they could
muster in order to introduce them to the mainstream. To other more radical
groups, the emulation of male production values and style was tantamount
to selling out. Radical feminists preferred to transform the work method, the
subject matter, the style and the message to create a distinctly feminist perspective. Women frequently formed theatre groups of leaderless collectives
with productions conceived by the ensemble out of material that reflected
their experiences as women. Groups like Its All Right to be Women chose
styles, themes and production methods which identified them as separatist.
According to Patti Gillespie,
The radical theatres tend to reject traditional (scripted) plays, normal
patterns of organization, accepted critical standards, polite language.
The specific characteristics chosen as replacements depend, of course,
on whether the theatre strives to promote lesbianism, explore the black
experience, raise consciousness, or name the enemy. But in every instance radical theatres select strategies which cultivate solidarity among
adherents while encouraging antagonism, or at least apathy, toward previously accepted social norms. They do not practice persuasion of the
many by the few; instead they organize themselves into leaderless groups
which strive to break down traditional distinctions between the leader
and the led, the actor and the audience. They do not strive to adjust
their presentation to the expectations of an audience; rather they jolt the
audience into new perceptions, new ways of looking at the world. They
do not promote a single program of change nor answer the question,
What do women want? They present instead the different experiences
of many women without attempting to resolve the consequent contradictions.57
The themes of these personal explorations in radical feminist theatre

(many of which tended to marginalize men or were presented in such
a way as to upset male dominance) included transformation, matriarchy,
female divinities, violence against women, strong women from the past,
reclaiming the female body from its objectification by men, female religious
figures, abortion, childbirth, child-rearing, female relationships and solidarity, femalemale relationships, separatism, lesbianism, eroticism, menstruation, menopause, prostitution, stereotyping, role playing, female rituals,
as well as, according to Vivian Patraka, mourning, rage, empowerment,
celebration and their ritualized expressions.58
Transformation or the potential for women to change was a central theme
of radical feminist drama. It is implicit in less radical plays such as Ntozake
Shanges for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
and Wendy Wassersteins The Heidi Chronicles but specifically emphasized in
the work of groups influenced by Joseph Chaikins Open Theatre such as At
the Foot of the Mountain. As in the Open Theatres Mutation Show (which
explored character transformation and involved Roberta Sklar, who cofounded Womens Experimental Theater, and Muriel Miguel, who founded
Spiderwoman), womens theatre groups investigated the many roles that
women play and showed characters transforming in mid-scene as well as
actors recalling the changes they have undergone in their past. Transformation in the life of a female character often occurred as a result of the death
of a husband, parent or child resulting in the liberation of the female. Karen
Malpedes A Lament for Three Women, Honor Moores Mourning Pictures,
Corinne Jackers Bits and Pieces and Alice Childresss Wedding Band all focus
on the loss of a parent or a husband that results in a new role for the surviving
woman. Likewise, Letters Home by Rose Leiman Goldemberg (which dramatizes the letters of Sylvia Plath to her mother and depicts Sylvia Plaths
suicide when she was at the height of her powers as a poet) culminates in
the empowering of her mother, Aurelia. Rather than being destroyed by
her daughters suicide, Aurelia reads from Sylvias diary at the end of the
play, echoing Sylvias sentiment when she was seventeen: I still am not
completely molded. I am strong. My life is just beginning!59 According to
Martha Boesing,
Transformational theatre became the aesthetic format of many womens
theatres in the seventies. Plays were often layered, imagistic, nonsequential.
Companies of five or six actors were called upon to play twenty to thirty
roles in an evening. We gathered across the nation in consciousnessraising groups to tell our stories and talk about the many facets, the many
roles we had been asked to play wife, daughter, mother, lover, colleague,
nymph, crone. We were getting our feelings out some of us for the first
time. And we were finding friends, sisters, who shared these feelings
anger, grief and a common sense of having been silenced.60
The theme of matriarchy was sometimes invoked as an answer to the

oppressive force of patriarchy. The Daughters Cycle, a loose adaptation of
the Oresteia by the Womens Experimental Theatre, enacted a ritual that
moves through themes of birth, the ambivalent and interchangeable nature
of mother/daughter roles, the underlying contracts negotiated between
mothers and daughters, the commonality of all women as daughters, and
a naming and reclaiming of our matrilineage.61 In a ritualized recitation, each of the actors named her own mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother (or surrogate mothers). They then repeated the recitation with
little details, adding positive values to their relationship culminating with
Roberta Sklar:
I am Roberta
daughter of Rose
when my mother died five years ago
as the rabbi spoke a eulogy for her
he named her repeatedly as Rose
daughter of Aden, her father
he never mentioned her mother
since that time I have had the opportunity
to name my mother publicly
Rose
the daughter of Golda, her mother
the daughter of Ruchel, her grandmother
the daughter of a woman from Odessa
whose name I dont know.62
Likewise, women questioned patriarchal religious structures and theatre

companies such as Spiderwoman, Coatlicue, and Foot of the Mountain
staged plays featuring ancient goddesses in Native American and other
cultures. Gloria Steinem has discussed the survival of such goddesses and
female religious symbols in the last five thousand years despite their marginalization by male patriarchal religions. Gnostic Christians worshiped
Sophia as the female Holy Spirit and considered Mary Magdalene the
wisest of Christs disciples; Tantric Buddhism still teaches that Buddhahood
resides in the vulva; the Sufi mystics of Islam believe that fana, or rapture,
can be reached only through Fravashi, the female spirit; the Shekina of
Jewish mysticism is a version of Shakti, the female soul of God; and even
the Catholic church included forms of Mary worship that focused more on
the Mother than on the Son.63
Feminist theatre often depicted strong or famous women from the past.
Plays detailing the lives of female activists, adventurers, artists, etc. demonstrated to contemporary women the possibility of succeeding in a maledominated society. A theatre group that particularly adopted this approach
was Little Flags, originally based in Boston. Headed by Maxine Klein,
who won an Obie in 1970 for her direction of Megan Terrys Approaching
Simone (about the French political activist Simone Weil), Little Flags produced plays about female political activists in the labor movement such
as Mother Jones (The Furies of Mother Jones), Emma Goldman (Emma),
Haydee Tamara Bunke Bider, a guerilla soldier who fought with Che
Guevara (Tania), as well as plays about strong contemporary women, such as
Marx on her Mind about a fast-food waitress who is a union organizer and
writes jazz.64 Martha Boesings Antigone Too: Rites of Love and Defiance
(1983), an adaptation of Sophocles Antigone, added famous female dissidents, such as Emma Goldman, Mother Jones, Margaret Sanger and
Rosa Parks.65 Similarly, Cherre Moragas Heroes and Saints (1992) depicts a
contemporary heroine without a body who impersonates the Virgen de
Guadalupe and leads a popular protest against the use of pesticides in
California, sacrificing herself for the health and well-being of her people.
Cultural and material feminists as well as radical feminists also investigated representations of sexuality, considering the male fantasization of
the female body and the objectification of women, lesbian representation,
sexual violence, pornography and female sexual pleasure. Laura Mulvey analyzed the dominance of the male gaze as the organizing principle in film.66
Teresa de Lauretis and Jill Dolan, amongst others, examined the lesbian
protagonist as a means for subverting normative representation in theatre.67
Performance artists Carolee Schneeman and Karen Finlay performed nude
to de-fantasize the female body and reclaim it as their own. Schneeman in
her Interior Scroll (1975) read from a minutely folded scroll that she pulled
from her vagina, listing grievances against the male dominated film profession and her dismissal by a fellow film artist whom she quoted as saying
to her, We think of you as a dancer.68 Karen Finlay, who earned her
way through college by working in strip clubs, disrupted the erotic image
of her nude body (which she smeared with chocolate or honey or other
substances) in such performances as The Constant State of Desire (1986),
with a text replete with scatological description and invective against men.
Rather than a stripper who meakly offers herself to the male viewer, Finlay
attacked male oppression and highlighted themes of female degradation,
sexual abuse, incest, etc. in her stage persona of an unsocialized woman or
banshee.69 Martha Rosler had her body carefully measured by two males in
Vital Statistics (1973) after which she and other women listed forms of female
degradation and then proceeded to purify their bodies. According to Jeanie
Forte, Countless others perform in the nude, not as actresses providing
anonymous titillation for an audience, but actual women simultaneously
revealing their vulnerability and their sexuality. They literally expose the
female body as a sign while also reclaiming it as their own, in defiance of
the oppressive system of representation and patriarchal encoding.70
Another common focus for feminist theatre was violence, either physical or psychological, against women. Public rituals and demonstrations
such as Take Back the Night (initially in New York in 1978 and subsequently on a variety of sites including college campuses), Three Weeks in May
(Los Angeles, 1977), In Mourning and in Rage . . . (Los Angeles, 1977) and
We Fight Back (Portland, 1978) were organized by women to call attention
to the danger from rapists and pornography.71 At the initial Take Back the
Night march, Andrea Dworkin summed up the sentiment:
Tonight we are going to walk together, all of us, to take back the night,
as women in other cities all over the world, because in every sense none
of us can walk alone. Every woman walking alone is a target . . . Only
by walking together can we walk at all with any sense of safety, dignity
or freedom. Tonight, walking together, we will claim to the rapists and
pornographers and women batterers that their days are numbered and
our time has come.72
A number of plays dealt with rape such as Raped: A Womans Look at Bertolt
Brechts The Exception and the Rule (1976) by At the Foot of the Mountain
and the more recent Until Someone Wakes Up (1992) by Carolyn Levy. One
of the problems in addressing this topic was how to avoid creating an erotic
masochistic act on stage. Often, the solution was to avoid representing
the male character, and so the rape scene emphasized the effect of rape
on the female character (or, as in the case of Spiderwomans Power Pipes,
the responsibility of another female in the situation), rather than showing
the rape physically on stage. Eleanor Johnson of Emmatroupe, a shortlived New York womens theatre group formed in 1975, explained that in
their production of A Girl Starts Out . . . A Tragedy in 4 Parts (1978), The
scenario is one of female persecution, but in its mode it steps outside of
the pornographic: the female character is victimized as women in life are
victimized, but the actors body is not sexualized for a male viewer and the
rape is never sentimentalized, romanticized, or glorified. Instead it is shown
for what it is, what it does, and what it means.73 Other types of violence
against women such as sexual abuse and incest were often treated in feminist
theatre, as in Maria Irene Forness The Conduct of Life (which shows a man
kidnapping a young woman for sexual purposes), Marsha Normans Getting
Out (about an ex-con who tries to escape her former life as a prostitute)
and the more recent Pulitzer Prize winning play by Paula Vogel, How I
Learned to Drive (1997, about a young girl who is sexually abused by her
uncle). Perhaps the most horrific aspect of this subject was depicted by the
English playwright Sarah Daniels in Masterpieces, which portrays a female
protagonist who happens to watch a snuff movie in which the female actor
(as opposed to the character she is playing) is sawed into pieces by a man
with a chain saw. She is so appalled that men could use women for such a
purpose that, when a man indecently assaults her at a subway station, she
throws him under the approaching train.
Materialist (socialist) feminist writers and groups particularly in Britain
used Brechtian staging techniques to investigate the overlap between class
and gender oppression. Red Ladders Strike While the Iron is Hot (1972) documented the oppressive conditions for women both at home and in the
workplace. Caryl Churchills Vinegar Tom (1985) showed parallels between
the victimization of women as witches in the seventeenth century and the
modern depreciation of women, and her Top Girls considered the difficult choices made by successful career women. Materialist feminists also
often inverted the genders of characters in order to demonstrate them as
social constructions. This was done with particular effectiveness by Caryl
Churchill in Cloud Nine in which the casting against gender was used to
expose Victorian conventions of gender and sexual behavior. Similarly the
French playwright Simone Benmussa showed the constructedness of gender
in The Singular Life of Albert Nobs (1977) about a woman who disguised
herself as a man. In Home of the Brave (1984) performance artist Laurie
Anderson dressed in male attire with closely cropped hair and, using electronic devices, altered her voice from male to female to confound gender
expectation. Split Britches, based at the WOW Cafe in New York, dressed
alternatively in male and female attire to call attention to the way their appearance determined attitudes toward gender. Lois Weaver of Split Britches
described the aims of their work: We just tried to tell our stories the best
way we could and . . . we wanted to reclaim a lot of roles that had been
denied us to be fat if we wanted to be fat, and to be a country western singer even if we couldnt sing, and to be Juliet if we were sixty.74 In
particular Split Britches presented lesbian actors on stage parodying heterosexual roles, and dressing in gender-stereotyped costumes, which they
would inhabit and alienate. Linda Jenkins described the effect of Peggy
Shaw and Lois Weaver alternating roles of butch and femme by dressing in
a variety of costumes:
In some of their plays, these costumes remain on the actor, overlaid with
other costumes, until the audience perceives layers and layers of differing
gender-wear, differing period pieces, differing ages and differing class
and ethnic accoutrements . . . At one point [in Beauty and the Beast], the
butch is wearing the dress of the old lady, the cape of the Beast, and
Perry Comos sweater, while the Jewish actress is wearing the clothes of
the rabbi, a tutu, and at one point, a dress hanging around her neck on a
hanger.75
In Belle Reprieve (1991), Split Britches combined with the gay British group
Bloolips in a re-gendered adaptation of Tennessee Williamss A Streetcar
Named Desire. The gay males of Bloolips impersonated Mitch and Blanche
while Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw of Split Britches performed Stella and
Stanley. Thus at the climax of the play, Peggy Shaw, a lesbian, was playing
Stanley about to rape Blanche played by Bette Bourne, a drag queen, with
Weaver and Precious Pearl dressed as lanterns. In the middle of the rape
scene, Bette Bourne broke off to complain that he wanted to be in a real
play. Weaver dropped her lantern to reply, Now we all talked about this,
and we decided that realism works against us.76 After discussion, they
return to ironizing their roles as rapist and victim.
stanley: If you want to play a woman, the woman in this play gets
raped and goes crazy in the end.
blanche: I dont want to get raped and go crazy, I just wanted to wear
a nice frock, and look at the shit theyve given me! (p. 181)
Ironically, after the feminist movement seemed to have ground to a halt

under the conservative policies of Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s and
because of an ideological impasse between materialist feminists (who recognized divisions between women on grounds of class, ethnicity and sexual
orientation) and radical feminists (who emphasized the commonality of
women), feminist theatre returned with considerable force in the 1990s.
Not only did Paula Vogels How I Learned to Drive win the Pulitzer prize,
but The Vagina Monologues (1996) by Eve Ensler became one of the most
visible feminist pieces at the end of the twentieth century, being performed
all over the United States and abroad and launching a grassroots political movement. Ensler, author of Depot (about nuclear disarmament) and
Necessary Targets (about the rape of women in Bosnia), initially performed
The Vagina Monologues as a one-woman show. Based on interviews that
she had conducted with over 200 women about their vaginas and using
only a high stool, a microphone and index cards as an aide-memoire and
set against a background of delicate red drapes subtly reminiscent of labia,
Ensler recounted personal stories of denial, discovery, exploration, masturbation, physical abnormalities, medical examinations, heterosexual and
lesbian sex, orgasms, genital mutilation, rape and birth. Between the stories,
she supplied facts both about the virtues of female genitalia and their violent
abuse. Beginning with the acknowledgement that many women have been
made to feel ashamed about their vagina, the piece proceeds to emphasize
its extraordinary structure and attributes. On one level the piece serves the
function of upbeat sexual education, celebrating the various features of the

vagina. As such it acts as a riposte to Sigmund Freuds notion of penis envy,
countering it with vagina envy and providing the females in the audience
with feelings of recognition, relief, satisfaction and solidarity.77 On another
level, the piece provides valuable insight into the violence that is commonly
perpetrated against women. Despite the graphic explicitness of some of the
material, The Vagina Monologues maintains audience empathy by conveying
its message mainly through the personal and poignant experiences of the
various women that Ensler interviewed.
Ironically, Vagina Monologues, in achieving its success, was returning to
the radical feminist position: the essentialized and universalized perspective
of a womans culture, different and separate from the patriarchal culture
of men.78 The stories are by turn touching, disturbing, and uplifting, and
culminate with the celebratory enactment of a triple orgasm followed by a
description of the birth of Enslers own grandchild.79 (Although she was
sexually abused by her father and has a lesbian partner, Ensler adopted a
young man as her son, and attended the delivery of his and her daughterin-laws child.) Describing her daughter-in-law in the hospital, screaming
with contractions, she recalls:
I was there when her vagina changed
from a shy sexual hole
to an archaeological tunnel, a sacred vessel,
a Venetian canal, a deep well with a tiny stuck child inside,
waiting to be rescued.
I saw the colors of her vagina. They changed.
Saw the bruised broken blue
the blistering tomato red
the gray pink, the dark;
saw the blood like perspiration along the edges
saw the yellow, white liquid, the shit, the clots . . .
and there as her vagina became a wide operatic mouth
singing with all its strength;
first the little head, then the gray flopping arm, then the fast
swimming body, swimming quickly into our weeping arms. (pp. 1234)
Arguably Ensler was adopting the strategy of strategic essentialism. After

performing The Vagina Monologues in small New York venues and winning
an Obie award, she founded V-Day, a non-profit grassroots movement
dedicated to ending violence against women around the world.80 Raising
millions of dollars for rape crisis centers and other womens organizations
out of the profits from the play, V-Day echoed the goals of the earlier
Take Back the Night movement.81 Its first major event was a benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues in New York for Valentines Day 1998
with a star-studded cast (including Glenn Close, Winona Ryder and Lily
Tomlin) who divided up the monologues amongst themselves. Subsequent
events included brief appearances in the long-running show by film stars
and other celebrities (such as Whoopi Goldberg and Donna Hanover, the
estranged wife of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) in New York, as
well as similar events in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities, and a
massive Valentines Day performance in Madison Square Garden in 2001.
In addition V-Day organized simultaneous performances of The Vagina
Monologues on hundreds of college campuses to coincide with the annual
celebration of Valentines Day from 1999 as a means of empowerment and to
raise awareness about violence against women. Many of these events organized support activities (in addition to a performance of Vagina Monologues),
such as the Clothesline Project (which originated in Massachusetts in 1990)
where women personally inscribed stories of their own sexual abuse onto
T-shirts that they hung on a publicly displayed clothesline.82 Thus, from
a small show without props, Ensler had built a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign by 2001 to help reclaim female sexuality and call attention
to violence against women.
Summary
Feminist theatre during the twentieth century interrupted dominant male
discourse with a variety of tactics. It blossomed in the early part of the
century in allegiance with the suffragist movement and re-emerged in
the 1970s and 1980s as part of the womens liberation movement, using
liberal, radical and materialist feminist approaches. By the 1990s the second
wave of feminism began to wane. Nevertheless, before the end of the millennium there were important successes such as Paula Vogels Pulitzer prizewinning How I Learned to Drive and Eve Enslers Vagina Monologues as well
as the ongoing work of such companies as Split Britches and Spiderwoman
that demonstrated the resilience of feminism and its continued ability to
provide challenging material for the stage.

Imaging and deconstructing the
multicultural nation in the 1990s
I1960s
n the wake of the various political movements of the
and 1970s such as the civil rights, Black Power, Red Power (AIM),
Chicano, anti-Vietnam War, feminist, gay and lesbian movements, the period of the late 1970s and 1980s emphasized a preoccupation with individual
rather than collective concerns. While the publication of Alex Haleys Roots
in 1976 and its broadcast on television in 1977 prompted an investigation into
cultural origins and ethnic identities, celebrating difference, the era of the
Reagan Presidency of the 1980s became known as the me generation. In
the late 1980s and early 1990s, a considerable thaw occurred in geopolitics
with Gorbachevs policies of glasnost and perestroika from 1985, the fall of
the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain in 1989, the dismantling of the Soviet
Union in the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War. Likewise, the emphasis on separatist and essentialist political and cultural identities moderated,
as multiculturalism became a catchword in society. Jesse Jackson, who ran
for President in 1984 and 1988, helped stimulate multicultural alliances and
formed the National Rainbow Coalition in 1986 that aimed to unite various
groups in American society under one umbrella, such as racial minorities
(people of color), gays, the poor, peace activists, and environmentalists. From
the late 1980s, rather than unity or separatism, activists celebrated diversity
and multiculturalism as a strategy of resistance and progressive change.
Political correctness (p.c.) entered the discourse, supporting affirmative action and hate speech regulations, and the politics of difference. Universities
introduced required courses in American cultures (rather than the American
culture) in the hope that students would become more tolerant of others
if they understood their differences and appreciated the contribution that
various cultures had made.1 Multicultural canons were developed on university campuses that celebrated the positive aspects of difference rather
than focusing on the negative history of discrimination. In the art world,
multicultural shows were mounted to display the creativity of different

cultures. Of this movement, Holland Cotter wrote, Multiculturalism . . .
will define the 1990s in the history books as surely as Pop defined the
1960s.2
It is clear from the 2000 census that the population in the United
States is becoming increasingly diverse,3 and that non-Hispanic whites,
who formed the majority in the past are now a minority in California, the
most populated state of the country, as well as in half of the one hundred
largest cities.4 Moreover, as Cotter points out, the census showed that
ever-increasing numbers of people are unwilling to identify themselves
by a single, ethno-racial category. They are Asian-American, plus AfricanAmerican, plus white, or some other multipart mix. Furthermore, as the
demographic profile shifts it also becomes more complex. Interracial marriage in the United States is at an all-time high, producing children who are
able to choose, theoretically at least, among a range of racial affiliations.5
Some optimistic commentators even suggested that, despite the presence
of segregated ghettos in most large American cities, the new millennium
marked a break with previous racial thinking and an end to concepts such
as multiculturalism as America entered a period of postethnicity.6
Although politicians have tried to accommodate the increasingly multicultural society within the traditional values of the hegemonic state, theorists and artists of multiculturalism in the 1990s questioned the relationship
between multiculturalism and assimilation, and indeed asked whether multiculturalism represented an advance in social policy or not. Some critics
looked back to the political strength achieved by essentializing racial difference. On the other hand, poststructural theorists and cultural historians
suggested that the notion of race was simply a social construct, motivated
by racism thus a matter of perception rather than fact. With regard to
multiculturalism in academia, Hazel Carby asked whether multiculturalism was a euphemism for race, and a form of tokenism aimed to mask the
failure of desegregation. Have we, as a society, successfully eliminated the
desire for achieving integration through political agitation for civil rights
and opted instead for knowing each other through cultural texts?7
Rustom Bharucha argued in a discussion on the relationship of multiculturalism to such concepts as interculturalism and intraculturalism that
the term multiculturalism is vague and redundant. No culturalism, to
my mind, has been more obsessively prefixed by qualifying adjectives like
liberal, authoritarian, corporate, insurgent, boutique, critical, aggregative, universalist, essentialist, paradigmatic, modular: a veritable
THE MULTICULTURAL NATION IN THE
1990 s
shopping-list of seemingly differentiated multiculturalisms that ultimately

resonate a disturbing sameness . . . Multiculturalism is the most overinscribed catch-word of seeming change in the polities of the developed
world. Tellingly, it exemplifies that old truism: Plus ca change, plus cest la
meme chose [the more things change, the more they remain the same].8
Bharucha, however, favored the approach of Shohat and Stam in Unthinking
Eurocentrism that advocated polycentric multiculturalism as the most equitable objective, an approach that decenters hegemonic cultural traditions
and privileges no single group, providing a just system for all.9 On the
other hand, this does not imply total utopian harmony, according to Shohat
and Stam, because, Multiculturalism has to recognize not only difference
but even bitter, irreconcilable difference. The Native American view of the
land as a sacred and communal trust . . . is simply not reconcilable with a
view of land as alienable property. The descendants of the slave ships and
the descendants of the immigrant ships cannot look at the Washington
Monument, or Ellis Island, through exactly the same viewfinder.10 Moreover, the deep-rooted core of some value systems in America are fundamentally exclusionary and will inevitably conflict with other beliefs in society.
In an article entitled Boutique Multiculturalism, or, Why Liberals are
Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech, Stanley Fish contentiously
argued that multiculturalism is a demographic fact but a philosophical
impossibility.11 He suggested that liberals who wish to tolerate all groups
in society find themselves in an untenable position because certain groups
are intolerant of others and their exclusiveness and hate speech ultimately
alienate those who try to accept them. According to Fish, people have a
limit to their level of toleration of other cultures, and in any case intolerance is embedded in certain cultural attitudes, such as in fundamentalist
religions.
Theatre artists in the 1990s produced multicultural theatre as an attempt at mapping the multicultural topography of American society and
revealing many of its points of friction. This chapter will examine various
approaches to multicultural theatre. (Although I will be discussing plays
and performances that juxtapose different cultures, I will avoid the more
common term intercultural theatre because it normally refers to a combination of different styles and traditions of theatre, and also because it
frequently refers to western productions integrating oriental performance
styles.) Patrice Pavis has defined multicultural theatre as involving the
cross-influences between various ethnic or linguistic groups in multicultural societies . . . Meaning arises from the clash of contexts, not from the
coexistence or multiplicity of cultural sources.12 Although he goes on to

confine his definition to performances utilizing several languages and performing for a bi- or multicultural public, this chapter does not limit the
concept to multilingual work but also includes performances that use phrases
from other languages or dialects but which are otherwise almost exclusively
in English. According to Pavis, multicultural theatre is dependent on a
political system . . . [that] recognizes . . . the existence of cultural or national
communities and encourages their cooperation, without hiding behind the
shibboleth of national identity,13 and he cites Germany and France as countries that rarely experiment in such performances. In the United States, the
shibboleth of national identity in the 1990s includes the notion that the
United States maintains a special identity because of its cultural diversity.
This chapter, however, will demonstrate that multicultural performances
in the 1990s helped to question the dominant concept of a unified nation.
It examines four different approaches to multicultural theatre in the US, all
of which deconstruct and destabilize the notion of a unified nation state.
Anna Deavere Smith in her work on urban riots paints a grim picture of
a divided and alienated community of warring tribes. Tony Kushner in
Angels in America constructs a more optimistic image of a culturally divided
American society moving towards greater harmony in a spirit of pluralism.
Such artists as Velina Hasu Houston and Brenda Wong Aoki have represented multiculturalism as physically and emotionally embedded in the body
and mind of individuals of mixed ethnicity with emotional and family ties
to other countries. Lastly, the work of the Colorado Sisters and Guillermo
Gomez-Pena provides a postmodern approach that emphasizes not only
multicultural but transnational hybridity, exposing the complex positionality of mestizas/os who psychologically straddle the Mexican/American
border. All of these artists contribute to what Cherre Moraga has termed a
force of disloyal americanos who subscribe to a multicultural, multilingual, radical restructuring of America.14
Anna Deavere Smith and the warring tribes

In her performances about urban riots in the 1990s, Anna Deavere Smith
demonstrated the intolerance in American society. She subverted hegemonic nationalistic values by putting the nation on stage in all its discordant
resonance. She undermined the simplistic rhetoric of the nation-state as a
uniform culture and ideology and represented the disharmony engendered
by hate speech. Her oral histories implicitly challenged the appropriateness
1990 s
of the American national motto e pluribus unum and the de facto Federal
policy of monolingualism.
Anna Deavere Smith presented one-person shows in which she impersonated various members of a community, such as San Francisco, New York
and Los Angeles. Under the collective title On the Road: A Search for
American Character, her numerous pieces since 1982 included among others Building Bridges Not Walls (1985), Voices of Bay Area Women (1988), Gender
Bending: On the Road Princeton University (1989); On Black Identity and Black
Theatre (1990); From the Outside Looking In (1990), Fires in the Mirror: Crown
Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities (1992), Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1993)
and House Arrest (1997), a play about the Washington press corps.15 In a sense
Anna Deavere Smiths work calls to mind Benedict Andersons description
in Imagined Communities of nation-building novels in which the solitary
hero travels through a sociological landscape imaging the nation.16 She
used the real words of community figures whom she interviewed, selecting,
editing and structuring the words of the interviewees and presenting these
individuals as characters in her one-person show. A single authorial voice can
be perceived through the selection, composition, manner, tone and texture
of presentation, and through the phantom presence of the actor/interviewer
who is always ghosting the characters she presents.17
Unlike the omniscient authorial presence in a novel, however, Anna
Deavere Smith does not provide a synthesis or a single viewpoint to bring
the work together as a unified statement.18 Furthermore, the characters
and society are not fictionalized; and rather than helping to reinforce the
imagined community of the nation, she presents the nation as falling
apart. She presents discordant voices that continue to claim their right to
be heard and who continue to disagree. They are the voices representing
the views of different classes, genders, religions, ideologies, age and ethnic groups and they demonstrate the disunity rather than homogeneity of
the community. Often she has been commissioned to present a piece that
focuses on a divisive issue in a community so that the community can better understand the social dynamics involved (e.g. the position of women
in the Princeton University community). However, rather than presenting
solutions, she highlights the differences; and, as Patrice Pavis suggests in
his definition of multicultural theatre, meaning arises from the clash of
contexts.19 Although her solo performance helps to unify the discordant
voices by encompassing them all within her own and thereby partially neutralizing them,20 at the heart of the work is an attempt to convey the complex
social dynamics and destructiveness in Americas multicultural society.
In general, the individuals that she portrays in Fires in the Mirror and
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, two performances about urban violence in the
1990s, rather than appearing in the events themselves, recount their versions
of the events.21 Their history is not uniform or even compatible but clearly
originates from specific biased perspectives. In Fires in the Mirror (whose full
title is Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities), Anna
Deavere Smith impersonates various members of the community during the
New York riots of 1991. Crown Heights includes large Caribbean-American
and African American populations and also a sizeable Hasidic Jewish community. The groups were polarized by an incident in which a Hasidic driver
swerved out of control and killed a seven-year-old Guyanese American boy
on a sidewalk. Several hours later a visiting Hasidic student was stabbed
and killed by a group of African Americans. These events led to four days
of riots, fire-bombings and demonstrations. Anna Deavere Smith portrays
various members of the community, from the father of the young boy to the
brother of the killed Hasidic Jew. Significantly, she juxtaposes two mutually
exclusive views of moral authority. As a local Rabbi, she recalls the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust and as an African American follower
of Farrakhan, she recounts the physical and psychological torture of slavery in an implicit competition for images of victimization. The Farrakhan
supporter accentuates the exclusivity of the competing cultural claims by
announcing, We are the chosen of God. We are those people that Almighty
God Allah has selected as his chosen, and they are masquerading in our
garment the Jews (p. 58). Anna Deavere Smith does not appear to be
interested in depicting a resolution to the conflict. She underlines the differences in the community and, as the Pastor of a local church, she intones,
Its gonna happen again and again (p. 77).
Ironically, the piece was being performed in New Yorks Public Theatre
in 1992 when riots broke out in Los Angeles, and these riots led to a second
piece on urban violence called Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. The Los Angeles
riots were caused by the acquittal of four white policemen who had been
videotaped beating an African American named Rodney King. With the
use of video material displayed on a large screen, Smiths performance recalls
many appalling incidents, such as the policemen beating Rodney King, a
Korean shopkeeper shooting an African American girl, and a group of
African Americans beating a white truck driver named Reginald Denny. In
the commentaries on the events by observers and participants whom she
impersonates, the violent acts are recalled as spontaneous, unpremeditated
actions. They reveal the underlying stress in a community that seems to
1990 s
be living not only on a geological but also on a sociological fault-line that

threatens a new earthquake or volcano daily. The hurt, hatred and other
pent-up emotions that erupted into street violence had been seen earlier in
Los Angeles in the Watts riots of 1965. The nation, rather than solving its
social problems, seems only to perpetuate them, and despite governmental
efforts to analyze social disruption such as the Kerner Commission report
into the riots of 1967, the same manifestations of disunity repeat themselves.
The nation has clearly not learned from the lessons of its own history,
not only cultural but also economic lessons, including James Madisons
observation in the tenth Federalist Paper that disputes have always arisen
from the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold
and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in
society.22
Anna Deavere Smith steps away from the riots at the end of Twilight,23
and, like the omniscient authorial perspective in a novel, indicates through
the words of Twilight Bey (an African American organizer of a gang truce)
that she remains in a kind of no mans land, a form of purgatory or, as she
phrases it, limbo:
Twilight Bey,
thats my name.
When I was twelve and thirteen,
I stayed out until, they say,
until the sun come up.
Every night, you know,
and that was my thing.
I was a watchdog. (p. 253)
Because she is an outsider as an interviewer and therefore exists only on the

fringes of the event and because of her complex ethnic make-up and social
class,24 she is not wholly identifiable with one part of the community and is
able to replay the cacophony of voices around her, each with its own separate
logic. On the one hand, she has been criticized for exaggerating or ironizing
some of the characters that she impersonates. On the other hand, she has
been accused of failing to show her own opinions in the performance.25
But one of her strengths is that she does not provide easy answers or
confine herself to a specific ideological or sociological position. By standing on the fringes of the community and selecting representative voices,
she suggests its various borders or boundaries and implies what is typical
or idiosyncratic about the various communities within the community, or
nations within the nation, or as she calls them in Fires on the Mirror, the
tribes.
In both Fires in the Mirror and Twilight, Smith conveys differing ideological and experiential perspectives in a series of oppositions,26 utilizing the
characters own distinct language and their idiosyncratic speech and body
rhythms. Rather than a single national voice, Smith presents a polyphony
of different ethnic, religious, class and gender voices in America that do
not remain static but constantly migrate and evolve. In Twilight, unlike the
Watts riots of 1965 or the Crown Heights riots where the conflict pitted
white against black, she bears witness to the expanding Asian and Latino/a
populations in the Los Angeles community, seeking, as she says, to express
something about the change in American identity.27
At the same time hers is not a passive or objective portrayal. Because she
presents the characters of both pieces in often heightened states of emotion, her work is a passionately involved and disturbing account that raises
difficult questions about multiculturalism and social justice. Is, for example,
the concept of America as a melting pot a form of cultural imperialism in
which the white, Christian, English-speaking middle class of America expect all other ethnic, religious and linguistic groupings to conform to their
hegemonic norms? Is multiracialism only a disguise for multi-racism? Is
multiculturalism, as Stanley Fish has argued, a philosophical impossibility?
Sandra Richards has suggested that tolerance of other cultures is not a natural priority. Human species survival depends upon our being socialized
through the enchantment of symbolic discourse into desiring a particular
mode of being; thus, each culture must create, as it were, necessary lies or
an order of discourse that presents itself as the true narrative in opposition
to all others in order to function systematically as a behavior regulatory
mechanism.28 Employing such a discursive practice, Anna Deavere Smith
as Rabbi Shea Hecht proclaims in Fires in the Mirror,
Number one,
we are different,
and we think we should and can be different.
When the Rebbe said to the Mayor
that we were all one people,
I think
what the Rebbe is talking about is that,
that common denominator that were all children of God and the
respect we all have to give each other under that banner.
But that does not mean that I have to invite you to my house for
1990 s
dinner,
because I cannot go back to your home for dinner,
because youre not gonna give me kosher food.
And I said,
so, like one Black said,
Ill bring in kosher food.
I said eh-eh.
We cant use your ovens,
we cant use your dishes,
its, it
its not just a question of buying certain food,
its buying the food,
preparing it a certain way.
We cant use your dishes, we cant use your oven. (pp. 11011)
The various identities that emerge through Anna Deavere Smiths voice
and body, as she moves as a solitary hero through the sociological landscape, represent not the united but the divided nature of the nation. In
an interview Smith said, Ive been wondering how to find the tools for
thinking about difference as a very active negotiation rather than an image
of all of us holding hands. There are too many contradictions, problems and
lies in American society about the melting pot. Youre invited to jump into
the hot stew but youre not wanted.29 By contrast with the national motto
e pluribus unum, her performance serves as a metaphor for a new national
or even post-national identity out of one, many. Out of one voice, many
voices; out of one nation, many nations.
Tony Kusher and a utopian vision

By contrast with the discordant and seemingly irreconcilable voices of Anna
Deavere Smiths work, Tony Kushner represents the tapestry of American
multicultural society as moving towards a harmonious future.30 In Angels
in America, the image of the Bethesda angel in Central Park, who seems
to bless the aids-afflicted gay men with more life, augurs a cure not
only for the physical ailments of the characters but also for their mental
state, and it symbolizes a hopeful prospect for the whole US community.
As opposed to the gritty realism of Smiths riot plays, Kushner employs
a whimsical, fantastic and fundamentally optimistic approach. Although
he includes historical figures such as Roy Cohn ( Joseph McCarthys legal
counsel) and Ethel Rosenberg (who, with Cohns help, was convicted of
spying for the Soviet Union and sentenced to the electric chair), Kushner
deploys mostly fictional characters, who often appear in dream sequences,
hallucinations or fantastic scenes. Even the historical character of Ethel
Rosenberg appears as a ghostly presence, haunting Roy Cohn; and by the
end of the second part of the play, Cohn himself has died and serves as
an afterworldly legal counsel to God, who is being sued by his angels for
abandoning the world. Thus, by contrast with the work of Anna Deavere
Smith, Kushner presents a highly fictionalized version of the United States.
His magical realist style31 allows him to explore various dimensions of the
coming 2000 millennium not only as conjuring up the possibility of an
apocalypse, but also as representing the end of a social and political era and
the potential for spiritual renewal and social progress.
Angels in America is a complex work of epic proportions. Lasting more
than five hours if played together, the two parts (Part One: Millennium
Approaches and Part Two: Perestroika), like Anna Deavere Smiths work, provide a panoply of diverse characters and cultures: Jewish, Protestant, Roman
Catholic and Mormon religions; gay and straight lifestyles; Caucasian and
African American ethnicities; metropolitan and regional environments, etc.
Although the play favors certain groups (especially gay males) and minimizes others (e.g., the female characters tend to be crazy or otherwise
marginalized, and Belize, the main African American character, tends to
serve as a helper rather than having an independent life), the range of
American identities that are acknowledged within the play represents a
broad cross-section of society.
The play draws parallels between the migration of various communities
in America (such as the Native Americans, Puritans, Jews, Mormons, etc.)
and comments on the painful process of social change. Emphasizing the
country as a land of immigrants, Kushner opens the play with a funeral for
a Lithuanian Jewish woman, during which the Rabbi implicitly questions
whether America has any core identity or culture.32 He tells the congregation, you do not live in America. No such place exists (1.10); and he adds
that the woman who died had come from an ancient, ancient culture and
had carried the old world on her back across the ocean . . . and she put it
down in Flatbush . . . and she worked that earth into your bones (1.10). As an
echo of this reference to Jewish immigration, Kushner stages a later scene
in a Mormon visitors center, where the diorama voice-over recalls the great
nineteenth-century trek of the Mormons across the plains in search of the
Kingdom of God. This story of Mormon migration across America to a
promised land, which is reminiscent of the biblical quest for a promised
1990 s
land, is, likewise, juxtaposed with the reference to Prior Walters ancestors
who came to America on the Mayflower and with Belizes ironic comment
on the enslavement and deportation of Africans to the US: Some of us
didnt exactly choose to migrate (2. 47). It is also counterpointed with allusions to the displacement and disappearance of the Native Americans. For
example, Harper ironically offers to sell Manhattan to Joe for the usual
cheap trinkets (2.100); the Rabbi in the funeral calls the dead Lithuanian
Jew the last of the Mohicans (1.11); and Louis claims that in America
no indigenous spirits exist only . . . Native American spirits and we killed
them off so now, there are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America,
there are no angels in America, no spiritual past . . . (1.92).
In Angels, we see that migration has produced dire consequences including wars, death, disenfranchisement and disease, thereby justifying the appearance of a heavenly angel who delivers a Tome of Immobility to Prior, a
gay WASP dying of aids. The angel predicts disaster and calls on mankind
to stop migrating until God, who has abandoned the earth, returns.
Forsake the Open Road:
Neither Mix Nor Intermarry: Let Deep Roots Grow:
If you do not MINGLE you will Cease to Progress:
Seek Not to Fathom the World and its Delicate Particle Logic:
You cannot Understand, You can only Destroy,
You do not Advance, You only Trample.
Poor blind Children, abandoned on the Earth,
Groping terrified, misguided, over
Fields of Slaughter, over bodies of the Slain:
Hobble yourselves!
. . . Turn Back. Undo.
Till HE returns again. (2.45)
Prior rejects the reactionary proposals of this hermaphroditic angel as well

as the attempt to install him in the role of a prophet. He also refuses to
accept her/his mission as an angel of death and wrestles with her/him to
prolong his life. Despite the angels apocalyptic vision of the future, Prior
exhorts her/him pathetically: Bless me anyway. I want more life. I cant
help myself. I do. Ive lived through such terrible times, and there are people
who live through much much worse . . . We live past hope. If I can find hope
anywhere, thats it, thats the best I can do. (2.133).
Unlike Anna Deavere Smiths bleak portrayal of warring tribes in society, hope and forgiveness abound in Kushners play. Even Roy Cohn
(who is categorized by Louis, as the polestar of human evil, hes like the
worst human being who ever lived, he isnt human even), is forgiven (2.93).
Despite Roys raging insults Move your nigger cunt spade faggot lackey
ass out of my room . . . Mongrel. Dinge. Slave. Ape(2.567) Belize justifies
saying the Kaddish for him on the grounds that everyone deserves to be
forgiven. A queen can forgive her vanquished foe. It isnt easy, it doesnt
count if its easy, its the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where
love and justice finally meet (2.122). At the heart of the play is Louiss (and
Kushners) neo-Hegelian positivist sense of constant historical progress
towards happiness or perfection (1.25). While alluding to the disasters of the
twentieth century and fantasizing that God abandoned the world at the time
of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, Angels in America conjures up the
vision that mankind is moving towards a better future.
At the beginning of the play (as in Smiths work), disaster appears everywhere: aids is attacking gays who are treated like pariahs by the rest
of society, New York is equated with hell, the ozone layer is failing, and
the polar ice cap is melting. Belize, who refers to himself as trapped in a
world of white people (2.91), characterizes the nation as racist, and freedom as a distant dream, or, as in the national anthem, an impossibly high
note to reach (2.95). Louis regards America as homophobic, referring to the
monolith of White America. White Straight Male America (1.90). Prior
echoes this, calling the funeral of a drag queen a parody of the funeral of
someone who really counted. We dont; faggots; were just a bad dream the
real world is having, and the real worlds waking up (2.34). Furthermore,
Roy Cohn advises that the only way for a homosexual to get ahead is to
stay in the closet and to deny that he is gay. Homosexuals are men who in
fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through
City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody
knows. Who have zero clout (1.45).
The play also denounces the American judicial system. Cohn reveals it to
be corrupt as evident especially in his coercion of the judge to execute the
Rosenbergs (1.1078), and Louis argues that legal judgements (such as Joes)
are unjust (2.1078). Moreover, Roy Cohn predicts a reactionary Republican
agenda dominating the next decades:
Well get our way on just about everything: abortion, defense, Central
America, family values, a live investment climate. We have the White
House locked till the year 2000. And beyond. A permanent fix on the
Oval Office? Its possible. By 92 well get the Senate back, and in ten years
1990 s
the South is going to give us the House. Its really the end of Liberalism.
The end of New Deal Socialism. The end of ipso facto secular humanism.
The dawning of a genuinely American political personality. Modeled on
Ronald Wilson Reagan. (1.63)
By contrast, at the end of the play, the future looks much rosier from
Kushners ideological perspective. San Francisco is characterized by Prior
as an unspeakably beautiful (2.120) heaven on earth (which arguably it is
for gay men compared to the rest of the country), and aids is no longer the
death sentence that it first seemed. Hannah predicts a social purging: The
fountain of Bethesda will flow again . . . We will all bathe ourselves clean
(2.145). Moreover, at least in Harpers mind, even the hole in the ozone layer
seems reparable. In her dream, she imagined that,
Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people
who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they
floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and
formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen
molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and
was repaired. (2.1412)
She adds optimistically, Nothings lost forever. In this world, there is a kind
of painful progress (2.142).
This positive vision is coupled with a new approach to communitarian
values, which redresses the selfish, irresponsible, uncaring attitude expressed
by Roy Cohn. Angels in America ends with three gay men a white Anglo
Saxon Protestant, a Jew, and an African American drag queen and a
straight Mormon woman sitting around the Bethesda fountain in Central
Park in 1990 speculating on the future. Rather than the normative couple
and marriage vows that usually ends a Shakespearean comedy, they are an
unusual quartet who seem to represent a new and more complex social
grouping rather than the dominant image in society of heterosexual couples
producing the next generation. They indicate the queering of America,
which, according to David Savran, seeks to produce a counterhegemonic
patriotism that militates for a redefinition of the nation and simultaneously for the recognition of the always already queer status of American
culture (from Whitman to Madonna).33 As they reflect on the ongoing
aids epidemic, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the restructuring of the Soviet
Union and the unresolved Palestinian/Israeli conflict, the queer quartet
exude a relaxed harmony with one another, enhanced by Priors schmaltzy
monologue to the audience, reminiscent of the stage managers curtain

speech in Thornton Wilders Our Town. The ending of Angels emphasizes
communitarian rather than nuclear family values and a pluralistic inclusiveness of diversity. Prior turns down the volume on their conversation as he
discusses with the audience his plans to live longer and his vision that gay
people will become fully integrated into society. This disease will be the
end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated
and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We wont die
secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens.
The time has come (2. 146).
Like the work of Anna Deavere Smith, Kushner destabilizes dominant
notions of national identity. However, despite showing the nation falling
apart because of migration, disease, and religious, racial, class and gender
antagonisms, he (unlike Smith) predicts a novel way forward that allows
for a new set of values and enables the disenfranchised and marginalized
gay community to become fully integrated into society as equal citizens.
He also allows for his characters to shift from essentialized ethnic, gender
and religious identities.34 Unlikely coalitions, which give the individual
more power, have formed because of the aids crisis. Because of witnessing Priors condition, Hannah, for example, has progressed from a
Mormon bigot to an open-minded New Yorker, warning Prior, You dont
make assumptions about me, mister; I wont make them about you (2.102).
Although Prior replies, I wish you would be more true to your demographic
profile. Life is confusing enough, Kushner clearly signals her changed
attitude as a significant harbinger for a more sympathetic and accommodating society in the future. Nevertheless, the harmony that is projected
does not imply a loss of cultural distinctiveness in a future multicultural
society. Just as Richard Schechner has argued that fusion is the opposite
of multiculturalism,35 Angels demonstrates that cultural diversity implies
difference and yet it allows for the possibility of cooperation. In a scene of
redemption towards the end of the play, we see an executed communist,
an African American drag-queen nurse who expresses a Roman Catholic
spirit of forgiveness,36 and a Jewish gay man (who feels guilty for having
deserted his aids-ridden partner), gathered around the body of Roy Cohn,
saying the Kaddish in a ceremony of reconciliation. Likewise, in the final
scene, Louis and Belize continue to disagree, but in a spirit of mutual
respect. The prospect for social change and for the creation of new coalitions
of difference is enhanced by the characters moving beyond the expectations of their own cultural borders such as Hannah accepting Priors gay
1990 s
lifestyle, Louis forgiving Roy Cohn, and, potentially, Joe acknowledging

his gay sexuality, and Harper overcoming her agoraphobia and dependency
on valium.37
Houston and Aoki undermining normative cultural taxonomies

By contrast with the work of Smith and Kushner that tended to polarize
ethnic, gender, sexual and religious differences, some theatre artists in the
1990s featured the complexity of mixed or hybrid identities and moved away
from identity politics. For example, the work of such Asian American writers as Velina Hasu Houston and Brenda Wong Aoki, and such mestizo/a
performers as the Colorado sisters and Gomez-Pena, differed from Smiths
portrayal of the separate tribes of the nation, and Kushners representation of gay or straight, Mormon or Jewish, WASP or African American
characters, by exploring multi-ethnic identities. By invoking their own ethnically mixed personalities, these artists reveal another dimension of diversity and multiculturalism whereby ethnicities and religions are combined or
integrated rather than separated into essentialized categories. Rather than
expressing relatively distinct cultural positions as in the work of Smith and
Kushner, characters in the work of these artists register as multi-ethnic and
multi-religious, and perform their hybridity, rather than allowing themselves to be clearly defined by cultural, and even national, borders. As May
Joseph writes of the post-civil rights era in the United States, hybridity
emerges as a democratic expression of multiple affiliations of cultural
citizenship.38
Velina Hasu Houstons trilogy Asa Ga Kimashita (Morning Has Broken),
American Dreams and Tea traces the history of the relationship between
Setsuko Shimada, a Japanese woman, and Creed Banks, her African
American husband (who is part American Indian). The couple meets while
Creed, the color of soy sauce, (p. 177) is stationed as a soldier in Japan at
the end of the Second World War, and Asa Ga Kimashita shows the difficulty
of Setsukos family (especially her father) accepting him as a future son-inlaw. American Dreams, the second play in the trilogy, continues the narrative,
revealing the difficulties that the couple encounter when they move to the
United States, especially the hostility of Creeds family to his Japanese wife.
Tea, the third play, takes place after the suicide of Himiko Hamilton, another Japanese woman who married a serviceman, and it depicts Setsuko
and three other women with similar marriages drinking tea, reminiscing,
and acting out their husbands and children, as the ghost of Himiko looks on.
In Tea, the five women, although part of the same community, have not
socialized together, partly because of the nature of their mixed marriages.
Teruko and Himiko married white men from Texas and Oklahoma, Atsuko
a Japanese American, Chiz a Mexican, Setsuko an African American.
Consequently, despite some similar experiences, their social lives have been
quite distinct. Creed and Setsuko have encountered racial prejudice. Atsuko
and her Japanese American husband have lived as Japanese Americans;
Gustavo died immediately upon returning to America leaving Chiz to cope
on her own; Teruko has felt isolated because of being a Japanese woman
married to a white man; and Himiko has been confined to her house by a violent husband. At the same time they have all suffered prejudice as Japanese
in America. As Himiko says, Our dignity was tied to a tree and left hanging
for strangers to spit on (p. 192). By contrast with the womens difficulties,
their children represent a new multi-ethnic generation of hybrid Japanese
(p. 187) who are between two worlds (p. 188). Setsuko says proudly of her
daughter, She doesnt look Japanese . . . and she doesnt look Negro. And
I am glad because I have created something new, something that will look
new and think new (p. 187). On the other hand, Himikos daughter has
not fared so well. Himiko murdered her husband, apparently because of an
unhappy marriage (during which her husband bit off part of her lip), and
the daughter left home, hitchhiking and was raped and killed.
Houston, whose parents were the model for Setsuko and Creed in the
trilogy, reveals that the trilogy does not deal with an isolated phenomenon.
During the American occupation of Japan (between 1945 and 1960), over
100,000 American soldiers married Japanese women. When the soldiers
returned, they were normally exiled to remote bases in the US (such as
Fort Riley in Kansas), as Himiko says, because they were married to Japs
(p. 169). Like Anna Deavere Smith, Houston relied heavily on personal
interviews during the developmental stage of her work. Houston began the
research for the plays, according to Roberta Uno, as an oral history project,
interviewing some fifty women who reluctantly consented to speak with her
and then only because she was a member of their community. But unlike
Smith, who edited and juxtaposed selected interviews which she performed,
Houston decided to abandon the content of the interviews, preserving the
emotional intensity, and turning instead to her own knowledge of women
she had grown up with, including her mother.39 Moreover, by focusing
on multi-national and inter-ethnic family relations and multi-ethnic (and
transnational) children, Houston highlights a different aspect of Americas
multicultural identity than Anna Deavere Smith and Tony Kushner. But like
1990 s
Anna Deavere Smith, Houston is not so much interested in the blending or

melting of cultures but the clash of cultures and the individuated results of
that disharmony. It is the native Japanese woman in America who fascinates
me; culturally I feel very close to her. I relate to her struggle their cultural
struggle is my cultural struggle.40
Houston herself does not fit into a standard ethnic category.41 Rather
than Asian American (or Pacific Asian), which would imply that she was of
Asian ancestry and living in America, she calls herself Amerasian because
of her American father and Japanese mother. Houston has encountered
resistance to her type of multicultural work because of its multi-ethnic subject matter, and her refusal to choose a single aspect of her heritage over
another.42 Her comments bring to mind Benedict Andersons analysis of
census forms in colonial states that used arbitrary and inaccurate classifications to codify the population, sometimes in terms of religion and sometimes
in terms of ethnicity and sometimes combining the two. Such taxonomies
did not reflect the actual racial or religious mix of the population because
they did not allow for mixed ethnicities. These identities, imagined by the
(confusedly) classifying mind of the colonial state reflected the censusmakers passion for completeness and unambiguity. Hence their intolerance
of multiple, politically transvestite, blurred, or changing identifications.
Hence the weird subcategory, under each racial group, of Others who,
nonetheless, are absolutely not to be confused with other Others. The fiction of the census is that everyone is in it, and that everyone has one and
only one extremely clear place. No fractions.43 Houston suggests that
ethnic exclusion on the grounds of traditional ethnic classifications does
not only emanate from the dominant culture but also from ethnically based
theatre groups. Too often I have heard the artistic director of an Asian
American or an African American theater tell me that one of my plays is
either too Japanese or not African American enough for their theater.44
Houston feels oppressed by this failure to respect the work of multiracial people who defy traditional racial categories personally and in their
work.45
Like Velina Hasu Houston, Brenda Wong Aoki also stresses her own
mixed ethnic identity in her work. Aoki is a theatre artist who writes and
performs her own material such as Obake (1988), a piece based on Japanese
ghost stories; The Queens Garden (1992), an autobiographical show about
growing up in Los Angeles; and Uncle Gunjiros Girlfriend (2000), a play
about a Japanese great uncle who caused a huge controversy in 1909 by
marrying a white woman in San Francisco.
In The Queens Garden Aoki portrays her journey in search of identity

as an unsuccessful escape from the tough gang-warfare lifestyle in Los
Angeles.46 Early in the play, she explains that my moms familys from
China, Mexico and Scotland and my dads familys from Japan and Salt
Lake, to which her Aunty Mary, who boasts she has da only rose garden
in da Westside, replies, You all mix up! Chop suey! (p. 17). In The Queens
Garden Brenda paints her early life in the Westside (South Central Los
Angeles) as harmonious. She works in her fathers pharmacy after school
and develops a strong friendship with a Hawaiian boy named Kali. Her
identity becomes more complicated when she gets bussed to high school
and is placed in an advanced (Lit. 1.A) class with white kids, while Kali
is relegated to a class for losers. When Brother Brown announces that
the Black Panthers have liberated this High School, the students become
racially polarized: On this side: frat boys, cheerleaders, Lit. 1.A all white.
On this side: wood shop, Twelve Oclock High, Westside Warriors all
the rest (p. 21). Reminiscent of Anna Deavere Smiths work, riots break
out between what Aoki also calls the tribes. But Brenda is able to negotiate her culturally mixed identity to her advantage. Smoke, Kalis friend,
marks her hand with a WS for Westside, and warns her, Flash dis to any
homies who try an mess wif you. Steven, her white friend from her advanced Lit. 1.A class, gives her his fraternity ring and advises, Show this
to any white people who try and bother you. With these two protective
signs, she manages to walk through the quad. Im cool . . . Westside. Im a
soc . . . Phi Gam. Westside. Phi Gam. (Mimes repeat of line as flashes ring or
palm) (p. 22).
By associating more with whites, she begins to view her family differently, as looking like a bunch of refugees (p. 22). Moreover, her teacher
encourages her to look beyond the dynamics of Los Angeless tribal life,
assigning utopian literature and urging: If theres one thing I want us all to
learn, its how to live together in peace (p. 19). Influenced by her teacher
and desiring something more than to marry Kali and become a fat mama
in a muumuu waiting for a welfare check, Brenda goes to college and drifts
further from the Westside. But she feels out of place, regarded by her fellow students as representing the Third World (p. 23). She drops out and
returns to the Westside to teach the losers class in her old school, hoping
to inspire them with such radical literature as Paulo Freires Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (p. 24).
Even though she has come through the same school, the reality of life
shocks her when she discovers that all the girls in her class are pregnant.
1990 s
Hai, her Vietnamese flatmate, surprises her further by intimating what she
had to do to survive the war:
hai:
When I left Viet Nam, there was not enough room on the boat
for both my sister and me. (Pause) But the captain liked me
and I had to make sure he kept liking me.
brenda: What happened to your sister?
hai:
These teacups are all thats left of my family.
Brendas life becomes still more complicated when she tries to comfort Hai,
and Hai proposes a lesbian relationship:
brenda:
hai:
brenda:
hai:
Oh God, Hai. Im so sorry. Ill be your family.

I love you, Brenda.
I love you too, Hai.
I do not mean it like that. I mean . . . I love you. (p. 25)
Brenda receives further jolts to her identity as she struggles against the
violent society around her. Her relationship with her family breaks down
over her fathers support of the Vietnam War. He tries to appear like a
loyal American, while she refuses to condone the killing of people who
look just like us! (p. 25). She also tries and fails to help her student Rosie,
who is married to a gang member and wants to be able to take her baby
to the park without getting blown away (p. 26). Finding her husband
a job outside the community only results in his being killed and Brenda
being blamed for his death. Gang warfare entwines Brenda, as Kali, now
a drug dealer, returns into her life. She tries to escape to San Francisco,
but he finds her and uses her apartment as a safe house while Smoke,
his old friend whom he has informed against, seeks to gun him down.
Sherry, Smokes wife and Brendas old high school friend, manipulates her to
intervene:
Youre not gonna help us? Your ole man and my ole man are blowing
up the whole Westside. Maybe in Frisco they dont have drive-bys, stray
bullets. It could be your mom coming home from work, my kid coming
home from school. Oh, but that has nothing to do with you! Thats not
your responsibility! Oh Brenda, how white of you. (p. 30)
Brenda fails to reconcile Kali and Smoke and to stop the gang war, and
a bloody shoot-out ensues in Aunt Marys rose garden. Because of the violence, Brenda retreats back to San Francisco but still regards the Westside,
despite its violence, as her home: My mom, dad, sisters and little bro still
live on the Westside. And even though I live in San Francisco, the Westside
is here. (Points to chest) (p. 31).
Like Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, The Queens Garden depicts urban society
as explosive and self-destructive, and like Anna Deavere Smith, Aoki argues
that her performance is not just about an idiosyncratic city. The reality is
that the conditions that spawned the LA riots exist all over this country. I
wrote The Queens Garden in an effort to humanize that experience because it
is only ten minutes from Beverly Hills to South Central. And there are South
Centrals springing up all over this country.47 Both use the term tribes
to explain the relationship between the warring elements in urban society,
and both perform the distinctive positions of various real characters who
represent opposing cultures.What is strikingly different between Smiths
and Aokis work, however, is that while Smith represents a kind of social
watchdog, looking on from the outside, Aoki remains an insider trying to
survive. Her family home in the midst of the violence makes it impossible
for her to escape permanently from or avoid being implicated in the gang
warfare. She tries to renegotiate her social position, but her family home
and sense of identity draw her back into a web of gangland violence.48
In the simplicity of her performance, with no costume changes, and only
one prop (a stool), lights, live music and a city landscape backdrop against a
cyclorama to convey a theatrical atmosphere, she creates a mood of increasing alarm as the out of control social forces overwhelm her.49 Although
the characters in her monologue are fictionalized, there is a strong sense
of immediacy and reality about her having lived through the experiences
that she recounts. Commenting on the verisimilitude of her show to real
life, she has said, Everybodys based on real people or composites of real
people, or real situations. 50 Moreover, there is an ongoing element of danger in that the social problems she depicts have not eased but are getting
deeper and deeper. Commenting in 1992 on the danger that she felt in
performing her show close to Los Angeles, she mentioned that consultants
on the film American Me had been killed and you feel very vulnerable as a
soloist. Youre a real clean shot up there, adding that it was unlikely that
someone from the gang culture would try to kill her, although members
of the audience occasionally carried guns.51 Asked by an interviewer if she
could live a safer life, she replied that her family all lived on the Westside
and that she needed to keep close to them. Ohana . . . Its the Hawaiian
word for family, extended family, and friends that you just couldnt live
without. Plus all the old people who have died who are still with you to
help you go through this life. Thats your Ohana. And thats what you need
1990 s
to get by in this life. Despite the violence and urban decay, she says that
there is a strong sense of community in her old neighborhood. Thats one
thing about poor people, if you dont have much money, you have each
other.52
In Uncle Gunjiros Girlfriend, Aoki explores family history and the source
of family shame.53 She discovers a hidden secret that her great uncle, who
had come from Japan to San Francisco with his brother, had caused a huge
controversy by marrying Helen Emery, the daughter of the Episcopalian
archdeacon of Grace Church (later Grace Cathedral). Her great uncle
Gunjiro was threatened with being tarred and feathered and run out of town
for wanting to marry a white woman. California passed a law forbidding
Japanese (in addition to Chinese) from marrying whites. Gunjiro and Helen
then tried Portland, Oregon where the Deputy District Attorney declared,
If she parades the streets with her Jap lover Ill jail them both (p. 21).
They fled towards the Canadian border but finally the mayor of Seattle
allowed them to marry under the protection of an armed guard. Helen lost
her citizenship, her parents split up, Gunjiros brother (Aokis grandfather)
lost his job as head of the Japanese Episcopal mission in San Francisco and
the two Aoki families moved separately to Utah where their economic circumstances grew much worse. Her grandfather and grandmother died after
working as sharecroppers, leaving their children to look after themselves.
Her great uncle Gunjiro and his wife Helen produced five children but the
oldest son asked Uncle Gunjiro to leave the family during the depression
because his Japanese countenance made it impossible for them to assimilate.
Gunjiro departed, leaving a love letter for his wife, and apparently committed suicide. During the Second World War when Japanese Americans were
removed from their homes and interned in camps, her great uncles family
disguised themselves as American Indians and fled to the hills to escape
internment while a neighboring Mormon family protected Aokis father
and his siblings.
In Gunjiros Girlfriend, Aoki plays the various roles of male and female,
whites, Japanese and those of mixed ethnicity, telling a love story marred by
racial prejudice. She traces the journey of her Japanese ancestors who came
from a distinguished Samurai clan, the decision of Gunjiro and Helen to
break with social convention, and the disgrace encountered by her grandfather who respected their decision to marry and consequently lost his own
job in the church. On a sparse neo Noh stage, she employs slides of news
clippings and photos of her family, and live music composed by her husband dressed in a Japanese ceremonial costume.54 She dons a multi-colored
robe, appearing, according to the stage directions, like a Shinto priestess, a European cardinal, or a grande dame a la Japonisme (p. 4). As in
The Queenss Garden, her performance exhibits a mixture of Japanese and
American techniques and movements to reflect the mixed ethnicity and
transnational character of her story, and, in a scene that combines Oriental
and Western forms (e.g., Christian redemptive drama and the pacifying
of a troubled ghost in Noh drama), absolves the minister of the Japanese
mission of the unfair treatment to her grandfather.
Unlike Anna Deavere Smith, who does not represent her own identity
in her shows but performs a variety of others, Aoki puts her own past and
present on the stage and identifies the opposing ethnic groups or tribes as
not only external to herself but also as internally constituted within her own
body. In The Queens Garden she impersonates whites, African Americans,
Hawaiians, Vietnamese, Japanese and others from her community, male and
female, gay and straight. In Gunjuros Girlfriend she represents the Japanese
and white people of her grandparents society, as well as herself in her quest
to track down her familys history by locating relatives and researching in
the library. As in The Queens Garden, she presents her own mixed identity
as a central focus of her work and ends by calling attention to the mixed
cultural background of her own seven-year-old son, dressed in a Samurai
outfit on a San Francisco beach performing traditional Samurai movements:
Now were even more mixed with the Chinese, the Spanish, the Scots, the
Greek, the Samoan, the Portuguese, the African! . . . We are the people of the
new world (p. 35). Like Houston, she challenges the standard categories
of cultural divisions by calling attention to her chop suey multi-ethnic
and transnational persona. Destabilizing normative concepts, she emphasizes her multicultural individuality rather than staging essentialized cultural
types.
transnational identities
Coatlicue and Gomez-Pe
na
Like Houston and Aoki, the Colorado sisters Coatlicue Theatre Company
presents a combination of identities Native, Mexican and US from
the point of view of their own personal experiences and traditions. Their
work reflects the background of the two sisters Elvira and Hortensia
Colorado growing up in Chicago with their mother, who was born in
Mexico (and who hid her Native roots), and their grandmother who was
steeped in Native tradition. They were taught by their mother to call
themselves Spanish, rather than Mexican or Native American, but later
1990 s
investigated their ancestral roots and developed performances that, like

Spiderwoman Theatre Company, wove stories about their mestiza background. The sisters move in and out of their stories, in and out of characters,
and reclaim traditional mythology in their stage performances, invoking
various goddesses including Coatlicue. According to Anzaldua,
Coatlicue is the mountain, the Earth Mother who conceived all celestial
beings out of her cavernous womb. Goddess of birth and death, Coatlicue
gives and takes away life; she is the incarnation of cosmic processes.
Simultaneously, depending on the person, she represents: duality in life,
a synthesis of duality, and a third perspective something more than mere
duality or a synthesis of duality . . . Coatlicue depicts the contradictory. In
her figure, all the symbols important to the religion and philosophy of
the Aztecs are integrated.55
By invoking the name and image of the goddess and embracing this symbol
of ambiguity, the members of Coatlicue Theatre Company since the mid1980s have told stories and explored the contradictions in their personal
experiences. In La Llorona The Wailing Woman which they developed in
1986, they portrayed the age-old struggle of woman on both sides of the
border whose origins date back before Christianity. According to their
publicity, La Llorona
is Malinche, Cortezs mistress, interpreter and mother. She is Cihuacoatl,
Aztec deity, protector of women who died in childbirth and who became
warriors. She is a witch/sorceress/seer, who possessed supernatural powers.
She is Matlacihuatl, who appeared to men at night, dressed in white,
frightened her children, transforming and changing with the times, holding on to our culture and traditions. Her cry is one of liberation/celebration. Her cry, wail, song, represents the voices of all women our pain
and our joy as we empower ourselves.56
In 1992, for the 500th anniversary of Columbuss voyage to America, the

Colorado sisters produced 1992: Blood Speaks which, in addition to song
and dance and a comic birthday party for Columbus, depicted the mayhem
caused by the Spanish conquistadors in the name of the Roman Catholic
Church, in whose human butcher shop . . . rather than cut the chains, they
would sever the head of pregnant slaves . . . and rip out the fetus to save
its soul.57 In 1993 the Colorado Sisters collaborated with Spiderwoman to
produce Power Pipes that combined the invocation of Aztec goddesses with
contemporary personal stories such as a rape on a New York subway and a
lesbian affair in Amsterdam.
Frequently in their work, they have called attention to the way in which
the international border between Mexico and the United States bisects their
culture and identity. In Chicomoztoc Mimixcoa Cloud Serpents (1996), they
represented their search for their Native American relatives, and related the
problems of discovering an ancestry that had been deliberately obscured
and buried. They recalled that in researching their roots for the show, we
were laughed at when we told the border guards we were Indian.58 In the
show they relate the denial of Native American identity by their families and
community, the influence of Roman Catholic religion and teaching, and the
violence against women in contemporary society. Encouraged to emulate
the values and characteristics of convent-educated, confirmation-dressed
children and Mexican debutante girls, the Colorado Sisters portray their
collusion in the denial of their own identities and their later interrogation
of their cultural heritage. In their stories, they repeatedly emphasize and
then overcome the shame imposed by the contradictory elements in their
cultural inheritance. Eventually, after a great deal of searching, they discover
that not only their grandmother but even their own sister spoke Otomi.
Only late in life are they able to celebrate the traditional values of their
Chichimec/Otomi culture as well as the success of the Zapatista campaign
for the rights of indigenous people in Mexico.
Like much of their work, Cloud Serpents weaves stories of the present and
the past, the modern and the traditional, and shows the sisters negotiating
cultural borders that have been erected by intolerant or ashamed relatives.
Mixing Nahautl, Spanish and English in their dialogue and dressing in
Native, Mexican and Roman Catholic costumes, they present various facets
of their backgrounds and demonstrate the pre-colonial and colonial legacies that have informed their characters. As Gloria Anzaldua has observed,
The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be
Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has
a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode nothing is thrust
out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned.59
Ultimately the Colorado Sisters invoke their prenational and transnational
indigenous culture as a means of resisting contemporary neocolonial values and destabilizing the national border between Mexico and the United
States.60
Like the Colorado Sisters and Velina Hasu Houston, Guillermo GomezPena presents characters who transgress cultural and national borders, and,
like Kushner, his vision is somewhat utopian. Moreover, like Anna Deavere
Smith and Brenda Wong Aoki, his one-person shows present a variety
1990 s
of personae with opposing ideological outlooks. Growing up in Mexico

where multiculturalism is the very spinal cord of our personal and collective biography,61 Gomez-Pena became a performance artist in the 1970s,
first in Mexico and later in the United States. In words reminiscent of
the Rabbis comments in Angels, Gomez-Pena says that by crossing the
border, he and his friends became citizens of nowhere, or better said, of
everywhere, we were condemned to roam around the foggy and unspecific
territory known as border culture.62 In 1985 he co-founded the Border Art
Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo in the transfrontier metropolis of
San Diego/Tijuana. According to Claire Fox, this workshop responded
critically to border issues such as immigration, human rights violations,
and racism, and they were utopian in that they asked their audiences to
imagine a world in which this international boundary has been erased.63
Located geographically on the border, their work was site specific, but it was
concerned less with the phenomenal and geological aspects of [the] place
than with the cultural, historical, ethnic, linguistic, political, and mythological dimensions of [the] site.64 Thus the border represented not only
a physical space in these shows but also a mental condition. The specific
site, however, did lend a sense of danger to their performances as well as
attracting international attention. Gomez-Pena recalls that End of the Line,
which would have been a rather benign artistic event had it been staged
further inland, became an international news story when it was performed
in 1986 on the coastal border between Mexico and the US.
Dressed as border stereotypes, the members of the workshop and friends
sat in a huge binational table bisected by the borderline. The Mexicans
were in Mexican territory, and the Chicanos and Anglos were on the US
side. We began to illegally hold hands and exchange food across the line.
At one point we turned the table 360 degrees and entered illegally into
each others countries. The three carabelas [ships] of Columbus made
out of flammable material were set on fire on the seascape. The national
Mexican media reported the events as news, and we became aware of the
political power of site-specific performance.65
After breaking with the Border Art Workshop in 1989, Gomez-Pena continued to focus on USMexico border issues but more in a psychological
rather than a site-specific way. In Border Brujo, a one-man show, which he
performed from 1988 and filmed in 1990, Gomez-Pena demonstrates the
various influences from both sides of the border, visually, linguistically, musically and textually.66 He slips in and out of different personae including
Native Americans, Mexicans, border guards, tourist salesmen, etc. His
costumes are festooned with eclectic collages of artifacts and decorations,

as he positions himself inside an extravagant altar that combines pop culture with religious symbols. He employs a microphone and megaphone for
extra emphasis and a ghetto blaster for music reflective of and contrapuntal
to different cultural contexts. He speaks English, Spanish, Spanglish, and
tongues which he explains as a personal Esperanto that experiments with
the phonetic structures of indigenous language, and sounds like shamanistic
tongues.67 His performance is deceptive and disarming, confronting the
audience with direct address.
Having lived on both sides of the border, Gomez-Pena reflects a transnational approach in his work, revealing the cultural complexity of border life
on the individual as well as more generally on the two countries. Rather than
simply complaining about the treatment of Mexicans and Chicanos in the
US, he expresses the liminal state in which border people find themselves,
with one foot in one country and one in the other, influenced by US commercial values, Roman Catholicism, and a mixture of Native American,
Mexican, and US customs and ways of speaking. The border becomes a
metaphor as a means to address general issues of cultural imperialism.68
In the voice of a Tijuana border salesman, he exhorts in a spirit of ironic
excess,
Here everything can take place
for a very very reasonable fee
anything can change into something else
Mexicanos can become Chicanos
overnite
Chicanos become Hispanics
Anglo-Saxons become Sandinistas
& surfers turn into soldiers of fortune
here, fanatic Catholics become swingers
& evangelists go zen
at the snap of my fingers
for a very very modest amount
I can turn your pesos into dollars
your coke into flour
your dreams into nightmares
your penis into a clitoris
you name it . . .
its fun, its fast
its easy, its worthwhile
you just gotta cross the border. (p. 80)
1990 s
According to Gomez-Pena, being a Mexican means being crucified

by the East, the West, the North and the South.69 He performs, in his
words, to exorcise the demons of dominant cultures.70 Echoing the words
of Gloria Anzaldua, he writes ironically, We are a syncretic blend of
Amerindian and European cultures, of folkways and imported technology,
immersed in the past but always welcoming the new, the other, the foreign,
no matter how dangerous it is. (Didnt we welcome Columbus, Cortez, and
the American multinationals? Dont we still welcome all tourists, impressarios, and burn-outs from Europe and the US?) Our sensibility is the sum of
these contradictions.71 In Border Brujo Gomez-Pena does not simply accept
these influences, but also raises questions about capitalist exploitation, and
while assuming a multicultural audience, addresses many of his remarks at
Anglo Americans:
I am here cause your government
went down there
to my country
without a formal invitation
& took all our resources
so I came to look for them
just to look for them
nothing else . . .
has anyone seen my stolen resources?
has anyone seen my coffee,
my copper, my banana, my gas,
my cocaine, my wrestling mask? (p. 81)
Gomez-Pena rejects the grievous insults from the dominant culture in

the US and, like the final scene of Angels in America, envisages the possibility
of a border-less zone, in which Chicanos/as and Mexicanos/as can freely
participate with Anglo Americans as full citizens, not exotic minorities.72
He suggests that, Border culture can help dismantle the mechanisms of
fear. Border culture can guide us back to common ground and improve
our negotiating skills. Border culture is a process of negotiation towards
utopia, but in this case, utopia means peaceful coexistence and fruitful
cooperation.73
In his later show 1992, which, like Coatlicues, coincided with the 500th
anniversary and commented on the devastation caused by the discovery of America, Gomez-Pena combined fictitious personae with personal
biography. 1992 represented a voyage of personal discovery in which he
developed a character called the warrior for Gringostroika, whom he
described as a hybrid of a mariachi and a disc-jockey; and his alterego [as] a

cross between a conchero, a Mexican wrestler, and a lowrider.74 The show
recounted his experiences as a performance artist in Mexico and the US,
which were interwoven with the exploits of Columbus and the conquistadors. He says of this work, I zigzag from the past to the future and
from the personal to the historical, in hopes of shedding light on our
contemporary experience as multi-, inter-, and trans-cultural citizens of
a country that has ferociously resisted accepting its mestizo condition
and multiracial soul.75 Gomez-Pena describes Columbuss convoy as
consisting of
La Pinta for the prisoners
La Nina for the child molesters
y la Santa Mara for the religious fanatics
Columbus arrived in America without papers
dont we all secretly wish he had been deported right away? (p. 99)
Like Border Brujo, 1992 is utopian. In the show, Gomez-Pena ironically

imagines some future restructuring of national borders which are the effects
of Gringostroika (that also echoed the ongoing dissolution of the Soviet
Union):
New Spain now encompasses the old territories of
Guatemala, Mexico & the United States of Aztlan
the Tortilla Curtain no longer exists
Spanglish has become the official language
Puerto Rico, Hawaii & Panama have finally seceded
from the new Federation of US Republics. ( p. 107)
Despite international success, Gomez-Pena says that his work finds opposition in a tripartite debate about separatism, in which Chicano nationalists feel threatened by the perspective of intercultural dialogue, members
of the Mexican intelligentsia fear a disguised form of integration, and
Anglo Americans are panicking at the irreversible borderization of the
United States.76 All three groups, according to Gomez-Pena, prefer to
defend their identity and culture rather than dialogue with the cultural
other. While Gomez-Pena opens up transnational and cross border possibilities, The three parties would like to see the border closed. Their
intransigent views are based on the modernist premise that identity and
culture are closed systems, and that the less these systems change, the more
authentic they are.77
1990 s
While performing a complex profusion of identities, Gomez-Pena does

not try to reduce them to an undifferentiated multicultural melange, but
emphasizes their distinct characteristics and oppositional tonalities, creating an ironic and subversive pastiche. He abhors a multicultural approach
that allows for a kind of Esperantic Disney World, a tutti-fruiti cocktail of
cultures, languages, and art forms in which everything becomes everything
else, and nothing is really indispensable. He warns that such an approach
strongly resembles the bankrupt concept of the melting pot with its familiar connotations of integration, homogenization, and neutralization.78
On the contrary, Gomez-Pena combines a Eurocentric critique within a
multicultural embrace that approximates Shohat and Stams polycentric
multiculturalism.79 Rejecting the separatist rhetoric of Chicano cultural
nationalism, his artistic vision advocates a cultural pluralism in which the
various ethnic groups collaborate and dialogue with one another without
having to sacrifice their particular identities to the Big Blob.80 From his
earliest days in the US, he has sought images to transgress the hegemonic
norm and promote a transnational identity. During his first performance in
the US in 1979 called The Loneliness of the Immigrant, he lay wrapped in an
Indian cloth on the floor of a public elevator in Los Angeles and remained
for hours with a message on the wall which read inter alia, Surely one
day we will be able to crack this shell open, this unbearable loneliness, and
develop a transcontinental identity.81
Summary
The work of Anna Deavere Smith, Tony Kushner, Velina Hasu Houston,
Brenda Wong Aoki, the Colorado sisters and Gomez-Pena presents various
approaches to representing a multicultural society, all of which destabilize conventional notions of national identity. Anna Deavere Smith represents the warring tribes in society pulling the country apart. Tony Kushner
presents utopian possibilities, queering the nation and anticipating the acceptance of gay lifestyles as an integral feature of American (and international) society. Houston and Aoki reject the conventional taxonomies of
cultural identity by staging multi-ethnic personae with divided and transnational loyalties. The Colorado sisters and Gomez-Pena position themselves
as straddling the MexicanUS border and absorbing influences from both
sides. As opposed to the concept of e pluribus unum, these artists proffer an
image of the divided states of America,82 looking for a different form of
comm/unity. Cherre Moraga writes,
I hold a vision requiring a radical transformation of consciousness in this

country, that as the people-of-color population increases, we will not
be just another brown faceless mass hungrily awaiting integration into
white Amerika, but that we will emerge as a mass movement of people to
redefine what an American is. Our entire concept of this nations identity
must change, possibly be obliterated. We must learn to see ourselves
less as US citizens and more as members of a larger world community,
composed of many nations of people and no longer give credence to the
geopolitical borders that have divided us . . . Call it . . . an identity that
dissolves borders.83
Notes
Introduction
1. Many plays which are now regarded as contributing to a nationalist movement offended their original target audience, e.g. Yeatss The Countess Cathleen, Ibsens Peer
Gynt and much of J. M. Synges work.
2. Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988), pp. 45.
3. Ernest Renan, What is a Nation?, in Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay (eds.),
The Nationalism Reader (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995), p. 154.
4. Schiller elaborated, Now, if poets would be patriotic they could do much on the
stage to forward invention and industry. A standing theatre would be a material
advantage to a nation. It would have a great influence on the national temper and
mind by helping the nation to agree in opinions and inclinations. The stage alone can
do this, because it commands all human knowledge, exhausts all positions, illumines
all hearts, unites all classes, and makes its way to the heart and understanding by
the most popular channels. Frederick Ungar (ed.), Friedrich Schiller: An Anthology
for Our Time (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1959), p. 279. Some of
this discussion has appeared previously in my Reifying Imagined Communities;
Nationalism, Post-Colonialism and Theatre Historiography, Nordic Theatre Studies,
12 (1999), 94103.
5. Ibsen was recruited by the Norwegian nationalist Ole Bull as stage director and
playwright-in-residence for the first professionalNorwegian company, the Norwegian
Theatre in Bergen. Although influenced by the nationalist movement in his early
plays, he later satirized it in Peer Gynt. Ironically, Peer Gynt became a nationalist
icon largely because of Griegs music that was added to it. See for example Frederick
J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker, A History of Scandinavian Theatre (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 13161.
6. Marvin Carlson, Nationalism and the Romantic Drama in Europe, in Gerald
Gillespie (ed.), Romantic Drama (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1994),
pp. 139152.
7. Laurence Senelick, Recovering Repressed Memories: Writing Russian Theatrical History, paper presented at International Federation for Theatre Research
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
NOTES TO PAGES
28
colloquium at Helsinki University in 1997 on Re/Writing National Theatre

Histories. Unpublished, p. 12.
Carlson, Nationalism, p. 152.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. edn. (London: Verso, 1995), p. 195.
Andrew Higson, The Concept of National Cinema, Screen, 30, no. 4 (Autumn
1989), 434.
Jeffrey D. Mason and J. Ellen Gainor (eds.), Performing America: Cultural Nationalism
in American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 9.
See David M. Reimers, Unwelcome Strangers: American Identity and the Turn Against
Immigration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 8.
See Felicia H. Londre and Daniel J. Wattermeier, The History of North American
Theater (New York: Continuum, 1998), p. 39.
See James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 16081870 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina, 1978), pp. 287333.
Quoted in Michael LeMay and Elliott R. Barkan (eds.), US Immigration and
Naturalization Laws and Issues (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 11.
Quoted in Gary A. Richardson, In the Shadow of the Bard: James Nelson Barkers
Republican Drama and the Shakespearean Legacy, in Judith L. Fisher and Stephen
Watt (eds.), When They Werent Doing Shakespeare: Essays on Nineteenth-Century
British and American Theatre (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1989),
p. 128.
See Walter J. Meserve, An Outline History of American Drama (Totowa, NJ:
Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1965), p. 73; and Maura Cronin, The Yankee and the
Veteran: Vehicles of Nationalism, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 13, no. 2
(Spring, 2001), 5170.
See Joseph Jefferson, The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson, edited by Alan S. Downer
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 20.
Bruce McConachie, American Theatre in Context, from the Beginnings to 1870, in
Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (eds.), The Cambridge History of American
Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), i, pp. 1545.
See Sacvan Berkovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1978), pp. 1645.
See R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the
Nineteenth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1955).
Donald E. Pease, National Identities, Postmodern Artifacts, and Postnational
Narratives, in Donald E. Pease (ed.), National Identities and Post-Americanist
Narratives (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), p. 4.
Stanley Richards (ed.), America on Stage: Ten Great Plays of America (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1976), p. xi.
See Bruce McConachie, The Theatre of Edwin Forrest and Jacksonian Hero
Worship, in Fisher and Watt (eds.), When They Werent Doing Shakespeare, pp. 318.
Irish workers were suffering from victimization at this time, and a common notice
was put on job and housing advertisements that no Irish need apply. Prejudice
against Catholicism had been evident in the first generations of settlers in America in
the seventeenth century with some Protestants referring to them as the anti-Christ
NOTES TO PAGES
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
8 11
and trying to bar them from immigrating. See Reimers, Unwelcome Strangers, p. 6.
This prejudice continued into the nineteenth and even the twentieth century. In 1911
for example, a periodical called The Menace that labeled Catholicism as a threat to
American values was launched by William Franklin Phelps and within three years it
had a circulation of over a million people. However, by this time, Irish immigrants
had become more settled and prosperous, especially in the big cities, and plays began
to reflect their new status, focusing especially on their role as city firemen, and later
as political and labor leaders in New York such as The Man of the Hour by George
Broadhurst in 1906 and The Boss by Edward Sheldon in 1913. For a discussion of
how they improved their image, see Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New
York: Routledge, 1995).
Quoted in James H. Dorman, Jr., Theater in the Ante Bellum South:18151861 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), p. 278. According to Dorman, the
furthest south it was performed was in Baltimore in 1854 in a watered down version
with the manager playing the part of Uncle Tom in case of trouble. See p. 278, note 61.
However, according to William Stanley Hoole, the Aiken version was presented in
Charleston, South Carolina in 1854. See Joseph P. Roppolo, Uncle Tom in New
Orleans: Three Lost Plays, New England Quarterly, 27 (1954), 215.
Quoted in Roppolo, Uncle Tom in New Orleans, p. 213.
See Roppolo, Uncle Tom in New Orleans, 21326.
Gerald Vizenor has argued that the image of the vanishing Indian was an aesthetic
pose. In his view, the settlers were hoping for the Indians to disappear and that
the tragic image that they concocted of a dying race represented a wish fulfillment.
Gerald Vizenor, Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998).
See Jeffrey D. Mason, Melodrama and the Myth of America (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1993), p. 58.
For a discussion of the influence of German Romanticism on the appreciation of
Native American Culture, see Anne-Christine Hornborg, Kluskap As Local
Culture Hero and Global Green Warrior: Different Narrative Contexts for the
Canadian Mikmaq Culture Hero, Acta Americana, 9, no. 1 (2001), 1738.
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History,
in Richard D. Heffner (ed.), A Documentary History of the United States, rev. edn.
(New York: Mentor, 1961), p. 185.
Quoted in Berkovitch, American Jeremiad, p. 165.
See Amy Kaplan, Left Alone with America: The Absence of Empire in the Study
of American Culture, in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease (eds.), Cultures of United
States Imperialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 1113.
Charlotte Canning has observed, Despite the circuit Chautauquas official claim
to a multi-denominational platform, a claim they buttressed by the appearance of
rabbis and Catholic priests, the Chautauqua platform was one of the most prominent promoters of what Handy calls the national religion, a religion of civilization
presented simply as universal moral values and the American way of life. Charlotte
Canning, The Most American Thing in America, in Mason and Gainor (eds.),
Performing America, p. 102.
NOTES TO PAGES
11 19
36. Conwell, who was a businessman turned minister, delivered his Acres of Diamonds
speech over six thousand times in forty years, extolling the virtues and opportunities
of the Protestant capitalist. See Canning, The Most American Thing, pp. 1023.
37. Charlotte Canning has argued, A reassuring, stable, and moral representation was
repeatedly performed year after year, both creating and fulfilling the spectators views
and beliefs about the United States. This United States bore little resemblance to
the heterogeneous, unstable, and complex nation that actually existed outside the
comfortable confines of Chautauqua, and it was that United States that people
wished to be reassured did not exist. Chautauqua relentlessly performed the dominant values of white Protestants of British descent, even as their influences were
waning in the face of increasing immigration and religious diversity. Canning,
The Most American Thing, p. 104.
38. According to Jackson Lears, Reality is what coincides with the ruling groups
worldview. Jackson Lears, A Matter of Taste: Corporate Cultural Hegemony in
a Mass-Consumption Society, in Lary May (ed.), Recasting America: Culture and
Politics in the Age of Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 50.
39. Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 6.
1 From British colony to independent nation: refashioning identity

1. Jared Brown, The Theatre in America during the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), p. 5.
2. Paul N. Ford, Washington and the Theatre (New York: Publications of the Dunlap
Society, 1899), p. 2.
3. See Hugh F. Rankin, The Theater in Colonial America (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1960), especially chapters 6 and 7.
4. Rankin, Theater in Colonial America, p. 192.
5. Ralph Culp has examined the plays performed in the colonies before the Revolution
and has classified 70 percent of the non-Shakespearean plays performed as Whig
as opposed to 15 percent that were Tory and 15 percent that did not favor one side
or the other. Brown, Theatre in America, pp. 1112. Although the accuracy of this
research might be questioned and one might ask if Whig sentiment in England was
as responsible for these choices as Whig sentiment in the colonies, nevertheless it
seems clear that the theatre was favoring Whig rather than Tory material. The need
to cater to the desires of the colonial audience was certainly apparent.
6. Rankin, Theater in Colonial America, pp. 139, 169, 193.
7. New York Gazette, 12 May 1766.
8. Rankin, Theater in Colonial America, p. 182.
9. New York Journal, 17 December 1767.
10. For the link between Whig antagonism in England to A Word to the Wise and its
negative reception in Philadelphia in 1770 see Rankin, Theater in Colonial America,
pp. 1701.
11. For a discussion of the influence of class divisions on theatre riots, see Richard
Butsch, American Theatre Riots and Class Relations, 17541849, in Theatre Annual
48 (1995), 4159.
NOTES TO PAGES
19 27
12. See reward notice in Pennsylvania Packet, 14 December 1772.

13. See Bruce McConachie, American Theatre in Context, from the Beginnings
to 1870, in Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (eds.), The Cambridge
History of American Theatre, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), i,
pp. 1278.
14. New York Mercury, 13 January 1766.
15. For a facsimile of the resolution, see Ford, Washington and the Theatre, following
page 24.
16. The date of publication appears as 1714 on the only extant copy of the play, but
recently Peter Davis has suggested that the actual publication date was 1715. Peter
Davis, Determining the Date of Robert Hunters Androboros, Theatre Survey, 25,
no. 1 (May 1984), 957.
17. The confrontation arose out of the growing resentment in several colonies where the
westerners felt under-represented and neglected by the assemblies that met in the
coastal towns such as Philadelphia, Charleston and New Bern (North Carolina). It
led to other insurrections such as those by the North and South Carolina associations
of Regulators who refused to pay taxes until they received fair government. The
Regulators in North Carolina threatened to attack the Governors mansion but were
easily defeated by the local militia at the Battle of Alamance in 1771. Several of
the Regulators were killed and six were hanged for treason, and the Governor rode
around the colony afterwards demanding an oath of allegiance. Insurrections after
independence such as Shays Rebellion in 1786 and the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794
resulted from similar disagreements.
18. Rogers later took the side of the British in the War of Independence and settled
in England.
19. Bruce McConachie has recently criticized Rogers for having stuffed his Indian
chief with patriarchal European virtues, effectively erasing genuine Native American
culture. However, I think he somewhat exaggerates by including Rogerss play as
one that helps justify [the English colonials] continuing oppression of both [the
Native American and African American] races. McConachie, American Theatre
in Context, p. 125.
20. Woudbes first lines in the play are, I am very sorry our good old governor Botetourt
has left us. He well deserved our friendship, when alive, and that we should for years
to come, with gratitude, remember his mild and affable deportment (p. 17). Jay
B. Hubbell and Douglass Adair in their introduction to The Candidates give the date
of Governor Botetourts death as 15 October 1770 to justify their assertion that the
play was written in 1770. Robert Munford, A Collection of Plays and Poems by the late
Colonel Robert Munford, of Mecklenberg County in the State of Virginia (Williamsburg:
1948), p. 6. It seems that Munfords son hoped for a performance in 1792 (and may
have written the prologue to the play at that time). He wrote from Richmond, The
players are in town, and I intend to get them to bring a farce of my fathers writing
upon the stage this winter. Whereas Hubbells and Adairs introduction (p. 5) states
that The Patriots was written in 1775 or 1776 and published in Philadelphia in 1776,
Walter Meserve asserts that it was based on an event in 1777 and written between 1777
and 1779, and not published until 1798. Walter Meserve, An Emerging Entertainment:
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
NOTES TO PAGES
30 39
The Drama of the American People to 1828 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1977). p. 86.
The ode was written by Francis Hopkinson, who later signed the Declaration of
Independence and designed the American Flag.
It is noteworthy that many of the dialogues and plays from this era portrayed the
America Indian in a sympathetic light. One of the most remarkable examples was
A Dialogue between an Englishman and an Indian that was performed at the
1779 commencement at Dartmouth College, which was founded to educate the
Indians. In the dialogue, an Englishman and an Indian (who was in fact acted by
an Indian) debated the character of Indians in front of a numerous auditory.
New-Hampshire Gazette, 5 October 1779. At the beginning of the piece, the Englishman accuses the Indian of being from a savage, cruel race but, after the Indian
counters with examples of European savagery, concedes that he has been too much
prejudiced. John Smith, A Dialogue between an Englishman and an Indian, 1779,
manuscript held by Dartmouth College Special Collections.
In a letter to James Madison on 4 January 1775, discussing the efforts of the Tory
printer James Rivington to undermine the credibility of the Continental Congress,
William Bradford wrote, Rivington is encouraging the Cause of Administration
there with all his might: he is daily publishing pamphlets against the proceedings
of the Congress & the Cause they are engaged in. Some of them are grossly scurrilous, particularly A Dialogue between a Southern Delegate & his Spouse on his
return from the Congress. Quoted in Norman Philbrick (ed.), Trumpets Sounding
(New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1972), p. 32.
While it might be tempting to read feminist rhetoric into the dialogue, the dramatic
choice of a superior woman in the play was probably made to further ridicule the
male members of the Congress.
See Philbrick, Trumpets Sounding, p. 37.
Munfords The Patriots would raise this issue from a Patriot perspective during the
war.
For a discussion of the effectiveness of such political tracts and pamphlet plays, see
Philbrick, Trumpets Sounding, pp. 613.
It was normal at this time that pamphlet plays were published anonymously, partly
because of their dangerous political views. Printers were subjected to abuse for publishing controversial material. A Patriot mob stormed the office of James Rivington,
the Tory printer of the New York Gazette, and wrecked his press in 1775. Likewise, the
Whig printer Isaiah Thomas, who published the Massachusetts Spy in which Mercy
Otis Warrens The Adulateur first appeared, secretly moved his press from Boston to
get out of danger. At least five pamphlet plays are ascribed to Warren (who continued
to write after the war), but, because most plays were published anonymously, it is
difficult to determine whether she or someone else wrote certain plays such as The
Blockheads, Or the Affrighted Soldiers published in 1776 and The Motley Assembly in
1779. Recent scholars have argued that Mercy Otis Warren probably wrote all the
plays ascribed to her in this chapter. See, for example, Jeffrey H. Richards, Mercy
Otis Warren (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), pp. 84108.
This name is spelled in various ways in the text.
NOTES TO PAGES
40 52
30. Jeffrey Richards has shown that the characters of Brutus and Cassius and whom
they represented in real life are not consistent and vary from one text to the next.
Richards, Mercy Otis Warren, p. 165, note 13.
31. Mercy Warren Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, drama folder, p. 5.
32. There are no page numbers in the facsimile text published in Franklin and presumably
in the original, and so I have numbered the pages.
33. John Adams, Papers of John Adams edited by Robert J. Taylor, Mary-Jo Kline and
Gregg L. Lint (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977),
ii, p. 3.
34. Benjamin Franklin (ed.), The Plays and Poems of Mercy Otis Warren (New York:
Delmar, 1980), p. 189.
35. Franklin (ed.), Plays and Poems of Warren, p. 212.
36. This issue would continue to be addressed in (and helps therefore to substantiate the
authorship of ) Warrens later plays, such as The Blockheads and The Motley Assembly.
37. Franklin (ed.), Plays and Poems of Warren, 2089.
38. Warren papers, reel 1, 612.
39. The play was advertised as on sale in the Boston Gazette of 3 April 1775. The Group
was printed by Edes and Gill in Boston on April 3, 1775, and reprinted in Jamaica
and Philadelphia by James Humphreys in 1775.
40. Adams, Papers of John Adams, ii, p. 214.
41. Adams, Papers of John Adams, ii, pp. 394408.
44. Adams, Papers of John Adams, ii, pp. 4078.
45. John Adams, Papers of John Adams edited by Robert J. Taylor, Gregg L. Lint and
Caleste Walker (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1979), iii, p. 11.
46. Franklin (ed.), Plays and Poems of Warren, p. xiii.
47. See Philbrick, Trumpets Sounding, pp. 1389.
48. The conspiracy theory also indicated the predominant favoring of Protestantism
over Catholicism that would become part of the national hegemonic discourse.
49. Lord Dunmore used this tactic successfully during the War of Independence and it
represented a significant threat to the Patriots. See Howard Zinn, A Peoples History
of the United States (London: Longman, 1980), p. 81.
50. Claude Robin, New Travels through North-America (New York: Arno Press, 1969),
p. 18.
51. Thomas Paine is credited with two anonymous dialogues from this same period.
A Dialogue Between General Wolfe and General Gage in a Wood Near Boston (printed
in the Pennsylvania Journal on 4 January 1775) appeared at about the same time as
Mercy Warrens The Group. Paine, who had only recently arrived in America and
would not write Common Sense (in which he argued for American political independence from Britain) for another year, did not go as far as Mercy Otis Warren in
justifying armed struggle and separate nationhood. On the contrary, in this dialogue
he envisaged the continuation of the American colonies within the empire. He used
the device of resurrecting a dead British military hero to argue the just cause of
NOTES TO PAGES
52 54
the American Patriots. The ghost of Wolfe remains loyal to King and country and
suggests that by resigning, Gage will restore perpetual harmony between Britain
and her colonies (p. 118). However, Paine went further in his second dramatic piece
A Dialogue Between the Ghost of General Montgomery, Just Arrived from the Elysian
Fields, and an American Delegate, in a Wood Near Philadelphia. Published in the
Pennsylvania Packet on 19 February 1776, Paine explicitly encouraged independence
in this second dialogue.
52. After the war Mercy Otis Warren wrote stage plays as well as a three-volume history
of the United States and justified her use of the dramatic form on didactic grounds.
Theatrical amusements may, sometimes, have been prostituted to the purposes of
vice; yet, in an age of taste and refinement, lessons of morality, and the consequences
of deviation, may perhaps, be as successfully enforced from the stage, as by modes of
instruction, less censured by the severe; while, at the same time, the exhibition of great
historical events, opens a field of contemplation to the reflecting and philosophic
mind. Warren, introduction to Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous in Franklin (ed.),
Plays and Poems of Warren, p. 11. For a discussion of the didactic purposes of her later
plays such as The Sack of Rome and The Ladies of Castile, see Richards, Mercy Otis
Warren, pp. 10720.
2 Federalist and Democratic Republican theatre: partisan drama

in nationalist trappings
1. Writing in the 1960s and 70s, leading American theatre scholars Richard Moody
and Walter Meserve discussed Burks Bunker-Hill at some length in their books,
but they categorized it simply as a patriotic piece and did not discuss its political
subtleties. See Walter Meserve, An Emerging Entertainment: The Drama of the
American People to 1828 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), pp. 11925
and Richard Moody (ed.), Dramas from the American Theatre (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1966), pp. 619.) Although more interested in the political and cultural context of theatre, Gary Richardson more recently has helped to perpetuate
the image of the play as nationalistic by highlighting its romance and theatrical
spectacle rather than its partisan political rhetoric. Gary Richardson, American
Drama from the Colonial Period through World War I (New York: Twayne Publishers,
1993), p. 56.
2. William W. Clapp, A Record of the Boston Stage (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1853), p. 55.
3. Meserve suggested that Adamss strident reaction to the play stemmed from a strong
scene in which Warren goes into battle. Warren and Prescot prepare for war with the
rallying cry, Liberty or Death. It is probably this scene, in which Burk made Warren
act with strong determination for victory, that offended John Adams. Warren draws
his sword and makes the following speech: Now savage strife and fury fill my soul /
And when my nature yields to self-compassion / Let Bostons injuries rise before my
view / And steel my heart to pity (iv, ii), Meserve, An Emerging Entertainment,
p. 123. Meserve may be partly right in proposing that these words made Warren out
to be more savage than he was in real life, but in addition there is an important
underlying rhetoric and a partisan quality to which Adams was very sensitive. For
NOTES TO PAGES
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
54 56
example, Adams may have been more aggrieved by Warrens denunciation of social
inequalities and aristocratic titles. Meserve also expressed difficulty in explaining the
early critical response to Burks play: The odd part of the response to Bunker-Hill
is the conscientious effort on the part of most early historians and critics to deplore
it, particularly when the play was certainly no worse than many of the plays being
produced at that time and even better than a substantial number. Although no one
would contend that the play is great drama, the ardor with which some of the early
condemnations seem to single out this play suggests a confluence of criticism for
whatever reasons may be imagined, p. 122. Later, he suggested surprisingly that
the continuing success of the play might have caused critics to attack it. Perhaps
its repetition simply gave critics more opportunity to express their views, p. 123.
Rather than placing Dunlaps comments in the context of a partisan reaction to the
play, Richard Moody discussed their financial implications, Perhaps Dunlaps later
failure as a theatre manager resulted from such fanciful disregard for the box office,
Moody (ed.), Dramas from the American Theatre, p. 65.
There was, of course, a fundamental contradiction in the position of many Democratic Republicans (including Jefferson) who promoted the egalitarian principles of
the French Revolution while engaging in the practice of slavery.
John Adams, The Political Writings of John Adams, edited by George A. Peek, Jr.
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1954), p. 115.
Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1964),
p. 184. Adams managed to push through the Senate the title His Highness the
President of the United States of America and the Protector of the Rights of the
Same but it foundered in the House of Representatives. See Samuel Eliot Morison,
Henry Steele Commager and William E. Leuchtenburg, The Growth of the American
Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), i, p. 285.
Mercy Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution
(New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1970), iii, p. 392.
Quoted in Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the United States (New York: Longman,
1980), p. 95.
Forrest McDonald, Alexander Hamilton. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc.,
1982), p. 346 and Morison, Commager and Leuchtenburg, Growth of the American
Republic, i, p. 327.
Quoted in Curti, Growth of American Thought, p. 184.
Quoted in Morison, Commager and Leuchtenburg, Growth of the American Republic,
i, p. 300.
See Merrill D. Peterson, Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 58.
Richard Butsch, in his valuable article American Theatre Riots and Class Relations,
17541849, tends to imply that the two factions divided along class lines, i.e. rich
employers and professionals against artisans. While there is some truth in this, the
alliances were more complex. For example, the rich planters in the south tended
to favor the Democratic Republican position because they opposed a strong central
government and because they feared having to repay their debts to Britain. Richard
Butsch, American Theatre Riots and Class Relations, 17541849, in Theatre Annual,
48 (1995), 4159.
NOTES TO PAGES
56 59
14. William Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley,
1833), i, p. 214.
15. According to the theatre historian Arthur Hobson Quinn, In 1798 the Chestnut
Street Theatre was nightly a scene of rivalry between the two parties as to which
could stir up more enthusiasm for its favorites, Arthur Quinn, History of the American
Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1923), p. 130, note 1. William Dunlap also refers to a disturbance in the New York
Theatre when the orchestra leader was not ready with a popular air when called
upon by Democratic Republicans. Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, i, p. 210.
16. William W. Clapp, A Record of the Boston Stage (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1853), pp. 223.
17. Quoted in Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, p. 26.
18. After the intense rivalry during the first season had virtually bankrupted the two
theatres, John Hodgkinson was brought from New York to perform with his company
in the summer at the Haymarket and the winter at the Federal Street Theatre. He
recommended that the shareholders of the Federal Street Theatre secretly buy out a
majority of the shares in the Haymarket (as well as its scenery) so that the theatres
would not have to compete because Boston was not big enough to sustain two
theatres. He also argued that the Haymarket proprietors would not try to start
another theatre because of the disastrous financial consequences in the previous
season. Fatal experience will cry out to each attempt remember!!! party will be
destroyd. Hodgkinson to Thomas Bartlett, Secretary of the Trustees of the Federal
Street Theatre, 13 March 1798, Federal Street Theatre Collection, Boston Public
Library.
19. John Burk, Bunker-Hill; or, The Death of General Warren (New York: Publications of
the Dunlap Society, no. 15, 1891), p. 12; Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 501.
20. New England Magazine, 1832, iii, 389.
21. Arthur Hornblow, A History of the Theatre in America (Philadelphia: Lippincott
Company, 1919), vol. i, p. 237.
22. Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 745.
23. Charles Powell, the manager of the Haymarket Theatre, had been fired as manager
of the Federal Street Theatre and had used the animosity between the social and political divisions within the city to promote the creation of a rival theatre. According
to historian William Clapp, Powell availed himself of the strong political antagonism which prevailed between the Federalists and so-called jacobins to induce the
latter to believe that the old theatre was managed with a view of promoting political
animosities, William Clapp, The Drama in Boston in Justin Winsor (ed.), The
Memorial History of Boston (Boston: J. R. Osgood and Company, 1881), iv, p. 363. It
may also have been partly to appeal to Democratic Republican tastes that Powell
hired French and Irish and not just English actors for his company. The actor who
played the heroic figure of General Warren, for example, was an Irishman.
24. Clapp, Record of the Boston Stage, pp. 367.
25. According to the accounts of the Federal Street Theatre, weekly income was normally
in excess of $1,000 in 1796 before the Haymarket Theatre opened, and exceeded
$1,200 for three weeks. In the three months after the opening of the Haymarket, the
box-office income of the Federal Street Theatre never reached $1,000 and was often
NOTES TO PAGES
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
59 62
below $700. See Managers Accounts, 17967, Federal Street Theatre Collection,
Boston Public Library. John Williamson, the manager of the Federal Street Theatre,
kept the theatre going with promissory notes and had to be bailed out by the trustees
at the end of the season. See Williamsons letters to Trustees of theatre, April to July,
1797. Federal Street Theatre Collection, Boston Public Library.
Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, i, p. 312.
Polar Star and Daily Advertiser, 26 October 1796.
Polar Star and Daily Advertiser, 9 January 1797.
Burk, Bunker-Hill, p. 1.
Burk claimed impartiality for his Polar Star and Daily Advertiser, but it was clearly
pro-French, anti-British and anti-monarchist. During the 1796 election campaign
between Adams and Jefferson, Burk hinted at his support for Jefferson. The Time
Piece, which he edited in 1798, was much more outspoken about its Democratic
Republican sympathies. (See The Time Piece, AprilJuly 1798.)
Burks arrest was an ironic comment on his first editorial in The Polar Star in which
he wrote to his readership after recently arriving from Ireland, I call you f e l l o w c i t i z e n s! for I too am a citizen of those states from the moment the stranger
puts his foot on the soil of America, his fetters are rent in pieces, and the scales of
servitude which he had contracted under European tyrannies fall off, he becomes a
f r e e m a n; and though civil regulations may refuse him the immediate exercise of
his rights, he is virtually a Citizen . . . This I take to be the way in which all strangers
are affected when they enter those states (6 October 1796).
At the same time as he negotiated for Burks case to be dismissed on condition
that Burk leave the country, Burr wrote to James Monroe asking him to help Burk.
Mr. Burk who will present you this, is a young Gentleman in whose Welfare I
feel much interested His enthusiasm in the cause of liberty, his talents, and his
literary acquirements, very uncommon at his period of life, entitle him to respect,
attention and patronage, Aaron Burr, Political Correpondence and Public Papers of
Aaron Burr edited by Mary-Jo Kline (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), i,
p. 361.
Bruce McConachie has observed that bashing the Brits played a large role in defining republican nationalism, Bruce McConachie, American Theatre in Context,
from the Beginnings to 1870, in Don Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (eds.), The
Cambridge History of American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), i, p. 135.
Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, i, p. 314.
Quoted in Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, i, pp. 31314.
Quoted in Peterson, Adams and Jefferson, pp. 545. Adams corresponded at length
with Rush about the need for titles and social distinctions in America. Rush evidently
maintained that they should be unnecessary, but Adams, quoting Roman and Greek
examples, argued that elevated titles gave the populace a respect for officials. He was
also clearly less sanguine than Rush that the division of power between the three
branches of government would work. I agree with you that hereditary Monarchy
and hereditary Aristocracy, ought not yet to be attempted in America and that
three ballanced [sic] Branches, ought to be at Stated Periods elected by the People.
This must and will and ought to continue, till Intrigue and Corruption Faction and
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
NOTES TO PAGES
62 68
Sedition Shall appear in those Elections to Such a degree as to render hereditary

Institutions, a Remedy against a greater Evil, Adams to Rush, 24 July 1789, Ms.
Am.229 (31), Boston Public Library.
Quoted in Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1978), p. 13.
Quoted in Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, i, pp. 31314.
Columbia Centinel, 22 February 1797.
Sollees name was often also spelled Solee.
William Dunlap, The Diary of William Dunlap (New York: New York Historical
Society, 1931) i, p. 144; see also Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, i, p. 313.
Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, i, pp. 3712.
Major John Andre acted and helped in the staging of British military plays from 1777
until he was captured and hanged by the Patriots for espionage in 1780. See Dunlap,
History of American Theatre, i, pp. 945 and Jared Brown, The Theatre in America
During the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), passim.
Although Dunlap admitted in the preface to the play that it was a slight piece, it was
printed many times apparently with the encouragement of his friends. See Dunlap,
Diary of William Dunlap, i, p. 160.
Oral S. Coad, William Dunlap (New York: Dunlap Society, 1917), pp. 4950.
Dunlap, Diary of William Dunlap, i, p. 175.
Richardson, American Drama, p. 57.
Richardson, American Drama, p. 60.
Dunlap looked at William H. Browns Westpoint Preservd, Or the Treason of Arnold,
which was apparently an anti-Federalist version of the same story that was performed
at the Haymarket Theatre in April 1797. Although Browns play was not printed and
has apparently disappeared, the emphasis on treason in the title clearly implies a
different ideological orientation from Dunlaps play. See Dunlap, Diary of William
Dunlap, i, p. 225.
A review defending the play in The Argus on 3 April implied that the performance
was well received until the cockade incident: The representation was attended by a
crowded audience who gave continued testimony of their approbation by plaudits,
and in many instances more unequivocal tributes to the Authors power by their tears.
One incident, viz. a young fiery officer tearing out his cockade and disclaiming the
service of his country, met with pointed disapprobation from a part of the audience.
The article went on to argue that the author of the play had shown that the actions
of the character were misguided and that the audience should not have interrupted
the action of the play before it understood the authors point of view. If in every play,
the audience made it a custom to shew their disapprobation of such [s]entiments
and actions as are continually put into the mouths of characters which the author
intends to expose either as rash or villainous, Theatrical representation could not go
on, nor could actors be found to represent such characters . . . If in the conclusion
they find that the author has not done what is called poetical justice, then it belongs
to the audience to do justice on him.
Dunlap, Diary of William Dunlap, i, p. 237.
Coad, William Dunlap, p. 62.
NOTES TO PAGES
68 76
53. The Argus printed two articles about the play that appeared side by side on 3 April
1798, one in defense of the author and the other attacking the play. Two days later,
The Argus printed a lengthy reply to the negative review by a correspondent who
defended the play against some of the political criticism. On 7 April 1798, the original
critic defended his opinions in the same paper, reinforcing his position that Andre
was a traitor and did not deserve such positive treatment in a play. This sort of
correspondence was highly unusual and reflected the political rivalry of the time as
well as the fact that the play was an original American work about an important and
controversial subject. By contrast with The Argus, The Time Piece merely edited the
original critical review and did not include the positive review or any correspondence.
The review included a note at the bottom of the article indicating that it had been
received on 31 March but that it had been too late for the edition of 2 April and was
therefore printed in the next edition on 4 April 1798.
54. According to Burks biographer Joseph Shulim, the other co-editor Matthew Davis
probably carried out the editorial duties until Burk took charge from 11 April 1798.
Joseph I. Shulim, John Daly Burk: Irish Revolutionist and American Patriot, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 54, part 6 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, October 1964), p. 22. This would mean that the advance publicity
for Female Patriotism (quoted in the text) appeared in The Time Piece on the same
day as Burk took over as editor.
55. Time Piece, 4 April 1798.
58. Dunlap, Diary of William Dunlap, i, p. 221.
63. Burk quoted the scene in which Joan La Pucelle recognizes the king in disguise and
introduces herself. Burk used the same name for Joan of Arc as Shakespeare. Pucelle
means young virgin.
64. Beauvais is spelled Beuvais for the first half of the play.
65. John C. Miller, The Federalist Era: 17891801 (New York: Harper and Brothers,
1960), p. 212.
66. Miller, The Federalist Era, pp. 21213.
71. Monthly Magazine, 3, no. 6 (December 1800), 455.
72. Quoted in Dunlap, History of American Theatre, ii, p. 163.
73. Bunker-Hill continued to be performed successfully in New York and elsewhere
through the Jacksonian era. It was printed in 1797 and reprinted in 1808 and 1817.
Charles Blake attested to its ongoing success, observing that the play has proved
very remunerative to the theatrical treasury in Boston. It was very well received
NOTES TO PAGES
77 83
here [in Providence when it was first produced] and the company then left town, to
produce it in Newport. Miserable as the play was it survived many dramas superior
to it in every respect, and is now sometimes brought out on the fourth of July in
New England cities for the benefit of visitors from the rural districts. Quoted in
Burk, Bunker-Hill, p. 12.
74. Because 4 July 1803 was a Sunday, the play was performed on the following day.
75. Quoted in Coad, William Dunlap, pp. 745.
76. The Argus, 3 April 1798.
3 Independence for whom? American Indians and the Ghost Dance

1. In developing many of the ideas in this chapter, I am indebted to an extremely
fruitful collaboration with Dr. Ross Frank in the Department of Ethnology at the
University of California, San Diego.
2. Richard Schechner, General Introduction to the Performance Studies Series, in
Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: Performing Arts Journal
Publications, 1987), p. 4.
3. See Weston La Barre, The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1970), p. 32.
4. Turner, Anthropology of Performance, p. 25.
5. Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 2930.
6. Ania Loomba, Colonialism / Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 97.
7. Quoted in Loomba, Colonialism / Postcolonialism, p. 103.
8. Jean and John Comaroff, Modernity and its Malcontents (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993), p. xxix.
9. A Congressional Act in 1871 abolished treaty making. See Francis Paul Prucha (ed.),
Documents of United States Indian Policy (Lincoln: Nebraska University Press, 1990),
p. 136.
10. John Pope to Colonel R. M. Sawyer, Military Division of the Mississippi, 1 August
1865, War of the Rebellion, Official Records, Ser. i, xlviii, Pt. 2, 1149. Quoted in James
C. Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1965), p. 3.
11. The General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) of 1887 established the policy of allocating
parcels of reservation land to individual Indians in order to break up tribal relations.
See Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, pp. 1714.
12. Thomas J. Galbraith to Clark W. Thompson, 27 January 1863, Annual Report of
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, serial 1182: 398. Quoted in Francis Paul Prucha,
The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1984), i, p. 439.
13. Paul Steinmetz, Pipe, Bible, and Peyote among the Oglala Lakota (Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1990), p. 28.
14. Clyde Holler, Black Elks Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. 113.
15. See Robert M. Utley, The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1963), pp. 68.
NOTES TO PAGES
83 85
16. Holler, Black Elks Religion, p. 134.

17. Sending Spirits to the Spirit World, Short Bull, 11 February 1898, in James
R. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, edited by Raymond J. DeMallie and Elaine
A. Jahner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), pp. 1412. This regulation,
which was introduced in 1883, was not enforced until 1892. See Prucha, Documents
of United States Indian Policy, pp. 161 and 187.
18. Despite having converted to Catholicism, Black Elk during his lifetime forged a
vision of Christianity that meshed with traditional Lakota religion, and published
a significant account of this. See Black Elk and Joseph Epes Brown, The Sacred
Pipe; Black Elks Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1953), passim.
19. New North-West, Deer Lodge, 20 August 1869. Quoted in Olson, Red Cloud, p. 89.
20. New York Times, 23 June 1867.
22. Pope to Sibley, 28 September 1862, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: GPO), series i, 13:
686. Quoted in Prucha, The Great Father, i, p. 443. A recent review of the militarys
reaction to the Ghost Dance phenomenon suggests that General Miles and other
important western army officials saw action against the Lakota in South Dakota as
an opportunity to demonstrate to politicians and bureaucrats in Washington that
military solutions were superior to civilian ones when it came to solving the Indian
Question. See Jeffrey Ostler, Conquest and the State Wounded Knee, Pacific
Historical Review, 65, no. 2 (May 1996), 21748.
23. Sherman to Cooke, 28 December 1866, NARS, RG 98, LR, Dept. of the Platte.
Quoted in Olson, Red Cloud, p. 52.
24. Sherman to Augur, 19 February 1867, NARS, RG 98, LR, Dept. of the Platte.
Quoted in Olson, Red Cloud, p. 53.
25. New York Times, 27 September 1867. Sherman argued that the road could not be
stopped but that the Indians could claim compensation. The military representatives
in the Peace Commission concluded their work by recommending that the policy
of making treaties with the Indians should be abandoned and that Indians should
be forced onto reservations and made individually liable to the laws of the US. See
Olson, Red Cloud, p. 78.
26. An earlier version of the Ghost Dance appeared in 1870. See James Mooney, The
Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (Washington DC: Bureau of
American Ethnology, Annual Report 14, 1896), part 2, pp. 7014.
27. A considerable amount of literature at the beginning of this century discussed the
similarities of Sun Dance traits among Plains tribes and theories of chronology and
transmission. See George Amos Dorsey, The Arapaho Sun Dance; the Ceremony of the
Offerings Lodge (Chicago: Field Columbian Museum, 1903); George Amos Dorsey,
The Ponca Sun Dance (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1905); Ralph
Linton, The Comanche Sun Dance, American Anthropologist, 37 (1935), 4208;
Robert B. Lowie, Sun Dance of the Shoshone, Ute, and Hidastsa, Anthropological
Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 16, no. 1 (1919), 387431; and Clark
Wissler, The Sun Dance of the Blackfoot Indians (New York: The Trustees, 1918).
NOTES TO PAGES
85 88
28. Hittman discusses the scholarly debate as to whether Wovoka prophesied that the
millennium would occur in this life or in the afterlife. Michael Hittman, Wovoka
and the Ghost Dance (Carson City: Grace Dangberg Foundation, Inc., 1990), p. 1.
29. According to Mooney, Paiute messengers preached to the Navaho about the new
belief but the Navaho were skeptical, laughed at the prophets, and paid but little
attention to the prophesies [sic]. Mooney speculates that because the Navaho were
quite rich, they felt no special need of a redeemer. However, he gives certain
examples that indicate that the Navaho were affected by the religion. Mooney, Ghost
Dance, pp. 80911.
30. For an elaboration of this argument, see Brad Logan, The Ghost Dance among the
Paiute, Ethnohistory, 27, no. 3 (Summer 1980), 2789.
31. James R. Walker, Lakota Society, edited by Raymond J. DeMallie (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1982), p. 157.
32. See Hittman, Wovoka, p. 90 and Mooney, Ghost Dance, pp. 9267.
33. In a letter to the Cheyenne, Wovoka explained: When you get home you have to
make dance. You must dance four nights and one day time. Quoted in Mooney,
Ghost Dance, p. 781.
34. Mooney, Ghost Dance, p. 898.
35. Mary Crow Dog has recently reflected on the importance of Indian religion in
maintaining a notion of Indian identity. Up to the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Indian religion was forbidden. Children were punished for praying Indian, men
were jailed for taking a sweat bath. Our sacred pipes were broken, our medicine
bundles given to museums. Christianizing us was one way of making us white, that
is, making us forget that we were Indians. Holding onto our old religion was one
way of resisting this kind of slow death. As long as people prayed with the pipe
or beat the little water drum, Indians would not vanish, would continue to exist as
Indians, Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes, Lakota Woman (New York: Harper
Perennial, 1990), pp. 923.
36. There is considerable scholarly dispute concerning the initial teaching of Wovoka
and whether his message was misinterpreted, misrepresented or reinterpreted by
his disciples. Ethnologists, including Mooney, have argued that Wovoka may have
changed his teaching over time and that some of the recorded testimony concerning
his prophecies may not give the full picture. See Hittman, Wovoka, pp. 63105.
38. The Yankton Lakota were a separate but related group that lived generally to the
east of the Teton Lakota. See Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, pp. xxivxxv.
39. Quoted in Mooney, Ghost Dance, p. 799.
40. Mandan Pioneer, 26 September 1890. Quoted in Ostler, Conquest and the State,
p. 222.
41. Quoted in Mooney, Ghost Dance, p. 789.
43. Hittman suggests that the Paiute version was based on their traditional round dance
in which men and women held hands and danced in a circle. Hittman, Wovoka, p. 93.
44. The meeting with other tribes could be useful in times of crisis. For example, following the break up of the Fort Laramie Treaty negotiations, the occasion of a Sun
NOTES TO PAGES
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
88 93
Dance in 1867 was used by the Lakota and the Cheyenne to discuss a common war
strategy. See Olson, Red Cloud, p. 131.
Mary Crow Dog emphasized this aspect of the ritual when the Ghost Dance was
revived during the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. For Leonard [Crow
Dog], dancing in a circle holding hands was bringing back the sacred hoop to feel,
holding on to the hand of your brother and sister, the rebirth of Indian unity, feel it
with your flesh, through your skin. He also thought that reviving the Ghost Dance
would be making a link to our past, to the grandfathers and grandmothers of long
ago, Dog and Erdoes, Lakota Woman, p. 153.
Elk and Brown, The Sacred Pipe, pp. 805.
Bruce Lincoln, A Lakota Sun-dance and the Problematics of Sociocosmic Reunion,
History of Religions, 34, no. 1 (1994), 67.
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 128.
Mooney reports that the songs were so numerous partly because those who fell into a
trance produced a song for the next dance that reflected on their mystical experience.
Mooney, Ghost Dance, p. 953.
Mooney indicates that the ghost shirt did not originate with Wovoka and that the
Paiute did not wear it. He suggests that the ghost shirt with its special powers
of invulnerability may have owed its origin to the Mormon religion and their sacred undergarments. Mooney, Ghost Dance, pp. 7901. See also Hittman, Wovoka,
pp. 656.
Mooney, Ghost Dance, pp. 91920.
Mooney, Ghost Dance, pp. 78990.
See Mooney, Ghost Dance, p. 915.
Quoted in Mooney, Ghost Dance, p. 798.
It is difficult, a hundred years later, to determine whether their intention in reinterpreting the costumes as being invincible in battle carried an implication of aggression
(bearing in mind that Beard suggests that they were praying for the Savior to send
the white man from all the land) or whether it was a religious ritual which called for
the disappearance of the whites but was closer in dynamic to a form of passive resistance. Beard recalls his father saying to the medicine man, Give up your gun. Your
ghost shirt will be all you need and implies that the medicine man refused because
he replied, My friend, I am afraid. Quoted in Walker, Lakota Society, p. 164. But
again this might be explained away as a means of self-defense rather than as an act of
aggression, and that it would not have been a matter of concern had the soldiers not
been threatening them with guns and demanding that the Indians hand over theirs.
Raymond J. DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elks Teachings as given to John
G. Neihart (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 260.
Quoted in Walker, Lakota Society, pp. 1578.
Quoted in Mooney, Ghost Dance, p. 788.
NOTES TO PAGES
94 99
64. One Bull, box no 104, One Bull, folder no. 11, Campbell Collection. Quoted in
Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), p. 87.
65. Utley, Lance and the Shield, p. 88.
66. Mooney, Ghost Dance, pp. 8545.
67. Quoted in Ostler, Conquest and the State, p. 222. The Bismarck Daily Tribune
also reported on Sitting Bulls agitational activities. See Ostler, Conquest and the
State, p. 223.
68. Arguably McLaughlins portrayal of Sitting Bull was deliberately negative to justify
the actions taken by McLaughlin, the Indian police and the government troops in
December.
69. James McLaughlin, My Friend the Indian (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1989), pp. 2034.
70. Like the Sun Dance which normally attracted far more observers than dancers, the
Ghost Dance was a ritual which allowed for both performers and observers. For
some reason, Utley gives the figures as 100 watching and 100 dancing, although he
presumably was basing his description on McLaughlins description of 200 watching
and 100 dancing. Utley, Lance and the Shield, p. 287. McLaughlin explains that he was
careful to approach the dance from a seldom-used road so that his presence would
not be noticed as he observed the dance. However, it was not uncommon for whites
to attend such ceremonies. In addition to ethnologists, journalists, and military and
government personnel, it seems that local settlers also watched them occasionally. A
local newspaper reported that the new dance among the Indians is said to be worth
going many miles to see. See Ostler, Conquest and the State, p. 222.
71. The government agents at the neighboring agencies were all planning to arrest the
religious leaders in their areas. See Ostler, Conquest and the State, p. 225.
72. General Nelson Miles argued that Sitting Bull was trying to agitate other tribes,
urging them to obtain arms and ammunition and be prepared to meet the warriors
near the Black Hills in the spring. Quoted in Ostler, Conquest and the State,
p. 236. Ostler maintains that Miles was fabricating this story in order to necessitate
military intervention.
73. See Robert M. Utley, The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1963), p. 5.
74. E. B. Reynolds to CIA, 25 September 1890, Special Case 188, RG 75, NA. Quoted
in Ostler, Conquest and the State, p. 226.
75. See Alexander Lesser, The Pawnee Ghost Dance Hand Game: Ghost Dance Revival
and Ethnic Identity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), p. 105.
4 The role of workers in the nation: the Paterson Strike Pageant

1. Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the United States (London: Longman, 1980),
p. 346.
2. See Zinn, Peoples History, pp. 3404.
3. Charlotte Canning has pointed out that, Despite the circuit Chautauquas official
claim to a multi-denominational platform, a claim they buttressed by the appearance
of rabbis and Catholic priests, the Chautauqua platform was one of the most prominent promoters of what Handy calls the national religion, a religion of civilization
NOTES TO PAGES
99 101
presented simply as universal moral values and the American way of life, Charlotte
Canning, The Most American Thing in America in Jeffrey D. Mason and
J. Ellen Gainor (eds.), Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theater
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 102.
4. See Canning, The Most American Thing, pp. 1023.
5. According to Canning, A reassuring, stable, and moral representation was repeatedly performed year after year, both creating and fulfilling the spectators views and
beliefs about the United States. This United States bore little resemblance to the
heterogeneous, unstable, and complex nation that actually existed outside the comfortable confines of Chautauqua, and it was that United States that people wished
to be reassured did not exist. Chautauqua relentlessly performed the dominant values of white Protestants of British descent, even as their influences were waning
in the face of increasing immigration and religious diversity, Canning, The Most
American Thing, p. 104.
6. Linda Nochlin, The Paterson Strike Pageant of 1913, Art in America, 52 (May/June
1974), 68.
7. See David Krasner, The Pageant is the Thing in Mason and Gainor (eds.),
Performing America, pp. 10622.
8. Quoted in Nochlin, Paterson Strike Pageant, p. 68.
9. Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties
(London: Dennis Dobson, 1946), p. 147. For a discussion of plays in the 1930s
about industrial conditions, see for example, Malcolm Goldstein, The Political Stage:
American Drama and the Theater of the Great Depression (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974).
10. Hughes was a political radical who believed in solidarity between the races. As
he himself was a mixture of races, he believed that America likewise should come
together rather than be split by prejudice. In a poem called Let America be America
Again which he wrote on a train trip while recovering from the bad press notices
for his play Mulatto, he expressed his belief in ethnic harmony for all groups in
America:
I am the poor white fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slaverys scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak . . .
O, let America be America again
The land that never has been yet
And yet must be the land where every man is free.
The land thats mine the poor mans, Indians, Negros, me
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
NOTES TO PAGES
101 104
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose

The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the peoples lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
in Arnold Ramersad and David Roessel (eds.), The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), pp. 1901.
New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, pp. 6, 4.
New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, p. 6.
New York Times, 9 June 1913, p. 8.
The IWW demanded an eight-hour day (rather than the fifty-five-hour working
week that was in practice). See Gregory Mason, Industrial War in Paterson, Outlook
(7 June 1913), 2867.
Mabel Dodge Luhan, Movers and Shakers: Volume Three of Intimate Memories (New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936), p. 188. (Mabel Dodge published her
memoirs after marrying a second time and changing her name to Mabel Dodge
Luhan.) Robert Rosenstone questions Dodges account in his biography of John
Reed but his arguments do not seem convincing. Robert Rosenstone, Romantic
Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 126.
Moreover, corroboratory evidence appeared in an article by Hutchins Hapgood (who
was present at the meeting) in the Globe and Commercial Advertiser: The idea of the
play was conceived by Mrs. Mabel Dodge, at a gathering some weeks ago in New
York at which Reed, Haywood, a former member of parliament, writers, radicals,
etc., were present. Reed and Haywood took up the idea with enthusiasm and since
then many people have become interested. Hutchins Hapgood, Strike Pageant in
the Garden, Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 21 May 1913.
Lois Rudnick (ed.), Intimate Memories: The Autobiography of Mabel Dodge Luhan
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), p. 134.
Luhan, Movers and Shakers, p. 189.
John Reed, Almost Thirty, in Groff Conklin (ed.), The New Republic Anthology:
19151935 (New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1936) p. 70. Although Reeds
article was written in 1917, it was shelved by the publisher until 1936, long after his
death.
See Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (eds.), The Cambridge History of
American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), iii, p. 514.
New York Times, 8 June 1913, p. 2. The New York Call reported that the mill in
the center of the set represented . . . Henry Dohertys, where the four-loom system
[which doubled the responsibilities of the workers] was first put in operation and
which was practically the cause of the now famous struggle. New York Call, 8 June
1913, p. 1.
Luhan, Movers and Shakers, p. 204. Martin Green suggests that this ramp was inspired
by Craigs ideas. See Martin Green, New York 1913: The Armory Show and the Paterson
Strike Pageant (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1988), p. 201.
NOTES TO PAGES
104 105
24. The newspapers and journals also acknowledged various other authors who may
have been part of the discussions. For example, The Paterson Strike Pageant,
Independent, 74 (19 June 1913), p. 1407 reported that Reed and Lincoln Steffens were
responsible for the idea and the Tribune alleged that The pageant was written for
[the strikers] by Thompson Buchanan, the playwright; Ernest Poole, the Socialist
and writer; Emilie [sic] Dodge and Jack Reed, the poet-Socialist. The International
Socialist Review also mentioned that Buchanan and Poole arranged and staged the
scenes and that Reed rehearsed them. Phillips Russell, The Worlds Greatest Labor
Play: The Paterson Strike Pageant, International Socialist Review, 14 ( July 1913), 9.
The Paterson Evening News (7 June 1913, p. 7) reported that The staging will be done
by Ernest Poole, Mabel Dodge, John Reed, Edward Hunt and Arturo Giovannitti.
Partly to reduce expenses, Reed decided to cut out four scenes. See Anne Huber
Tripp, The IWW and the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913 (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1987), p. 143. For a description of the original scenario for the pageant, see the
Paterson Evening News, 19 May 1913, p. 10.
25. Program of the Paterson Strike Pageant, printed in Brooks McNamara (ed.),
Paterson Strike Pageant, Drama Review, 51 (Summer 1971), 63.
26. Letter presumably from Edward Hunt, 12 June 1913, John Reed Manuscripts,
Houghton Library, Harvard University, bms Am 1655 (95).
27. William Haywood, Bill Haywoods Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood
(New York: International Publishers, 1929), p. 263.
28. Bernadine Kielty Scherman, Girl from Fitchburg (New York: Random House, 1964),
p. 72.
29. Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 27 May 1913, p. 7.
30. In an article for The Masses about his imprisonment for four days with the strikers
in Paterson, Reed emphasized that the ordinary workers, like the ones he had met
in prison, were as important as the leaders of the strike. They were the strike
not Bill Haywood, not Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, not any other individual. And if
they should lose all, their leaders, other leaders, would arise from the ranks, even as
they rose, and the strike would go on! John Reed, War in Paterson, The Masses
( June 1913) quoted in Mabel Dodge Luhan, Movers and Shakers, p. 198. Although
the IWW leaders tried to steer the strike in certain directions, they responded to
local conditions. See speech by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, on 31 January 1914, to the
New York Civic Club Forum, printed in Joyce L. Kornbluh, Rebel Voices: An IWW
Anthology, revised edition (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1998), pp. 21516.
31. Paterson Evening News, 19 May 1913, p. 10. The same article described the first
rehearsal for the pageant which occurred in the same meeting where he trained
their voices for them to sing a song. The song is called the Haywood Thrill. The
speaker this morning stated that the strains of the music when it reached the ears
of the manufacturers, it would make them feel that the terror of death was on
them. It is a very catchy air, and has no words. While giving the first lesson today he
got so enthused that he took off his coat. Reed wrote later how much he admired
the commitment and ideology of the IWW leadership. I liked their understanding
of the workers, their revolutionary thought, the boldness of their dream, the way
immense crowds of people took fire and came alive under their leadership. Here was
drama, change, democracy on the march made visible a war of the people, Reed,
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
NOTES TO PAGES
105 107
Almost Thirty, p. 70. Likewise, Hutchins Hapgood wrote of the realization of our
much abused conception of democracy and the dawn of a hope that they may be
co-operators in their own destiny, that they may work out for themselves a larger life,
may be vital factors in the creation of an industrial democracy. Hutchins Hapgood,
Sees No Sign of Strikes Loss, Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 26 May 1913,
p. 5.
Haywood, Bill Haywoods Book, p. 263.
New York Times, 8 June 1913; New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, p. 1.
Haywood, Bill Haywoods Book, p. 263.
Haywood, Bill Haywoods Book, p. 263. It is interesting to speculate why the Times
failed to mention the shooting. Because the cast were not allowed to use firearms by
the authorities, this may have made it more difficult to spot the event when there
was so much other activity on the stage. However, the Independent (74 (19 June 1913),
p. 1406) reported that the shooting by the police of a bystander, Modestino [was]
not staged. Although Haywood may have mis-remembered, it seems more likely
that the shooting was staged but perhaps not heard, given that several other papers
also mentioned it, including the New York Call. See 12,000 People Cheer Paterson
Pageant, New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 1.
Program of the Paterson Strike Pageant, in McNamara (ed.), Paterson Strike
Pageant, p. 63. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn recalls that Modestino lived opposite one
of the dye houses. One afternoon, after he returned from work, he was sitting on his
steps with his young child in his arms. Deputies came out of the plant, escorting a
few strikebreakers. Pickets assembled there began booing and hooting at the scabs.
The deputies started shooting. The man on the stoop grabbed his child and started
through his doorway, when he was shot in the back. His wife grabbed the child and
her husband fell and died at her feet. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl: An
Autobiography: My First Life (19061926) revised edition (New York: International
Publishers, 1973), p. 168.
See New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 1, and New York Herald, 8 June, 1913, p. 4.
Pageant, p. 63. Flynn remembers that the strikers sang the Funeral March of the
Workers which Reed had taught them. Flynn, Rebel Girl, p. 169.
The press reports disagreed about the number of pallbearers, some indicated four
and others, e.g. the New York Call, six. See New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 1.
Pageant, p. 63.
New York Tribune, 8 June, 1913, p. 4.
New York Herald, 8 June, 1913, p. 4.
New York Times, 8 June 1913, p. 2. Rosenstone quotes Trescas lines in Italian: Occhio
per occhio, dente per dente, sangue per sangue! Rosenstone, Romantic Revolutionary,
p. 125. The Independent, 74 (19 June 1913), p. 1407, as well as other newspapers,
says that only Haywood and Tresca spoke at the funeral, although Flynn was also
mentioned in some reports, presumably erroneously.
New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 2.
NOTES TO PAGE
107
47. A Grand Jury in Paterson asked William Brueckmann, the Mayor of Haledon, to
stop the meetings in his borough, but Brueckmann refused. See New York Call,
25 May 1913. By contrast with the large police presence in Paterson, only one policeman attended the mass meeting of approximately 25,000 people in Haledon on
25 May 1913.
48. New York Times, 8 June 1913, p. 2. The International Socialist Review described one of
the songs in detail: There was a chorus leader who sang in a clear, musical voice that
reached the uttermost parts of the Garden, and how his people did respond to him
with their lyric replies! Again and again the audience demanded repetitions of these
strange, wonderfully musical chants, composed and sung by the strikers themselves.
The words, meaningless without the voices, went as follows:
Now friends and fellow workers;
this strike we shall win!
(Chorus: this strike we shall win,
this strike we shall win!
Let us all join in the chorus:
Hurrah for Miss Flynn!
[(] Chorus): Hurrah for Miss Flynn
hurrah for Miss Flynn!
Italian, French and German,
Hungarian, Jew and Polish;
will [sic] make all together
one nationality.
Llallara, llallara, llallara, lla.
Stu sciopero fa conoscerre
ca nuie nce [sic] mantenimmo
uniti e cumpattimmo
cu forza e abilita
E llilliri llilliri lla
Vivi Tresca Haywood e Flynn,
notte e ghiuorno immallucca,
(coro) repeat.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
Russell, The Worlds Greatest Labor Play, p. 9. The New York Call (8 June 1913)
wrote that the United German Singing Societies sang the Socialist march during
this same scene.
New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3.
New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, p. 4. According to Haywood, many Paterson children
had earlier gone on strike in their school because the teachers had called the strikers
Anarchists and good-for-nothing foreigners, Haywood, Bill Haywoods Book,
p. 264.
Independent, 74 (19 June 1913), p. 1407.
NOTES TO PAGE
108
56. Flynn, Rebel Girl, p. 169. The Independent, 74 (19 June 1913), p. 1407 mentions that
The youngsters . . . were given again to the New York women who had been caring
for them. It is interesting to speculate whether the same actual strike mothers
were on stage and whether the real children, who were sent away, were used in
the performance. It seems likely because those that were sent to New York would
have been able to rehearse on the day of the performance. Furthermore, the New York
Call indicated that many of them were in the front of the audience. About 100
kiddies, accompanied by their strike parents, occupied the first few rows of seats.
Most of them were dressed in red and joined in the singing of the International
and the other revolutionary airs, New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 2.
58. Linda Nochlin argues that, Reed may be said to have turned the patriotic rhetoric,
the well-meaning melting pot psychology of the do-gooder civic-theater leaders,
back upon itself, revealing its idealistic vision of the immigrant workers place in their
new land for the sentimental cant it was. The patriotic pageants were all too often
merely spectacular rationalizations of the status quo, filling the workers with false
promises and false consciousness at the same time. In the Paterson Strike Pageant,
it was made dramatically clear that the new citizens were contributing more than
their dances, their songs and their folk traditions to this country; they were being
forced to contribute their health, their hopes, their honor and their children forced
to live lives of wretchedness and squalor in order that WASP capitalist society
might flourish, Nochlin, Paterson Strike Pageant, p. 68.
59. Linda Nochlin observes that in 1913, The whole country was in the throes of a
vigorous pageant renaissance, often referred to as the New Pageant Movement,
sometimes as community or civic theater. The year of the Paterson Pageant
saw the founding of the American Pageant Association, an organization with a
Bulletin, a series of conferences and a solid educational program. The bulletin listed
almost 50 performances coast to coast in 1913 in addition to Reeds, including such
varied fare as the Pageant of the Nations in Newburyport, Mass., the Pageant of
American Childhood in Worcester, the Historical Pageant at Carmel, Calif., the
Suffrage Allegory and Pageant Parade in Washington, DC, a Greek Festival in
Nashville and, perhaps particularly significant given Reeds Harvard background,
both the Hollis Hall Pageant at that university (organized by George Pierce Baker, a
strong proponent of civic theater) and Sanctuary, A Bird Masque, directed by Percy
MacKaye, Harvard 97, leader of the civic-theater movement and pageant-master
extraordinary, Nochlin, Paterson Strike Pageant, p. 67.
60. Independent, 74 (19 June 1913), pp. 14067.
61. New York Call, 7 June 1913 quoted in Tripp, IWW, p. 144.
62. According to the New York Call, There were red Socialist banners hanging from the
balconies, red shoulder sashes on the white gowned girls selling the cause pamphlets
and newspapers, red carnations in strikers buttonholes, little daughters of the strikers
dressed all in red, even to the shoes; red hair ribbons, and the red, red ribbons
and rosettes of the IWW flaunting everywhere, New York Call, 8 June, p. 2. The
New York Times observed that, There were many flags, most of them the fiery red
ones of the IWW, not to mention many banners on which short, pithy paragraphs
NOTES TO PAGES
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
108 111
in bright golden letters told the story of the alleged sufferings of the strikers at
the hands of the authorities of Paterson and the silk millowners, New York Times,
8 June 1913, p. 2.
Haywood, Bill Haywoods Book, p. 262. See Kornbluh, Rebel Voices, p. 201. A similar
patriotic event was organized by the manufacturers during the strike in Lawrence
during the previous year. Haywood, Bill Haywoods Book, p. 252.
Before the show started, according to the New York Herald, the strikers band played
the Star-Spangled Banner, Marseillaise and other airs, all of which were cheered,
New York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4.
Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 6 June 1916, p. 5.
Pageant, p. 62.
New York Times, 19 May 1913, p. 2. Hapgood described another scene, which was
omitted, in his report on 21 May. The forty strikers brought before the judge. The
policemans story. Strikers attempt to answer. Tell it to the next fellow! Held for
Grand Jury on the charge of Unlawful Assembly; five hundred dollars bail. Strikers:
Fill up de jail! We take no bail! To hell with the AFL Horray [sic] for the IWW,
Hapgood, Strike Pageant in the Garden, p. 4.
International Socialist Review, 13 ( June 1913), 849850.
Likewise, behind the scenes, it is clear that the rehearsal process was not completely
amicable, egalitarian and harmonious. A sympathetic report in the New York Call
portrayed Reed as an exhausted dictator in the final rehearsal: When he wasnt
megaphoning from the stage of the Garden to the 2,000 and more he was striking,
really striking, the maps of people who positively would get in the way. Im the boss
of this show, said Jack Reed, who long before had thrown away his coat (this is the
dress rehearsal thats now being discussed), and while megaphoning was ripping off
his collar. If I dont say move this way, dont move this way. I dont want to hurt the
feelings of any lady or gentleman taking part in this pageant shut up stop that
talking do you hear me? stop that talking! but if any white livered, low browed
son of a gun dont get into his bean the elementary fact that Im the whole boss of
this show theres going to be a whole lot of trouble around here. Do you make me?
Pay a lot of attention to the boss of this show or well, pay a lot of attention or
there wont be any show, New York Call, 8 June 1913, p.2.
New York Times, 19 May 1913, p. 2.
For example, the New York Call reported on 25 May 1913 that Frank Palleria, grand
venerable of the Order of the Sons of Italy of New Jersey, denied that a meeting
had been called for tomorrow to advise its members to return to work, and that the
organization intended to withdraw its support from the striking dyers and weavers.
He denounced the report as a malicious attempt of the bosses and press to create
strife and a break among the strikers, and to stampede them back to work, New
York Call, 25 May 1913.
Daniel McCorkle letter to the Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 24 May 1913, p. 6.
Pageant of the Paterson Strike, The Survey (28 June 1913), 428.
NOTES TO PAGES
111 112
76. Andre Tridon, Haywood, New Review, 1 (May 1913), 504. At their large strike
meetings, according to Steve Golin, Bilingual individuals in the crowd quietly translated Italian, Yiddish, German, Polish, Dutch, or English speeches for the benefit
of those around them, Steve Golin, The Fragile Bridge: Paterson Silk Strike, 1913
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), p. 153. The Survey reported that One
German striker, when asked how those of his nationality got along with the Italians,
said, Were all brothers and sisters and it certainly seemed so, for the Italian
singer [in the funeral scene] was reinforced by a hearty chorus of German women,
The Survey (28 June 1913), 428. Although the IWW (unlike most other unions) encouraged the membership of all ethnic groups, no African Americans were involved
in the strike because the mills would apparently not hire them. However, the IWW
brought Hubert Harrison, an African American socialist from New York, to speak
at two strike meetings. While the local newspaper derided this, Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn defended him. See Golin, Fragile Bridge, p. 145. John Reed also advocated
solidarity between African Americans and other workers. Later in Russia, he told a
meeting attended by Lenin that in the northern and southern parts of the United
States the one aim must be to unite the Negro and the white laborer in common
labor unions; this is the best and the quickest way to destroy race prejudice and
develop class solidarity. Quoted in Granville Hicks, John Reed: The Making of a
Revolutionary (New York: Macmillan, 1936), p. 392.
77. Paterson Pageant financial statement, quoted in Luhan, Movers and Shakers, p. 211.
78. Hutchins Hapgood, Creative Liberty, Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 7 June
1913, p. 7.
79. As in the Lip strike sixty years later, where French workers in the Lip watch factory
seized control of the factory and produced the watches themselves, the ability of
workers to do more than carry out the orders of their employers was transparent.
See Wilmer The Lip Affair, New Society (21 March 1974), 6967.
80. Speech by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, on 31 January 1914, to the New York Civic
Club Forum, printed in Kornbluh, Rebel Voices, p. 226. Steve Golin in Fragile Bridge
(pp. 15778) argues that the strike was designed to gain publicity rather than to raise
money and, because this was achieved, the strike was successful. He points out that
all historians of the pageant save one (Linda Nochlin) support Flynns argument
that it caused the failure of the strike, and he argues that they have given Flynns
comments too much credit in coming to that conclusion. Although his argument
has merit, he seems to overplay his hand, however, by underestimating the effect on
morale of the financial disappointment.
81. See Luhan, Movers and Shakers, pp. 2023.
82. The Globe reported, In order to get local color into their rehearsals and so that[,]
while rehearsing[,] the actors and actresses may also be working for the cause, the
preliminary tutelage of the workers is taking place outside the Price and other mills
in Paterson. One thousand pickets are rehearsing the picket scene ten hours a day
there. Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 27 May 1913, p. 7.
83. Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 27 May 1913, p. 7. Likewise, the police chief allowed
them to use the halls in Paterson that had been denied for strike meetings presumably
because he did not wish to outlaw an amateur drama society. Globe and Commercial
Advertiser, 6 June 1916, p. 5.
NOTES TO PAGES
112 114
84. Golin, Fragile Bridge, p. 139.

85. Hapgood, The Strikers Pageant, Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 9 June 1913,
p. 6.
86. See Nochlin, Paterson Strike Pageant, p. 67.
87. New York Times, 19 May 1913, p. 2.
88. New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3.
89. On One Meal a Day!, International Socialist Review 13 ( June 1913), 851.
90. See Golin, Fragile Bridge, pp. 163 and 168, and Upton Sinclair, American Outpost:
A Book of Reminiscences (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1932), p. 263.
92. New York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4.
93. Emphasis added. Hapgood, Strike Pageant in the Garden, p. 4.
94. The Survey (28 June 1913), 428.
95. For example, the Paterson Evening News reported, Considerable difficulty has been
experienced in securing any of the strikers to play the roles of strike-breakers and
policemen. It may be necessary for Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffins, Temple Graves,
Jr., Hutchins Hapgood, Ernest Poole, Leroy Scott and others of the committee to
appear as policemen and scabs in the great drama, Paterson Evening News, 3 June
1913, p. 5.
96. Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 6 June 1916, p. 5. In performance the actors playing
policemen suffered from audience participation. According to the New York Herald,
Scores of strikers wore policemens uniforms and to keep up the realism of the scene
all were lustily booed, as is done daily by the pickets in Paterson. The policemen
smiled grimly, waved their clubs and explained that their parts were the hardest and
most distasteful of the entire performance, New York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4.
97. New York Times, 8 June 1913, p. 2.
98. New York Evening World [n.d: 9 June 1913], quoted in Russell, Worlds Greatest
Labor Play, p. 8.
99. New York World, 9 June 1913, p. 6.
100. Russell, Worlds Greatest Labor Play, p. 9.
101. New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, p. 4.
102. The New York World commented on the relative homogeneity of the audience:
Few except labor unionists, Socialists and members of the Industrial Workers of
the World attended it, New York World, 9 June 1913, p. 6.
104. See Golin, Fragile Bridge, pp. 1667.
105. Quoted from a news report in Luhan, Movers and Shakers, p. 207. The press, who
were clearly interested in her reaction as no doubt were many of her acquaintances
in the audience and on stage, disagreed as to how Mrs. Modestino reacted to
the scene. The New York Herald, which featured her in their headlines Fifteen
Thousand Persons in Madison Square Garden See Coffin Borne at Head of Long
Procession Widow of Slain Paterson Striker Among the Spectators reported that
she was seated in a box near the stage and viewed the grewsome representation
of the tragedy of her husbands death and burial without a trace of emotion. New
York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4. The Press said that she sat with head buried through
the whole scene. New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3. The New York Call reported,
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
NOTES TO PAGE
115
Mrs. Modestino, who occupied a box, broke down and the committee had its
hands full to revive her. New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 2. The International Socialist
Review also said that she buried her head in her hands, Russell, The Worlds
Greatest Labor Play, p. 9.
New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, p. 4. According to Solidarity, the IWW organ, the
funeral scene was enacted with a repressed intensity on the part of both players and audience.Solidarity, 14 June 1913, p. 3. Quoted in Golin, Fragile Bridge,
p. 167. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Mabel Dodge also remembered the emotional impact of the funeral scene in unifying the audience with the actors. Flynn
wrote that the scene moved the great audience tremendously. Flynn, Rebel Girl,
p. 169.
In a sense the strikers were celebrities whose offstage personas were as visible as their
roles on stage. For a discussion of the effect of celebrity actors on their audience, see
Michael Quinn Celebrity and the Semiotics of Acting, New Theatre Quarterly, 6,
no. 22 (May 1990), 15461.
New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 2. The New York Times had earlier reported Silvermans controversial sentencing, which made her even more of a celebrity: Hannah
Silberman, who, with Carrie Carella, led the girls on the picket line, said: Thank
you, your Honor. The Recorder, not liking the tone of sarcasm, replied: Youre
welcome, sixty days. The other girls were sentenced to jail for ten days each.
With some difficulty, she was released in time for the pageant. Partly as a result
of this incident, the Tribune printed a large photo of her next to their report of
the pageant, with a caption describing her as The Little Firebrand of the strike.
New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, p. 4 (Silverman was also spelled Silberman by
the press). The New York Herald reported that among those acting in the picket
scene were the original forty-five, including Miss Hannah Silberman, seventeen
years old, a recognized leader, all of whom served ten days in the Passaic county jail. New York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4. In an article in June, Bill Haywood
mentioned the coming trial of Gurley Flynn, Tresca, Lessig, Quinlan and myself
on indictments charging incitement to assault, riot, disorderly assemblage, and
other high crimes. International Socialist Review, 13 ( June 1913), 851. The New York
Call quoted Bill Haywoods statistics that of the actors at least 800 had served jail
sentences. See New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 2.
New York Times, 8 June 1913, p. 2. The New York Herald commented on the irony
that the actors had intended to use firearms in the picket scene but that the
police regulations forbade, so that this feature had to be dispensed with, New York
Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4.
Tripp, IWW, p. 110.
New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, p. 4. The paper softened their insinuation that
violence was imminent by adding, But the speeches of Bill Haywood and the
others banished the first possibility, while the second was curbed into the increased
determination to fight on as peacefully as might be until the fight is won. Ironically
NOTES TO PAGES
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
116 117
the speeches by the strike leaders were criticized by the press as lackluster compared
to the acting of the workers. In the funeral scene, Tresca, who was supposed to put
all the fire of his warm Italian nature in his blood to blood speech . . . delivered it in
a wearied tone, with one hand in his pocket, and Haywood spoke in a monotonous
voice. Also in the scene giving away the children, Flynn failed to inspire any sense
of loss, and the episode went flat. New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3. According
to Andre Tridon, Haywood was not normally a dramatic or eloquent speaker. The
platform from which he speaks never becomes a stage, and when he speaks from a
stage, that stage becomes a platform . . . Haywood is simple. His speech and manner
are simple, Andre Tridon, Haywood, New Review, 1 (May 1913), 5023.
Stuart Hall writes, How things are represented and the machineries and regimes
of representation in a culture do play a constitutive, and not merely a reflexive, afterthe-event, role. This gives questions of culture and ideology, and the scenarios of
representation subjectivity, identity, politics a formative, not merely expressive,
place in the constitution of social and political life. Stuart Hall, New Ethnicities,
Black Film: Black Cinema, ICA Documents 7 (London: Institute of Contemporary
Arts, 1988), p. 29.
Hapgood, Strike Pageant in the Garden, p. 4.
See Harry J. Elam, Taking it to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez
and Amiri Baraka (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 1113.
Russell, Worlds Greatest Labor Play, p. 9. Emma Goldman s anarchist journal
Mother Earth expressed disappointment that the symbolic aspect of the performance was not taken further, complaining that it was too locally photographic.
Presumably wanting something more universal and militant, the report called the
performance too lacking in the revolutionary spirit of active resistance to tyranny,
which is the living breath of the struggle of the international proletariat for emancipation. Mother Earth, 8, no. 4 ( June, 1913), 102.
New York World, 9 June, 1913, p. 6. The pageant obviously heightened the awareness
of the Socialists to the strikers cause. Before suspending business, the convention
agreed to send a telegram to President Wilson asking that he institute an inquiry into the state of public affairs and the condition of government in the city
of Paterson, NJ, and to ascertain whether the Federal Constitution was abrogated
by the authorities of Paterson during the strike of the silk workers. The telegram
states that all impartial observers testify to the peaceable character of the strike and
the quiet and peaceful manner in which the strikers are conducting themselves. It
accuses the municipal authorities and local courts of Paterson of having declared
their determination to crush the strike by all means, regardless of law and constitutional guarantees, and further states that the Paterson authorities are acting in
pursuance of their lawless conspiracy to arrest without lawful ground. It cites the
convictions of Haywood, Hannah Silverman, Patrick Quinlan, Alexander Scott,
editor of the Weekly Issue, and others as examples of what false and inadequate
testimony can accomplish. New York World, 9 June 1913, p. 6.
New York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4.
NOTES TO PAGES
118 119
123. Kimberly Benston, The Aesthetic of Modern Black Drama, in Errol Hill (ed.),
The Theater of Black Americans (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980), i, p. 62.
124. New York Times, 8 June 1913, p. 2.
125. The New York Press mentioned that in addition to the working class were those who
are interested in all labor troubles, social workers, college students, settlement workers, sociologists of high and low degree, and here and there a few manufacturers
even from the maligned Paterson. In the boxes were the elite of the Socialist set,
those who give friendly aid and vocal impetus to every Socialistic movement. For
instance, there were Mrs. Rose Pastor Stokes, Mrs. Anna Strunsky Walling, Ellis
O. Jones, Lincoln Steffens, Art Young, Julius Hopp and others of the ultra type.
Then there were the mere Socialists, those who preach from the backs of wagons
and on soap boxes, New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3. According to the Globe, the
pageant attracted not only national but also international visitors. Among those
who are expected to be present are . . . Jack London . . . and Upton Sinclair. Elbert
Hubbard may be there also, while hundreds of lesser socialists from every section
of the country and a few from England are reported to have written asking for
reservations. The pageant is obtaining international notice, Globe and Commercial
Advertiser, 4 June 1913, p. 4.
126. In fact one of the reviewers complained of tricks by the IWW which undermined
the effectiveness (i.e. the authenticity) of the event. New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3.
127. New York Times, 8 June, 1913, p. 2. The New York Call reporter, who attended the
afternoon rehearsal in Madison Square Garden, wrote that the sheriff had called up
in the middle of the rehearsal and asked for a seat right on top of the stage during
the performance to see that the American flag was not insulted . . . Tell the Sheriff
that he cant sit up on the stage, said Haywood over his shoulder, he being too busy
at the moment to answer the telephone call personally. The reporter, presumably
anxious to exploit this conflict, appears to have phoned Sheriff Harburger in his
office and was told, If necessary, Ill come to the Garden tonight armed. I am the
chief peace officer of this community and my office goes back into antiquity. You
newspaper boys youre my friends can elaborate this as you see fit. Harburger
will stand for no monkey business by anarchists. It is Harburgers pledge to the
people of this great county to suppress riot and duress. I give warning that I will be
among you newspaper boys in a front seat tonight, wearing my badge, and armed if
necessary. When he entered the hall a half hour before the show began, he spotted
a No GodNo Master banner and announced, according to the New York Call,
That . . . is a sacr[i]ligious banner, newspaper boys. Have a cigar . . . While Chulius
was lighting the cigar, the Arrangements Committee had the sign removed and
when the greatest Sheriff this great county ever has seen, sees and ever will see
noted what had happened he settled down among the newspaper boys and let the
proceedings proceed. Later when the collection basket came around, the Sheriff
pitched in a dollar bill. See New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 2.
128. The Press wrote, Instead of asking for the patrolling of the Manhattan police
which they feared would be a constant challenge to their restraint-hating adherents
they put their own men in police uniforms. From their own kind the strikers were
willing to take and obey orders for quiet. Only one embodiment of local authority
NOTES TO PAGES
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
134.
135.
136.
137.
138.
119 121
was present, the ubiquitous Sheriff Harburger, armed to the teeth, ready to defend
the Flag, interrupt an incendiary speaker or do anything else that is included in his
oath of office. The little Sheriff had no opportunity to demonstrate his fiery zeal;
not a single chance came his way and that ought to be sufficient indication of the
orderliness of the crowd. New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3.
New York Tribune, 9 June 1913, p. 6. The newspapermen were as curious about what
was happening offstage as on since the social circumstance of the IWW having
taken over Madison Square Garden was so unusual and provocative. Several reporters wrote of the incident of the rogue poster in the hall carrying the slogan
No God, No Master poster which was torn down by one of the IWW leaders, both as an incident that signaled a threat to conventional morality but also
as an indicator that the IWW could be regarded as a safer and more responsible organization than might previously have been expected. For example, the Press
wrote, For a few moments before the pageant opened there was an expression
from a few hotheads in the upper gallery. Those persons glorying in their atheism, hung out a long banner: No God, No Master. At once from many parts of
the vast auditorium there came shouts. It remained for Quinlan [an IWW organizer] to assert his native reverence and compel the removal of the objectionable
placard. New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3. Reporters also remarked on the numerous personnel collecting money for the strike and selling (dangerous) political
literature.
The paper also praised the performance standard: The strike-actors, though they
only had only one rehearsal, enacted their parts well and many showmen who were
in the audience admitted that they could not have done better after only one drill,
Russell, Worlds Greatest Labor Play, p. 7. (This was evidently written before
news of the financial debacle.)
The Survey (28 June 1913), 428.
New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 3. Similarly, the International Socialist Review asked,
Who could sit quietly in his seat when that mill, wonderfully portrayed on canvas
in the first scene, suddenly ceased its grinding whirr and shot from its belly that
mass of eddying, struggling human beings loudly chorusing their exultant war
songs as they proclaimed themselves on strike? Stage managers annually spend
months of toil on a mob scene that the Paterson strikers outclassed with a single
rehearsal. As a spectacle it was perfect. Russell, Worlds Greatest Labor Play,
p. 9.
Russell, Worlds Greatest Labor Play, p. 8.
Flynn, Rebel Girl, p. 168.
The Independent also praised the simple yet effective staging, In its own fashion it
was as simple as the primitive drama of the sixteenth century . . . The stage, unlocalized save for the drop, became in turn the street, Haledon (a nearby village) and
Turn Hall in Paterson, quite as freely as a pre-Elizabethan inn-yard. It also commended the unpretentious performances, There was no play-acting. The strikers
139.
140.
141.
142.
143.
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
149.
NOTES TO PAGES
121 122
were simply living over, for their fellows to see, their most telling experiences. No
stage in the country had ever seen a more real dramatic expression of American
life only a part of it, to be sure, but a genuine and significant part. Independent,
74 (19 June 1913), pp. 14067.
New York World, 9 June 1913, p. 6. Although commenting on its tragic quality, the
reporter also revealed its sense of optimism: They were workers, plodding in the
gray morning into the mills. They were strikers, emerging from the same mills,
singing the Marseillaise. They were pickets, trying to dissuade others from taking
the jobs they had laid down. They were police victims, pushed, clubbed and even
shot. But they were still fighters, as they showed in the final act of their play, and
were still hopeful of winning their battle against the owners of the factories.
New York Times, 8 June 1913, p. 2. The New York Call was less cautious, quoting
one of the managers of the Garden as saying, This was the largest crowd that ever
turned out to the Garden, and even beat the great political meetings that were held
under the roof of this hall. New York Call, 8 June 1913, p. 1.
New York Times, 8 June, 1913, p. 2
New York Times, 9 June 1913.
The Pageant as a Form of Propaganda, Current Opinion, 50 ( July, 1913), 32.
Similarly, the Paterson Evening News announced that the era of a social revolution
is approaching. Paterson Evening News, 9 June 1913, p. 7.
Russell, Worlds Greatest Labor Play, p. 7. Dodge explained, This brilliant idea
was kept secret until the moment came to turn on the electricity, and then it was too
late to get the heavy municipal machinery in motion to have the Seditious Blaze
turned off. By the time the red tape was unwound, the show was over! Luhan,
Movers and Shakers, p. 203.
Proceedings of the Eighth IWW Convention, September 15 to 29, 1913, stenographic
report (Cleveland, Ohio, n.d. ), 39. Quoted in Golin, Fragile Bridge, p. 175.
Paterson Evening News, 19 May 1913, p. 1. This information was repeated in the
same newspaper on 21 May 1913, p. 13. In the Globe and Commercial Advertiser on
21 May Hutchins Hapgood wrote that it is not a money-making idea, although
admission will be charged to a part of the building, Globe and Commercial Advertiser,
21 May 1913.
The New York World concluded, As the gigantic company started back for Paterson
at 12.30 oclock this morning, they were happy with the knowledge that they had
created a lot of sentiment for their cause, and, incidentally, had added to the fund
that is keeping them alive, while they are fighting the mill-owners. New York World,
9 June 1913, p. 6. The New York Press announced that the the cause benefited more
than $10,000 at one swoop. New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 1. According to the
Times, it was announced at the Garden last night that, after paying the rent of the
Garden, paying for the special train, the painting of the scenery, and feeding the
Paterson players, the IWW cleared $6,500. Similarly, the Herald reported that
the receipts aggregated $10,000, and the expenses of the production $3,500. New
York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4. Likewise, the Tribune on the same day reported that
NOTES TO PAGE
122
the admissions, ranging from $1.50 down to 10 cents, had wiped out the expenses
and left a fat surplus for the strike war chest, New York Tribune, 8 June 1913, p. 4; and
the New York World printed the headlines, Money Raised Exceeds Expectations.
New York World, 9 June 1913, p. 6. The New York World suggested that, before the
show, the financial situation of the pageant had been quite precarious but they
managed to achieve their goals. They didnt know, when they came, exactly how
they were going to pay for the rental of the Garden. The management wasnt sure,
either, and at one time, barred the doors so that they couldnt have got out if they
wanted to. The strikers rehearsed . . . and then waited and hoped for a crowd
of sympathizers, fellow-workers to come and pull them out of their financial hole.
They gambled that was all. But they won! For a crowd came to the Garden last
night that filled it to its capacity and something over 12,000 persons paid in at the
doors enough money to cover the expenses of moving the great cast, of renting the
hall, and then to leave in the treasury which is being expended to keep the strikers
alive a sum above $5,000. And at least 6,000 others were turned away from the
doors. New York World, 9 June 1913, p. 6. According to the Paterson Evening News
(7 June 1913, p. 7), the press committee consists of Lincoln Steffins, W.E. Walling,
Upton Sinclair, Inez Haynes Gillmore, Hutchins Hapgood, Thompson Buchanan
and Rose Pastor Stokes. The New York Call reported that Upton Sinclair was
responsible for predicting, on the night of the performance, large profits from the
pageant. New York Call, 8 June 1913.
150. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, six months after the event, outlined its dispiriting effect.
Unlike Haywood, Flynn had always been skeptical of the event. But after, in her
own words, the flood of criticism about the strike that was becoming more vicious
all the time and involving as a matter of course the policies and strike tactics of the
IWW, she made a long speech to the New York Civic Club Forum, evaluating
the strike including the pageant. Flynn, obviously on the defensive, criticized some
of her critics (especially socialist intellectuals in New York) whom she described
as people who stayed at home in bed while we were doing the hard work of the
strike . . . who never went to Paterson, or who went on a holiday; who did not study
the strike as a day-by-day process. She maintained that the pageant, while being
a beautiful example of realistic art . . . [and] splendid propaganda for the workers
in New York had distracted the workers from their duties on the picket line,
thus enabling the first workers to enter the mill. This seems to have been a slight
exaggeration because the pageant showed that some workers were already entering
the mill in the early days of the strike. However, she was probably referring to
large numbers rather than isolated individuals. With greater justification, she also
argued that the apparent financial success of the pageant had raised expectations
of large financial support that did not materialize. It is evident from newspaper
reports that, once the financial results of the pageant were announced in mid- June,
the pickets seem to have lost enthusiasm for their duties. Flynn also suggested to
her critics that the pageant was divisive because many of the workers were jealous
that they were not chosen to perform. There were only a thousand that came to
New York. I wonder if you ever realized that you left 24,000 disappointed people
behind? . . . Between jealousy, unnecessary but very human, and their desire to do
151.
152.
153.
154.
155.
NOTES TO PAGES
122 123
something, much discord was created in the ranks. Speech by Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn, on 31 January 1914, to the New York Civic Club Forum, quoted in Kornbluh,
Rebel Voices, pp. 21522. For other criticism by socialists and anarchists of the strike,
see Golin, Fragile Bridge, pp. 1701.
The New York Press wrote that Madison Square Garden had been engaged for the
week beginning June 16, when the strikers will simulate the passions and the pangs
that flowed spontaneously last night, New York Press, 8 June 1913, p. 1. The New
York Herald also indicated in their report on the next day that It may be duplicated
at an early date, New York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4. Similarly, under their headlines
Show to Run All Next Week, the socialist newspaper New York Call reported that
Upton Sinclair had announced, plans were being outlined for the presentation of
the pageant for the week beginning June 16, New York Call, 8 June 1913. The Times
later reported, Haywood and the others in charge were seriously considering hiring
Madison Square Garden for a week to give two performances daily for the benefit
of the Paterson Strike Relief Fund, New York Times, 24 June 1913, 1. The Paterson
Evening News also reported, There is some talk of repeating the pageant, but no
definite action has been taken as yet. 9 June 1913, p. 7.
Tripp, IWW, pp. 1489.
Paterson Evening News, 18 June 1913, p. 8. Adolph Tressig, trying to put a positive
face on it, announced that although the strikers had not benefited financially from
the performance directly, the national publicity that the event had generated had
resulted in donations coming in to the relief fund from all over the country, and
there is now plenty of money on hand. Paterson Evening News, 24 June 1913, p. 9.
The Paterson Evening News described his new clothes which included a Panama
hat. Paterson Evening News, 18 June 1913, p. 9. Reed wrote to his mother on 17 June,
When I told them I was going away, ten thousand people asked me not to. Dont
tell this around because it sounds ridiculous. But I led the singing again, and when
I came down they crowded around me saying, We have been so lonesome for to
sing you come tomorrow, and You make the people to be happy. Quoted in
Rosenstone, Romantic Revolutionary, p. 131.
New York Times, 24 June 1913, p. 1. The Times asked, What has become of almost
$7,000 profit that the Industrial Workers of the World agitators, who had charge of
the recent Strike Pageant in Madison Square Garden, New York, are said to have
made as a result of the show given by the Paterson silk strikers in the Garden on the
night of Saturday, June 7, last? So far, according to the information received, the
amount turned over to the Strike Committee is exactly $348. It is openly charged
in this city [of Paterson] today that the Paterson strikers have been exploited by the
IWW. That trouble was brewing in the ranks of the strikers who for eighteen weeks
have followed blindly the leadership of William D. Haywood, the national head
of the IWW movement, and his s[u]bordinate agitators, has long been apparent to
those who are familiar with the situation in this strike-ridden municipality. Pouring salt into the wounds, it mentioned that Reed had told the strikers that he was
sick and was going to Europe to recover, adding, Among the passengers who sailed
for Europe on the Hamburg-American liner Amerika at 10 oclock last Thursday
morning was a man who was listed among the saloon passengers as John Reed.
NOTES TO PAGES
123 124
156. Mabel Dodge Luhan later recalled, Fearful of the immediate sympathy that we had
raised, orders had been given to the write-up men to take away the glory . . . They
wrote all kinds of rumors and sought to spread them as best they could. Apparently quoting the headlines of several newspapers, she continued, They said
variously, Claim Is Now Made That Pageant Lost Money . . . Fuss Over Pageant
Finances . . . Strikers Look in Vain for Report from IWW Leaders . . . Deficit of
$1,996 from Strike Show . . . Instead of Making Rumored $6,000 Profit, Paterson
IWW Lost by Pageant at Garden . . . Many Loans Still Unpaid . . . Strike Pageant
Was Money Loss . . . Backers of One Night Stand Are out $3,000 . . . Now It Is Explained That the Big Strike Pageant at Madison Square Garden Was Run at a Loss
and 25,000 Local Strikers Who Hoped to Share the Profits Will Have to Whistle
for Their Money . . . etc. Luhan, Movers and Shakers, p. 210. The Times reported
that on the day after Haywoods $348 announcement, The Paterson newspapers
went after Haywood. One of the papers referred to the Haywood pageant as one of
many lemons handed to the strikers by the IWW, and added, with reference to
the show, but this last one is the biggest and sourest of the lot. New York Times,
24 June 1913, p. 1.
157. Golin, Fragile Bridge, p. 161.
158. The Pageant financial committee justified their admittance: Many of them had
walked from Paterson, West Hoboken, Astoria, College Point, the Bronx and
Brooklyn. The pageant was theirs more than anybody elses. Quoted in Luhan,
Movers and Shakers, p. 211. The press estimated that about 5,000 or 6,000 people
were turned away at the doors. See New York Herald, 8 June 1913, p. 4, and the New
York World, 9 June 1913, p. 6.
159. The first major signs of the loss of morale came on 23 June when the pickets did
not show up for duty and, according to the Times, at least 1,000 weavers, who have
been on strike, returned unmolested to their looms, and it is said that double this
number will return in the next few days. Next week no one here will be surprised
if every silk mill in Paterson is in operation again. That pageant did it, said a
police officer, who has been on strike duty for eighteen weeks. After that measly
$348 that was handed in for the strike relief fund, watch for a stampede back to the
mills. The Times added, that this is the general opinion among the authorities
is indicated by the fact that the Police Department kitchen and dining room service, which has been maintained for the last three months because of the excessive
strike duty the police were called upon to perform, was discontinued to-day. The
police said that practically no pickets were at the silk mills this morning, and that
the 1,000 or more weavers who returned to their looms were not molested in any
way whatever. New York Times, 24 June 1913, p. 1.
160. Solidarity, 28 June 1915, p. 4. Quoted in Golin, Fragile Bridge, p. 175.
161. Randolph Bourne, Pageantry and Social Art, unpublished ms, quoted in Arthur F
Wertheim, The New York Little Renaissance: Iconoclasm, Modernism and Nationalism
in American Culture, 19081917 (New York: New York University Press, 1976), p. 56.
162. See Haywood, Bill Haywoods Book, p. 262.
163. Hicks, John Reed, pp. 21314. According to Hicks, Reed saw a huge pageant in
Petrograd after the Bolshevik revolution: On the steps of the old stock exchange,
NOTES TO PAGES
124 130
which had become a club for sailors, five thousand actors presented a pageant of the
revolution from the Paris Commune to the worldwide triumph of the proletariat.
Reed, watching it with the most intense excitement felt that one of his greatest
dreams had come true. Here was the revolutionary art for which he had longed,
since the Paterson pageant, seven years before, had given him his first glimpse of
the possibilities of mass dramatic expression. Hicks, John Reed, p. 391.
164. Wilbur Daniel Steele to Mary Heaton Vorse, 14 June 1913. Quoted in Golin, Fragile
Bridge, p. 176.
165. Susan Glaspell, The Road to the Temple (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, Co., 1927),
p. 250. During this same period, the silent film industry also became interested in
labor issues. Such films as The Jungle (1914) based on an Upton Sinclair novel, Intolerance by D. W. Griffith (1916), The Struggle (1913), The Strike Leader (1913), The Great
Mine Disaster (1914), Why? (1913), The Strike at Coaldale (1914), and Rags to Riches
(1913), among many others, put labor problems on the screen. However, many of
these films were anti-labor and painted strikers as un-American and undemocratic
and out for revenge. One issue that often provided support for the labor movement
was child labor. Films such as Children Who Labour in 1912 and Children of Eve
in 1915 showed the exploitation of children in mines and factories and encouraged
support for legislation to deal with child labor. For example, although the Children
Who Labour ends happily with a little girl working in the factory being returned to
her family, the last title provided a warning for the audience. The condition called
child labor . . . still exists and demands our attention. Quoted in Kay Sloan, The
Loud Silents (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), p. 71.
5 Staging social rebellion in the 1960s

1. For a discussion of the theatre, film and television productions that reacted against
the social repression of the McCarthy era, see Brenda Murphy, Congressional
Theatre: Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film and Television (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999).
2. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (Basic
Books: New York, 1988), p. 13.
3. Quoted in Hazel Carby, Multicultural Wars, Radical History Review 54 (Fall
1992), 13.
4. Quoted in Philip S. Foner (ed.), The Black Panthers Speak (New York: Da Capo
Press, 1995), p. x.
5. Foner (ed.), Black Panthers Speak, p. 4.
6. Quoted in Cleveland Sellers and Robert Terrell, The River of No Return: The
Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC (New York:
William Morrow & Co., 1973), p. 166.
7. Sellers and Terrell, River of No Return, p. 254.
8. Quoted in Sellers and Terrell, River of No Return, p. 257.
9. Rodolfo Acuna, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, third edition (New York:
Harper Collins, 1988), pp. 3401.
10. Quoted in Andrew Hunt, The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War
(New York: New York University Press, 1999), p. 109.
NOTES TO PAGES
130 134
11. Hunt, The Turning, p. 42.

12. See Abbie Hoffman, Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture (New York: G.P. Putnams
Sons, 1980), pp. 12636.
13. A similar development followed in the film industry in the 1970s with portrayals
of bad-ass black men, with attitude in such films as Shaft. Stuart Hall wrote of
this era, The first fruit of this counter-revolution was a series of films, beginning
with Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasss Song (Martin Van Peebles, 1971), and Gordon Parkss
box-office success, Shaft. In Sweet Sweetback, Van Peebles values positively all the
characteristics which would normally have been negative stereotypes. He made his
black hero a professional stud, who successfully evades the police, with the help of a
succession of black ghetto low-lifers, sets fire to a police car . . . What marked Shaft
out, however, was the detectives absolute lack of deference towards whites. Stuart
Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Milton
Keynes: Open University Press, 1998), pp. 2701.
14. See Richard R. Moser, The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the
Vietnam Era (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996), p. 1.
15. For a history of ethnic theatre, which unfortunately omits certain groups such
as Asian American theatre, see Maxine Seller, Ethnic Theatre in the United States
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983).
16. See W.E.B. Du Bois, Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre: The Story of a Little
Theatre Movement, in James Hatch and Leo Hamalian (eds.), Lost Plays of the
Harlem Renaissance 19201940 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), p. 447.
17. See Harry Elam, Taking it to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and
Amiri Baraka (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), p. 28.
18. Imamu Amiri Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (New York:
Freundlich Books, 1984), p. 197.
19. Baraka, Autobiography, p. 200.
20. Baraka, Autobiography, p. 198. Baraka later reflected, I guess during this period I got
the reputation of being a snarling white-hating madman. There was some truth to it,
because I was struggling to be born, to break out from the shell I could instinctively
sense surrounded my own dash for freedom. I was in a frenzy, trying to get my feet
solidly on the ground. Baraka, Autobiography, p. 194.
24. Larry Neal, The Black Arts Movement, in Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y.
McKay (eds.), The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., 1997), p. 1972.
27. Describing it as a weapon to help in the slaughter of these dimwitted fatbellied white
guys who somehow believe that the rest of the world is here for them to slobber on,
Baraka argued that Americans will hate the Revolutionary Theatre because it will be
out to destroy them and whatever they believe is real. Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones,
Selected Plays and Prose of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (New York: William Morrow &
Co., 1979), pp. 131, 132.
NOTES TO PAGES
134 141
28. LeRoi Jones, Four Black Revolutionary Plays (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969),
p. 89.
29. See Baraka, Autobiography, p. 212.
31. Jones, Four Black Revolutionary Plays, p. 39
32. Neal, The Black Arts Movement, p. 1968.
33. See Mike Sell, The Black Arts Movement: Performance, Neo-Orality, and the
Destruction of the White Thing in Harry J. Elam, Jr. and David Krasner (eds.),
African American Performance and Theater History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), pp. 5680.
34. Sellers and Terrell, The River of No Return, p. 256. The Black Panthers, according
to Sellers, was the most prominent exponent of Political Nationalism. The party
possessed a hodgepodge ideology jerry-built from numerous sources: Mao Tse-tung,
SNCC, Marcus Garvey, Fidel Castro, North Korean Communists, Frantz Fanon
and Karl Marx. They generally called themselves MarxistLeninists. The Panthers
adamantly claimed that they had managed to bridge the age-old ideological chasm
between conventional Marxist analyses of class oppression and traditional Black
Nationalist analyses of racial oppression. They claimed that their ideology permitted
them to speak to race and class oppression at the same time. Sellers and Terrell,
The River of No Return, pp. 2556.
35. Sellers and Terrell, The River of No Return, p. 255.
37. Ron Karenga, Ron Karenga and Black Cultural Nationalism, Negro Digest
( January, 1968), 5.
38. Karenga, Ron Karenga and Black Cultural Nationalism, p. 6.
39. Quoted in Sellers and Terrell, The River of No Return, p. 255.
40. Sellers and Terrell, The River of No Return, pp. 2578 and Foner (ed.), Black Panthers
Speak, pp. xiv-xvi. For a discussion of the FBIs activities, see Ward Churchill and
Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBIs Secret Wars Against the Black Panther
Party and the American Indian Movement, corrected edition (Boston: South End
Press, 1990), pp. 3799.
42. Luis Valdez, The Tale of La Raza, in Ed Ludwig and James Santibanez (eds.),
The Chicanos: Mexican American Voices (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 98.
43. Valdez, The Tale of La Raza, p. 100.
44. Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early Works: Actos, Bernabe and
Pensamiento Serpentino (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1990), p. 27.
45. Valdez and Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early Works, p. 39.
46. Luis Valdez, El Teatro Campesino Its Beginnings, in Ludwig and Santibanez
(eds.), The Chicanos, p. 118.
47. New Grapes, Newsweek, 31 July 1967, p. 79.
48. Quoted in Yolanda Broyles-Gonzales, El Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano
Movement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), p. 242.
49. Valdez, The Tale of La Raza, pp. 99100.
NOTES TO PAGES
141 147
51. Jorge A. Huerta, Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms (Ypsilanti, Mich.: Bilingual
Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1982), p. 66.
52. Los Vendidos, created and written by Luis Valdez, directed by George Paul, produced
by Jose Luis Ruiz, 1991.
53. Quoted in Moser, New Winter Soldiers, p. 111.
54. See Albert Herrera, The National Chicano Moratorium and the Death of Ruben
Salazar, in Ludwig and Santibanez (eds.), The Chicanos, pp. 23541; and Acuna,
Occupied America, pp. 3459.
57. Valdez and Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early Works, pp. 11011.
58. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, During the war, US planes in Operation
Ranch Hand dropped about 18 million gallons of herbicide, more than half of it
Agent Orange, to kill vegetation that concealed Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
soldiers. Vietnam says that as a result, more than 1 million of its 76 million inhabitants, including 150,000 children, suffer from exposure to toxins. In addition
about 100,000 [American] veterans have sought compensation for defoliant-related
diseases. The article also suggested that the effects of the pollution had not been
investigated because of the fear of compensation liability, and that the toxins had
entered the food chain, with such crops as rice being widely exported back to the
US that could be carcinogenic. Victims of a War Without End, San Francisco
Chronicle, 11 September 2001, p. a7.
59. This issue has also been addressed in Cherre Moragas Heroes and Saints.
60. I am grateful to Professor Jorge Huerta for translating some of the passages from
Spanish in this chapter.
61. In interviews with this author, Luis Valdez and Lupe Valdez mentioned that Mel
OCampo, a journalist, Ben Wilson, a local teacher and member of the John Birch
Society, and others were strongly critical of Vietnam Campesino. According to Lupe
Valdez, Wilson suggested that Cuba was no longer ninety miles away from the US
but just next door in San Juan Bautista. Interview with Luis Valdez, 16 September
2001 and with Lupe Valdez, 20 September 2001.
62. Valdez and Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early Works, pp. 1767.
63. See Elam, Taking it to the Streets, p. 105.
64. La Carpa de los Rasquachis was revised several times between 1974 and 1978. The play
has not been published. This description is based on the 2001 production, which
recreated the 1976 version.
65. William F. Crandell, They Moved the Town: Organizing Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, in Melvin Small and William Hoover (eds.), Give Peace a Chance:
Exploring the Anti-War Movement (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992),
p. 143.
66. William F. Crandell, They Moved the Town, p. 144.
67. Different Sons, a VVAW documentary directed by Jack Ofield, produced by Arthur
Littman, Bowling Green Films, 1971.
68. New York Times, 5 September 1970, p. 4.
69. Different Sons.
NOTES TO PAGES
147 153
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
Different Sons.
Different Sons.
Different Sons.
William F. Crandell, They Moved the Town, p. 144.
Quoted in Hunt, The Turning, pp. 501.
Different Sons.
Different Sons.
Quoted in Moser, The New Winter Soldiers, p. 111.
See Gayatri Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, edited
by Sarah Harasym (London: Routledge, 1990).
79. In a poetic introduction to Four Black Revolutionary Plays, published in 1969, LeRoi
Jones predicted,
the cities of the continent will change hands
the power on the continent will change hands . . .
i am prophesying the death of white people in this land
i am prophesying the triumph of black life in this land, and over all the world
we are building publishing houses, and newspapers, and armies and factories
we will change the world before your eyes.
( Jones, Four Black Revolutionary Plays, pp. viiviii)
80. Luis Valdez wrote in 1966, That we Mexicans speak of ourselves as a race is
the biggest contradiction of them all. The conquistadores, of course, mated with their
Indian women with customary abandon, creating a nation of bewildered halfbreeds.
Valdez, The Tale of La Raza, p. 95.
6 Reconfiguring patriarchy: suffragette and feminist plays

1. Helen Chinoy and Linda Jenkins (eds.), Women in American Theatre, revised edition
(New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987), p. 276. Charlotte Canning
points out that many of these groups did not last long and that only three groups
from the 1970s survived into the 1990s: Spiderwoman, Split Britches and Horizons:
Theatre from a Womans Perspective. Charlotte Canning, Feminist Theaters in the
USA: Staging Womens Experience (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 20910.
2. See Julia Miles (ed.) The Womens Project (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1980), pp. 1011.
3. Quoted in Jill Dolan, The Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor: UMI Research
Press, 1988), p. 3.
4. Phyllis Lee Levin, Abigail Adams (New York: St. Martins Press, 1987), p. 84.
5. Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March 1776 in L. H. Butterfield, M. Friedlander
and M. Kline (eds.) The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family,
17621784 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 121.
6. Wyoming and Utah allowed the vote from 1869 and 1870 but were not admitted into
the Union until 1890 and 1896 respectively.
7. For a discussion of feminist aspects of this play, see Sally Burke, American Feminist
Playwrights: A Critical History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), pp. 217.
NOTES TO PAGES
153 160
8. See M. S. Seller (ed.), Ethnic Theatre in the United States, Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1983.
9. Miles (ed.), The Womens Project, p. 9.
10. Quoted in Burke, American Feminist Playwrights, p. 39.
11. Quoted in Burke, American Feminist Playwrights, p. 39.
12. Quoted in Albert Auster, Actresses and Suffragists: Women in the American Theatre,
18901920 (New York: Praeger, 1984), p. 6.
13. Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, p. 36.
14. Quoted in Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, pp. 10910.
15. See Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, pp. 578.
17. Quoted in Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, p. 134.
18. Quoted in Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, p. 111.
19. See Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, p. 86.
20. For photos of the pageant, see Naima Prevots, American Pageantry: A Movement for
Art and Democracy (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1990), p. 50.
21. Quoted in David Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in
the Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990),
p. 135.
22. Karen Blair, Pageantry for Womens Rights: The Career of Hazel MacKaye,
19131923 in Theatre Survey, 31 (May 1990), 2346.
24. Elizabeth Robins, Ibsen and the Actress (London: Hogarth Press, 1928), p. 12.
25. Robins also performed Hedda Gabler in New York in 1898 for a single performance.
The Critic commented, It was, on the whole, the most satisfactory representation
of an Ibsen play ever given in this city. It called Robinss interpretation of Hedda
in every way a remarkable achievement. Quoted in Michael Meyers introduction
to Henrik Ibsen, Plays: Two (London: Eyre Methuen, 1980), p. 240.
26. Quoted in Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: Volume 1, 18561898: The Search for Love
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1988), p. 311.
27. Elizabeth Robins, Theatre and Friendship (Freeport: Books for Libraries, 1969),
pp. 334. Other women who followed her example were Florence Farr, Edie Craig,
Lena Ashwell, Annie Horniman, Lady Gregory, and Lillian Baylis.
28. Quoted in Julie Holledge, Innocent Flowers: Women in the Edwardian Theatre
(London: Virago, 1981), p. 30.
29. Holledge, Innocent Flowers, p. 30.
30. Robins, Theatre and Friendship, p. 34.
31. Quoted in Holledge, Innocent Flowers, p. 39.
32. According to Michael Meyer, Ibsen modeled Hilda Wangel on Emilie Bardach, an
eighteen-year-old Viennese girl whom he had met in 1889. Ibsen, Plays: Two, p. 227.
33. Robert Schanke, Mary Shaw: A Fighting Champion, in Chinoy and Jenkins, (eds.)
Women in American Theatre, p. 103.
34. New York Times, 16 March 1909.
36. Schanke, Mary Shaw, p. 104.
37. Quoted in Schanke, Mary Shaw, p. 106.
NOTES TO PAGES
160 166
38. For a discussion of American suffragette drama, see Bettina Friedl, On to Victory:
Propaganda Plays of the Woman Suffrage Movement (Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1987).
39. See Sarah Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York: Free
Press, 1989), pp. 175196.
40. See Canning, Feminist Theaters, p. 3.
41. Miles (ed.), The Womens Project, p. 10.
42. Chinoy and Jenkins (eds.), Women in American Theatre, p. 283.
44. See Alison Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and
Allanheld, 1983). Of this differentiation, Jill Dolan has remarked, There are many
gradations within and among these categories some of which are socialist feminism,
lesbian feminism, spiritualist feminism but I find these three most inclusive and
most useful for clarifying the different feminist ways of seeing, Dolan, Feminist
Spectator, p. 3.
45. Dolan, Feminist Spectator, p. 4.
47. Sue Ellen Case, Feminism and Theatre (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 64.
48. See bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press,
1990), pp. 6577, 89102; Audre Lorde, An Open Letter to Mary Daly and The
Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Masters House, and Gloria Anzaldua,
Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers in Cherre Moraga
and Gloria Anzaldua (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back (Watertown, Mass.:
Persephone Press, 1981), pp. 94101, 16573.
50. Case, Feminism and Theatre, p. 127.
51. Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen, 16, no. 3 (1975), 14.
52. Dolan, Feminist Spectator, p. 8. See also Sue Ellen Case, Feminism and Theatre,
pp. 1289.
53. Janet Brown, Taking Center Stage: Feminism in Contemporary US Drama (Metuchen,
NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1991), p. 3.
55. Quoted in Chinoy and Jenkins (eds.), Women in American Theatre, p. 349.
57. Chinoy and Jenkins (eds.), Women in American Theatre, pp. 2856.
58. Vivian Patraka, Notes on Technique in Feminist Drama: Apple Pie and Signs
of Life, Women and Performance 1, no. 2 (Winter 1984), 58.
59. Rose Leiman Goldemberg, Letters Home in Julia Miles (ed.) The Womens Project
(New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1980), p. 176.
61. Clare Coss, Sondra Segal, and Roberta Sklar, Separation and Survival: Mothers,
Daughters, Sisters The Womens Experimental Theater, in Hester Eisenstein
and Alice Jardine (eds.), The Future of Difference (Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall & Co.,
1980), p. 193.
62. Coss, Segal and Sklar, Separation, pp. 2001.
63. Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues, V-Day edition (New York: Villard, 2001), p. xii.
NOTES TO PAGES
167 174

65. See review of Antigone Too: Rites of Love and Defiance in Women and Performance, 1,
no. 2 (Winter 1984), 142.
66. Mulvey, Visual Pleasure.
67. See Teresa de Lauretis, Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation in Theatre
Journal, 40, no. 2 (May 1988), 15577; and Jill Dolan, Feminist Spectator, pp. 11517.
68. Carolee Schneeman, Interior Scroll, in Carolee Schneeman, More Than Meat Joy:
Complete Performance Works and Selected Writings, edited by Bruce McPherson (New
Paltz, NY: Documentext, 1979), p. 239.
69. C. Carr, Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts: The Taboo Art of Karen Finlay,
in Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan (eds.), Acting Out: Feminist Performances (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), pp. 141, 144.
71. See Canning, Feminist Theaters, pp. 1539.
72. Quoted in Canning, Feminist Theaters, p. 155.
73. Quoted in Karen Malpede (ed.), Women in Theatre: Compassion and Hope (New York:
Drama Book Publishers, 1983), p. 251.
76. Split Britches, Belle Reprieve in Sue-Ellen Case (ed.), Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/
Feminist Performance (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 178.
77. See Ensler, Vagina Monologues, p. 168.
78. Case, Feminism and Theatre, p. 64.
79. The order of scenes varied and new material was added to the performance. A performance at the San Francisco Alcazar Theatre, 6 July 2001 used the order described
here.
80. Quoted from V-Day website, www.vday.org.
81. According to the V-Day website in July 2001, V-Day has raised over 3 million dollars
which it has given to organizations fighting for the rights of women in Afghanistan,
to stop genital mutilation in Kenya, and rape crisis centers in Bosnia, Chechnya, as
well as hundreds of domestic programs to combat rape and abuse.
82. Ensler, The Vagina Monologues, pp. 139, 164.
7 Imaging and deconstructing the multicultural nation in the 1990s

1. Tony Platt, Desegregating Multiculturalism: Problems in the Theory and Pedagogy
of Diversity Education, Notes for presentation at the annual conference of the
Sociology of Education Association, Pacific Grove, California, 24 February 2001,
privately held.
2. Holland Cotter, Beyond Multiculturalism, A Way to a New Freedom, New York
Times, 29 July 2001, section 2, p. 1.
3. According to a report by Terry Eastland in USA Today, 21 March 1996, p. a11 The
states non-Hispanic white population is now 57% but is expected to decline mainly
as a result of immigration but also of racial intermarriage to 50% by 2000 and to
46% by 2010. The census of 2000 showed that non-Hispanic whites were no
longer a majority in California (New York Times, 30 April 2001, p. a15.)

4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
NOTES TO PAGES
174 179
New York Times, 30 April 2001, front page.

Cotter, Beyond Multiculturalism, p. 28.
See Cotter, Beyond Multiculturalism p. 28.
Hazel V. Carby, The Multicultural Wars, Radical History Review, 54 (Fall 1992),
17.
Rustom Bharucha, The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking through Theatre in an
Age of Globilization (London: Athlone Press, 2000), p. 10.
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism:Multiculturalism and the
Media (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 359.
Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, p. 359.
Stanley Fish, Boutique Multiculturalism, or, Why Liberals are Incapable of
Thinking about Hate Speech, Critical Inquiry, 23, no. 2 (Winter 1997), 37895.
Patrice Pavis, The Intercultural Performance Reader (London: Routledge, 1996),
pp. 89.
Pavis, Intercultural Performance Reader, p. 8.
Cherre Moraga, Art in America con Acento, in Diana Taylor and Juan Villegas
(eds.), Negotiating Performance (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), p. 32.
For a discussion of the historical development of her work, see Carol Martin, Anna
Deavere Smith: The Word Becomes You, The Drama Review 37, no. 4 (Winter
1993), 4562; and Sandra Richards, Caught in the Act of Social Definition: On
the Road with Anna Deavere Smith, in Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan (eds.),
Acting Out: Feminist Performances (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993),
pp. 3553.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1995), p. 30.
Tim Brennan suggested that her role at the time as a Stanford professor also ghosts
her performance. See Tim Brennan, At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 110.
For a discussion of this point, see Charles R. Lyons and James C. Lyons, Anna
Deavere Smith: Perspectives on her Performance within the Context of Critical
Theory, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Fall 1994), 45.
Pavis, Intercultural Performance Reader, p. 9.
Janelle Reinelt, for example, argues that Smith bridges social differences by using
the authority of the discourses of news and documentary combined with the liberal
humanist view of the artists empathetic capacities, Janelle Reinelt, Performing
Race: Anna Deavere Smiths Fires in the Mirror, Modern Drama, 39, no. 4 (Winter
1996), 615.
This is not true for Reginald Denny whom she impersonated and whom she also
showed being beaten in a film.
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, The Federalist Papers edited by
Roy P. Fairfield, second edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981),
p. 18.
I am referring here to the Berkeley Repertory production, which I saw in San
Francisco in February 1996. I understand that in the earlier Los Angeles and New
York productions, she did not step out of character and costume during this final
speech.
NOTES TO PAGES
179 186
24. Although categorised by American society as African American, she is so light

skinned that her acting agent told her to go for Spanish parts. Her brother has blond
hair and blue eyes. Stanford Daily, Intermission, 29 February 1996.
25. See, for example, reviews by Sandra Tsing Loh, Joyce Guy and Judith Hamera in
Theatre Journal 46 (1994), 11317. Joyce Guy (an African American living in the
Koreatown section of Los Angeles) further criticized the performance as too safe.
Recalling that she left the theatre feeling slighted, she wrote that the riots were
caused by prolonged, complex, societal issues that the production glossed over and
needed to address (p. 116). For a rebuttal of these critiques see Janelle Reinelt,
The Politics of Location in Theatre Forum 6 (Winter/Spring 1995), 545 and
Alice Rayner, Improper Conjunctions: Metaphor, Performance, and Text, Essays
in Theatre/Etudes Thea trales, 14, no. 1 (November 1995), 314.
26. Richards, Caught in the Act, pp. 3740.
27. San Francisco Chronicle, Datebook, 2 January 1994.
28. Richards, Caught in the Act, p. 50.
29. Martin, Anna Deavere Smith, pp. 534.
30. It is interesting to note that Tony Kushner worked with Anna Deavere Smith and
George C. Wolfe on revising Twilight in order, according to Smith, to try to create
a section of the play, which was kind of a multicultural dream. We looked very hard
through all the material to find a really positive, good-thinking Asian American,
Latino, white, black. And we constructed that. Smith, however, then revised the
play again following such events as the Million Man March, the O. J. Simpson
verdict and the devisiveness over affirmative action because she thought that such
an optimistic approach was inappropriate. I thought it wasnt realistic anymore to
put out all well thought-out, positive platforms . . . the multicultural dream maybe
has to be reconceived . . . In terms of hope you look and you go, Doesnt look good
at all. . . . I would say thats what I would have to offer, Robert Vorlicky (ed.), Tony
Kushner in Conversation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998) pp. 2512.
31. Although some of the fantastic moments are understandable as emanating out of
the dreams and nightmares of drugged characters under great emotional stress,
the coincidental connection between characters such as Harper and Prior or the
appearance of Louis in the Mormon diorama are impossible to consider simply
as dream sequences. As Harper tells Joe, Its just . . . the magic of the theatre or
something (2.65).
32. In the opening performance of the play at Eureka theatre in San Francisco in 1991,
the scene with Roy Cohn on the telephone preceded this one, which was played
in tandem with the scene of Harper and Mr. Lies. (Video recording of Angels in
America held in the PALM library, San Francisco.)
33. David Savran, Queering the Nation, in Jeffrey D. Mason and J. Ellen Gainor
(eds.), Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theater (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 216.
34. Kushner clearly plays favorites here with those whose politics accord with his own.
Joe, whose politics are clearly too far to the right for Kushner, suffers in isolation at
the end of the play. As a gay Mormon, Joe defies his religious heritage but is deserted
by Louis because of his political and personal allegiance with Roy Cohn.
NOTES TO PAGES
186 195
35. Richard Schechner, An Intercultural Primer, American Theatre (October 1991), 30.
36. The Rabbi says, Catholics believe in forgiveness. Jews believe in Guilt (1.25).
37. Although it is not clear whether Joe will come out of the closet or whether Harpers
plane flight is real, it is arguable that they have made some progress in these directions.
38. May Joseph and Jennifer Fink (eds.), Performing Hybridity (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 5.
39. Roberta Uno (ed.), Unbroken Thread (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1993), p. 158.
40. Quoted in Uno, Unbroken Thread, p. 159.
41. Terry Eastland quotes Californias state law about the definition of minorities as
any citizen or legal alien who is an ethnic person of color and who is: black (a
person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa); Hispanic (a person
of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish
or Portuguese culture or origin regardless of race); Native American (an American
Indian, Eskimo, Aleut or Native Hawaiian); Pacific-Asian (a person whose origins
are from Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines,
Samoa, Guam or the United States Trust Territories of the Pacific including the
Northern Marianas); Asian-Indian (a person whose origins are from India, Pakistan,
or Bangladesh), USA Today, 21 March 1996, p. a11.
42. Uno (ed.), Unbroken Thread, p. 159.
43. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 1656.
44. Quoted in Uno (ed.), Unbroken Thread, p. 159.
45. Uno (ed.), Unbroken Thread, p. 159. The 2000 census, for example, was the first
national census to allow Americans to indicate more than one ethnicity.
46. Brenda Wong Aoki, The Queens Garden in Kathy A. Perkins and Roberta Uno (eds.),
Contemporary Plays by Women of Color (London: Routledge, 1996).
47. Perkins and Uno (eds.), Contemporary Plays, p. 14.
48. When she asked her father why he continues to live there with the mounting violence,
he answered, We were here first. This is our neighborhood, San Diego Repertory
Theatre News (NovemberDecember 1992), 8.
49. These staging arrangements are evident in a video held by Aoki and recorded at Life
on the Water Theatre, San Francisco, 18 October 1992.
50. San Diego Repertory Theatre News (NovemberDecember 1992), 6.
51. Personal interview with Brenda Wong Aoki, 29 June 2001.
52. San Diego Repertory Theatre News (NovemberDecember 1992), 8.
53. Brenda Wong Aoki, Uncle Gunjiro, unpublished typescript dated 17 May 2001.
Personal collection.
54. These effects are evident in the video of her performance of Uncle Gunjiros Girlfriend
which was produced by First Voice in 2000. Personal collection.
55. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands La frontera = the New Mestiza (San Francisco:
Spinsters/Aunt Luke, 1987) p. 46.
56. Coatlicue Theatre Company, press release (2001), 4. Personal collection.
57. Elvira and Hortensia Colorado, 1992: Blood Speaks, in Perkins and Uno (eds.),
Contemporary Plays, p. 84.
58. Steve Elm, Coatlicue, Coatlicue press packet, n.d. Personal collection.
59. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands, p. 79.
NOTES TO PAGES
196 202
60. See Alicia Arrizon, Mythical Performativity: Relocating Aztlan in Chicana

Feminist Cultural Productions, Theatre Journal, 52, no. 1 (March 2000), 367.
61. Guillermo Gomez-Pena, A Binational Performance Pilgrimage, The Drama
Review, 35, no. 3 (Fall 1991), 27.
62. Gomez-Pena, Binational Performance Pilgrimage, p. 30.
63. Claire Fox, The Portable Border: Site-Specificity, Art, and the US-Mexico
Frontier, Social Text, 41 (Winter 1994), 63.
64. Quoted in Fox, The Portable Border, p. 63.
65. Gomez-Pena, Binational Performance Pilgrimage, pp. 389.
66. Border Brujo was frequently altered in performance over the years. Several textual versions have been printed. Textual references in this paper are taken from
Gomez-Pena, Border Brujo, in Warrior for Gringostroika (St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf
Press, 1993).
67. Gomez-Pena, 1992 in Warrior for Gringostroika, p. 98.
68. Fox, The Portable Border, p. 62.
70. Quoted in Fox, The Portable Border, p. 64.
72. Gomez-Pena, The Multicultural Paradigm, in Warrior for Gringostroika, p. 52.
73. Gomez-Pena, Multicultural Paradigm, p. 47.
75. Gomez-Pena, 1992, p. 98.
76. Gomez-Pena, The Multicultural Paradigm, p. 47.
79. Shohat and Stam argue, Multiculturalism without the critique of Eurocentrism runs
the risk of being merely accretive a shopping mall boutique summa of the worlds
cultures while the critique of Eurocentrism without multiculturalism runs the risk
of simply inverting hierarchies rather than profoundly rethinking and unsettling
them. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, p. 359.
80. Gomez-Pena, Multicultural Paradigm, p. 52.
81. Gomez-Pena, Warrior for Gringostroika, p. 125.
82. Quoted from the final song in Michael P. Premsrirats play The Clouds, the Ocean and
Everything in Between, premiered at New Langton Arts, May 2001.
83. Cherre Moraga, Art in America con Acento, in Diana Taylor and Juan Villegas
(eds.) Negotiating Performance (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), p. 36.
Select bibliography
The dates of play publications listed below often differ from the dates of first performances which are given in the text.
Plays /dialogues /performances / videos

Aiken, George L., Uncle Toms Cabin in Daniel C. Gerould, ed., American Melodrama:
New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983.
Albee, Edward, The American Dream, London: Samuel French, 1961.
Anderson, Laurie, Home of the Brave (videorecording), produced by Paula Mazur,
Burbank, Ca.: Warner Reprise Video, 1986.
Anon. (An Enquirer after Truth) [ John Checkley], Dialogues between a Minister and an
Honest Country-Man Concerning Election and Predestination, Philadelphia: Andrew
Bradford, 1741.
[ Jacob Duchae. The ode was written by Francis Hopkinson], An Exercise Containing a Dialogue and Ode On the Accession of His present gracious Majesty, George III,
Philadelphia: W. Dunlap, 1762.
[Philip Morin Freneau and H.H. Brackenridge], A Poem on the Rising Glory of America;
Being an Exercise Delivered at the Public Commencement at Nassau-Hall, September
25, 1771, Philadelphia: Joseph Crukshank, 1772.
[Thomas Hopkinson], An Exercise Containing a Dialogue and two Odes. Performed at
the public Commencement in the College of Philadelphia, May 20th, 1766, Philadelphia:
W. Dunlap, 1766.
[ John Leacock], The Fall of British Tyranny in Norman Philbrick (ed.), Trumpets
Sounding, New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1972.
[Thomas Paine], Dialogue between General Wolfe and General Gage in a Wood Near
Boston in Daniel Wheeler (ed.), Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. ii, New
York: Vincent Parke and Co., 1908.
[Robert Rogers], Ponteach: Or, the Savages of America, London: J. Millan, 1766.
[ Jonathan Sewall], Cure for the Spleen, or, Amusement for a Winters Evening [later in
1775 published as The Americans Roused in a Cure for the Spleen, or, Amusement for a
Winters Evening. New York: James Rivington] Boston, 1775.
[William Smith], An Exercise, Consisting of a Dialogue and Ode, Sacred to the Memory
of His late Gracious Majesty George II, Philadelphia: Andrew Steuart, 1761.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
[William Smith], An Exercise; containing a Dialogue and Two Odes set to music for the
Public Commencement in the College of Philadelphia, May 17th, 1775, Philadelphia:
Joseph Crukshank, 1775.
(Mary V.V.), A Dialogue between a Southern Delegate and His Spouse on His Return
from the Grand Continental Congress, Boston: Mills and Hicks, 1774.
(Member of that community), A Dialogue Containing Some Reflections on the late
Declaration and Remonstrance of the Back-Inhabitants of the Province of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia: Andrew Steuart, 1764.
Debates at the Robin-Hood Society, in the City of New-York, On Monday Night 19th of
July, 1774, New York: Printed by order of the Robin-Hood Society, 1774.
A Dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil in The New England Primer
Enlarged, Boston: Printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1735.
An Exercise containing a Dialogue and Ode On Occasion of the Peace. Performed at
the Public Commencement in the College of Philadelphia, 17 May 1763. In Nathaniel
Evans, Poems on Several Occasions: With Some Other Compositions. Philadelphia: John
Dunlap, 1772.
The Military Glory of Great-Britain, An Entertainment given by the late candidates for
bachelors degree, at the close of the anniversary commencement, held in Nassau-Hall,
New Jersey, September 29th, 1762, Philadelphia: William Bradford, 1762.
The Paxton Boys. A Farce Translated from the original French, by a Native of Donegall,
Philadelphia: Anthony Armbruster, 1764.
Aoki, Brenda Wong, The Queens Garden in Kathy A. Perkins and Roberta Uno (eds.),
Contemporary Plays by Women of Color, London: Routledge, 1996.
Uncle Gunjiros Girlfriend, unpublished typescript, 2000.
Arent, Arthur (ed.), One-Third of a Nation in Pierre du Rohan, Federal Theatre Plays:
Prologue to Glory, New York: Random House, 1938.
Aristophanes, Lysistrata and Other Plays, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin,
1973.
At the Foot of the Mountain, Raped: A Womans Look at Bertolt Brechts The Exception
and the Rule, 1976.
Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones), The Motion of History in The Motion of History and Other
Plays, New York: William Morrow, 1978.
Barker, James Nelson, Tears and Smiles in Paul Howard Musser, James Nelson Barker,
17841858; with a Reprint of his Comedy Tears and Smiles, Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1929.
Basshe, Emanuel Jo, The Centuries; Portrait of a Tenement House, Freeport, NY.: Books
for Libraries Press, 1971.
Belmont, O. H. P. and Elsa Maxwell, Melinda and Her Sisters in Bettina Friedl (ed.), On
to Victory: Propaganda Plays of the Woman Suffrage Movement, Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1987.
Benmussa, Simone, The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs in Benmussa Directs: Portrait of
Dora by Helène Cixous; Tranlated from the French by Anita Barrows. The Singular Life
of Albert Nobbs by Simone Benmussa; Adapted for the Stage from George Moores Short
Story Albert Nobbs; and Translated from the French by Barbara Wright, London:
John Calder, 1979.
Berrigan, Daniel, Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Boston: Beacon Press, 1970.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bird, Robert Montgomery, The Gladiator in Clement E. Foust, The Life and Dramatic
Works of Robert Montgomery Bird, New York: B. Franklin, 1971.
Boucicault, Dion, The Octoroon, Or Life in Louisiana in Arthur Hobson Quinn (ed.),
Representative American Plays: From 1767 to the Present Day, seventh edn., New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953.
Brougham, John, Metamora; Or, The Last of the Pollywogs in Don B. Wilmeth (ed.),
Staging the Nation: Plays from the American Theater, 17871909, Boston: Bedford
Books, 1998.
Brown, William Wells, The Escape; or, a Leap for Freedom in James V. Hatch and Ted
Shine (eds.), Black Theatre USA: Forty-Five Plays by African Americans, 18471974,
New York: Free Press, 1974.
Burk, John, Female Patriotism, or The Death of Joan DArc, New York: Printed by R.M.
Hurtin, 1798.
Bunker-Hill; or, The Death of General Warren, New York: Publications of the Dunlap
Society, no. 15, 1891.
Caldwell, Ben, Prayer Meeting; or, The First Militant Preacher in James V. Hatch and
Ted Shine (eds.), Black Theatre USA: Plays by African Americans: The Recent Period:
1935-Today, rev. edn., New York: Free Press, 1996.
Childress, Alice, Wedding Band in Honor Moore (ed.), The New Womens Theatre: Ten
Plays by Contemporary American Women, New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
Churchill, Caryl, Cloud Nine, London: Pluto Press, 1979.
Top Girls, London: Methuen, 1982.
Vinegar Tom in Caryl Churchill, Plays: One, London: Methuen, 1985.
Conrad, Robert T., Jack Cade, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1918.
Coss, Clare, Sondra Segal, and Roberta Sklar, The Daughters Cycle (excerpts) in
Clare Coss, Sondra Segal, and Roberta Sklar, Separation and Survival: Mothers,
Daughters, Sisters The Womens Experimental Theater, The Future of Difference
edited by Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980, pp. 195235.
Crothers, Rachel, He and She in Arthur Hobson Quinn (ed.), Representative American
Plays: From 1767 to the Present Day, seventh edn., New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1953.
A Mans World in Judith E. Barlow (ed.), Plays by Women: The Early Years, New York:
Avon Books, 1981
Daly, Augustin, Horizon in Augustin Daly, Plays, edited by Don B. Wilmeth and
Rosemary Cullen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Daniels, Sarah, Masterpieces, London: Methuen, 1984.
Different Sons, a VVAW documentary directed by Jack Ofield, produced by Arthur
Littman, Bowling Green Films, 1971.
Du Bois, W.E.B., The Star of Ethiopia. A Pageant, in Herbert Apthecker (ed.),
Pamphlets and Leaflets by W.E.B. Du Bois, White Plains, NY.: Kraus-Thomson,
1983.
Dunlap, William, Darbys Return in Paul L. Ford (ed.), Washington and the Theatre,
New York: Benjamin Blom, 1899.
Andre in Arthur Hobson Quinn (ed.), Representative American Plays: From 1767 to the
Present Day, seventh edn., New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Glory of Columbia: Her Yeomanry in Richard Moody (ed.), Dramas from the
American Theatre 17621909, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966.
Durivage, O.E., The Stage-Struck Yankee (also known as Our Jedidiah: or, Great Attraction),
New York: Samuel French, n.d.
Ensler, Eve, Necessary Targets: A Story of Women and War, New York: Villard, 2001.
The Vagina Monologues, V-Day edition, New York: Villard, 2001.
Fierstein, Harvey, Torch Song Trilogy in Harvey Fierstein, Torch Song Trilogy: Three Plays,
New York: Villard, 1983.
Fornes, Maria Irene, The Conduct of Life in Plays: Mud, The Danube, The Conduct of Life,
Sarita, New York: PAJ Publications, 1986.
Fuller, Charles, A Soldiers Play, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.
Glaspell, Susan, Trifles in Susan Glaspell, Trifles and Six Other Short Plays, London:
E. Benn, 1926.
Goldemberg, Rose Leiman, Letters Home in Julia Miles (ed.), The Womens Project, New
York: Performing Arts Journal, 1980.
Gomez-Pena, Guillermo, 1992 in Warrior for Gringostroika, St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf
Press, 1993.
Border Brujo in Warrior for Gringostroika, St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1993.
Hamilton, Cicely, How the Vote Was Won in Dale Spender (ed.), How the Vote Was Won
and Other Suffragette Plays, London: Methuen, 1985.
Hoffman, William M., As Is, New York: Vintage, 1985.
Houston, Velina Hasu, Asa Ga Kimashita in Velina Hasu Houston (ed.), The Politics of
Life, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
Tea in Roberta Uno (ed.), Unbroken Thread, Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1993.
Hughes, Langston, Mulatto in Langston Hughes, Five Plays edited by Webster Smalley,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.
Dont You Want to be Free? in James V. Hatch and Ted Shine (eds.), Black Theatre USA:
Forty-Five Plays by African Americans, 18471974, New York: Free Press, 1974.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Ramersad and David
Roessel, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
Hunter, Robert, Androboros, Printed at Monoropolis since August, 1714, New York:
William Bradford, 1714.
Ibsen, Henrik, Ghosts in Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts and Other Plays, Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penguin, 1964.
The Master Builder in Henrik Ibsen, The Master Builder: and Other Plays,
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.
Hedda Gabler in Henrik Ibsen, Plays: Two, London: Eyre Methuen, 1980.
Plays: Two, London: Eyre Methuen, 1980.
A Dolls House in Henrik Ibsen, Plays: Two, London: Eyre Methuen, 1980.
Peer Gynt in Henrik Ibsen, Plays: Six, London: Methuen, 1987.
Jacker, Corinne, Bits and Pieces in Honor Moore (ed.), The New Womens Theatre: Ten
Johnson, Hester, On to Victory in Bettina Friedl (ed.), On to Victory: Propaganda Plays of
the Woman Suffrage Movement, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jones, LeRoi, Dutchman in LeRoi Jones, Dutchman and The Slave: Two Plays, New
York, Morrow, 1964.
The Slave in LeRoi Jones, Dutchman and The Slave: Two Plays, New York, Morrow,
1964.
Arm Yourself, or Harm Yourself !, Newark: Jihad Publication, no date (1967?).
Black Mass in LeRoi Jones, Four Black Revolutionary Plays, Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill Co., 1969.
Four Black Revolutionary Plays, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969.
Slave Ship, Newark: Jihad Publication, 1969.
JELLO, Chicago: Third World Press, 1970.
Kramer, Larry, The Normal Heart, London: Methuen, 1987.
Kushner, Tony, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes Part One: Millennium Approaches, New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1993.
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes Part Two: Perestroika, rev. edn.,
New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1996.
Lindsley, A. B., Love and Friendship, or, Yankee Notions, New York: D. Longworth, at
the Dramatic Repository, Shakespeare-Gallery, 1809.
Logan, C.A., The Vermont Wool Dealer, New York: Samuel French, n.d.
Maltz, Albert, Black Pit, New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1935.
Mann, Emily, Execution of Justice in Emily Mann, Testimonies: Four Plays, New York:
Theatre Communications Group, 1997.
McCloskey, James J., Across the Continent; Or, Scenes from New York Life and the Pacific
Railroad in Isaac Goldberg and Hubert Heffner (eds.), Davy Crockett and Other
Plays, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.
Medina, Louisa, Nick of the Woods, Boston: Spensers Boston Theatre, n.d.
Miller, Arthur, Death of a Salesman in Arthur Miller, Plays: One, London: Methuen,
1988.
The Crucible in Arthur Miller, Plays: One, London: Methuen, 1988.
Miller, Tim, Glory Box, unpublished, 2000.
Moore, Honor, Mourning Pictures in Honor Moore (ed.), The New Womens Theatre: Ten
Moraga, Cherre, Giving up the Ghost in Cherre Moraga, Heroes and Saints and Other
Plays, Albuquerque: West End Press, 1994.
Heroes and Saints in Cherre Moraga, Heroes and Saints and Other Plays, Albuquerque:
West End Press, 1994.
Munford, Robert, A Collection of Plays and Poems by the late Colonel Robert Munford,
of Mecklenberg County in the State of Virginia, Petersburg: William Prentiss,
1798.
Murdock, Frank, Davy Crockett in Isaac Goldberg and Hubert Heffner (eds.), Davy
Crockett and Other Plays, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.
Norman, Marsha, Getting Out (1977) in Marsha Norman, Four Plays, New York: Theatre
Communications Group, 1988.
Odets, Clifford, Waiting for Lefty in Clifford Odets, Six Plays, London: Methuen, 1982.
ONeill, Eugene, The Hairy Ape in Eugene ONeill, The Collected Plays of Eugene ONeill,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1988.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Open Theatre, Mutation Show in Karen Malpede and Joseph Chaikin (eds.), Three Works
by the Open Theatre, New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1974.
Patterson, Charles, Black Ice, in LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal (eds.), Black Fire, New
York: William Morrow & Co., 1968.
Paulding, James Kirke, John Augustus Stone and William Bayle Bernard, The Lion of
the West, edited by James N. Tidwell, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954.
Peters, Paul and George Sklar, Stevedore, New York: Covici, Friede, 1934.
Rabe, David, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel in David Rabe, The Vietnam Plays,
New York: Grove Press, 1993.
Sticks and Bones in David Rabe, The Vietnam Plays, New York: Grove Press, 1993.
Streamers in David Rabe, The Vietnam Plays, New York: Grove Press, 1993.
Red Ladder, Strike While the Iron is Hot in Michelene Wandor, Strike While the Iron is
Hot: Three Plays on Sexual Politics, London: Journeyman Press, 1980.
Robins, Elizabeth, Votes for Women in Dale Spender (ed.), How the Vote Was Won and
Other Suffragette Plays, London: Methuen, 1985.
Robins, Elizabeth and Florence Bell, Alans Wife, London: William Heinemann, 1893.
Rosler, Martha, Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained, Video Data Bank
Preservation Program, Chicago: Video Data Bank, 1996.
Schneeman, Carolee, Interior Scroll in Carolee Schneeman, More Than Meat Joy:
Complete Performance Works and Selected Writings, edited by Bruce McPherson,
New Paltz, NY: Documentext, 1979.
Shange, Ntozake, for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf: A
Choreopoem, New York: Macmillan, 1977.
Shaw, Mary, Impressionistic Sketch of the Anti-Suffragists in Bettina Friedl (ed.), On to
Victory: Propaganda Plays of the Woman Suffrage Movement, Boston: Northeastern
The Parrots Cage in Bettina Friedl (ed.), On to Victory: Propaganda Plays of the Woman
Suffrage Movement, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.
Sherman, Martin, Bent, New York: Avon Books, 1980.
Sinclair, Upton, Singing Jailbirds, Long Beach, California: 1924.
Smith, Anna Deavere, Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities,
New York: Anchor Books, 1993.
Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, New York: Anchor Books, 1994.
Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines [includes excerpts used in House Arrest], New
York: Random House, 2000.
Smith, John, A Dialogue between an Englishman and an Indian, 1779, manuscript
held by Dartmouth College Special Collections.
Spiderwoman, Power Pipes in Mimi dAponte (ed.), Seventh Generation: An Anthology
of Native American Plays, New York: Theatre Communication Group, 1999.
Spivak, Gayatri, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, edited by
Sarah Harasym, London: Routledge, 1990.
Split Britches, Beauty and the Beast in Sue-Ellen Case (ed.), Split Britches: Lesbian
Practice/Feminist Performance, London: Routledge, 1996.
Belle Reprieve in Sue-Ellen Case (ed.), Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance, London: Routledge, 1996.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Steele, Wilbur Daniel, Contemporaries in Barbara Ozieblo (ed.), The Provincetown

Players: A Choice of the Shorter Works, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.
Stone, Augustus, Metamora; Or, the Last of the Wampanoags in Eugene R. Page (ed.),
Metamora and Other Plays, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941.
Terry, Megan, Approaching Simone, Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1973.
Tyler, Royall, The Contrast in Don B. Wilmeth (ed.), Staging the Nation: Plays from the
American Theater, 17871909, Boston: Bedford Books, 1998.
Uno, Roberta (ed.), Unbroken Thread, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1993.
Valdez, Luis, Mundo Mata, 2001, unpublished.
The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa in Jorge Huerta (ed.), Necessary Theater: Six Plays
about the Chicano Experience, Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1989.
Los Vendidos, created and written by Luis Valdez, directed by George Paul, produced
by Jose Luis Ruiz, 1971.
Zoot Suit in Luis Valdez, Zoot Suit and Other Plays, Houston: Arte Publico Press,
1992.
Valdez, Luis and El Teatro Campesino, El Baile de los Gigantes, unpublished, 1974.
El Fin del Mundo, 1976, unpublished.
Las Dos Caras del Patroncito in Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez
Early Works: Actos, Bernabe and Pensamiento Serpentino, Houston: Arte Publico
Press, 1990.
La Carpa de los Rasquachis, 2001, unpublished.
La Quinta Temporada in Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early
Works: Actos, Bernabe and Pensamiento Serpentino, Houston: Arte Publico Press,
1990.
Soldado Razo in Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early
1990.
Los Vendidos in Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early
1990.
Vietnam Campesino in Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early
1990.
Vogel, Paula, How I Learned to Drive in Paula Vogel, The Mammary Plays, New York:
Theatre Communications Group, 1998.
Warren, Mercy, The Adulateur, The Defeat and The Group in Benjamin Franklin (ed.),
The Plays and Poems of Mercy Otis Warren, Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints,
New York: Delmar, 1980.
Wasserstein, Wendy, The Heidi Chronicles in Wendy Wasserstein, The Heidi Chronicles
and Other Plays, San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990.
Wilder, Thornton, Our Town, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1962.
Williams, Tennessee, A Streetcar Named Desire London: Methuen, 1984.
Yeats, W.B., The Countess Cathleen in W. B. Yeats, Collected Plays, second edn., London:
Macmillan, 1952.
Zangwill, Israel, The Melting Pot, New York: Macmillan, 1912.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscript collections
John Reed Manuscripts, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bms Am 16555 (95).
Serials /newspapers
Argus (New York), 1798.
Boston Gazette, 17968.
Columbia Centinel (Boston), 17978.
Globe and Commercial Advertiser (New York), MayJune 1913.
New York Call, AprilJune 1913.
New York Herald, MayJune 1913.
New York Press, MayJune 1913.
New York Times, MayJune 1913.
New York Tribune, MayJune 1913.
Paterson Evening News, AprilJune 1913.
Polar Star and Daily Advertiser (Boston) 17967.
Time Piece (New York), 1798.
Articles
Arrizon, Alicia, Mythical Performativity: Relocating Aztlan in Chicana Feminist Cultural Productions, Theatre Journal, 52, no.1 (March 2000), 2349.
Benston, Kimberly, The Aesthetic of Modern Black Drama in Errol Hill (ed.), The
Theater of Black Americans, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980, vol. i,
pp. 6178.
Blair, Karen, Pageantry for Womens Rights: The Career of Hazel MacKaye, 19131923
in Theatre Survey, 31 (May 1990), 2346.
Butsch, Richard, American Theatre Riots and Class Relations, 17541849, in Theatre
Annual, 48 (1995), 4159.
Canning, Charlotte, The Most American Thing in America in Jeffrey D. Mason
and J. Ellen Gainor (eds.), Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American
Theater, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999, pp. 91105.
Carby, Hazel V., The Multicultural Wars, Radical History Review, 54 (Fall 1992), 718.
Carlson, Marvin, Nationalism and the Romantic Drama in Europe in Gerald
Gillespie (ed.), Romantic Drama, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.,
1994, pp. 13952.
Carr, C., Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts: The Taboo Art of Karen Finlay
in Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan (eds.), Acting Out: Feminist Performances, Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993, pp. 14151.
Clapp, William W., The Drama in Boston in Justin Winsor (ed.), The Memorial
History of Boston, Boston: J.R. Osgood and Company, 1881, vol. iv, pp. 35782.
Cotter, Holland, Beyond Multiculturalism, A Way to a New Freedom, New York
Times, 29 July 2001, Section 2, p. 1.
Crandell, William F., They Moved the Town: Organizing Vietnam Veterans Against
the War in Melvin Small and William Hoover (eds.), Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Anti-War Movement, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992, pp. 14154.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cronin, Maura, The Yankee and the Veteran: Vehicles of Nationalism, Journal of
American Drama and Theatre, 13, no. 2 (Spring, 2001), 5170.
Davis, Peter, Determining the Date of Robert Hunters Androboros, Theatre Survey,
25, no. l (May 1984), 957.
De Lauretis, Teresa, Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation in Theatre
Journal, 40, no. 2 (May 1988), 15577.
Du Bois, W.E.B., Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre: The Story of a Little Theatre
Movement in James Hatch and Leo Hamalian (eds.), Lost Plays of the Harlem
Renaissance 19201940, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996, pp. 4468.
Fish, Stanley, Boutique Multiculturalism, or, Why Liberals are Incapable of Thinking
about Hate Speech, Critical Inquiry, 23, no. 2 (Winter 1997), 37895.
Fox, Claire, The Portable Border: Site-Specificity, Art, and the US-Mexico Frontier,
Social Text, 41 (Winter 94), 6182.
Gomez-Pena, Guillermo, A Binational Performance Pilgrimage, The Drama Review,
35, no. 3 (Fall 1991), 2245.
Hall, Stuart, New Ethnicities, Black Film: British Cinema, edited by Kobena Mercer,
ICA Documents 7, London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1988, pp. 2731.
Herrera, Albert, The National Chicano Moratorium and the Death of Ruben Salazar
in Ed Ludwig and James Santibanez (eds.), The Chicanos: Mexican American Voices,
Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971, pp. 23541.
Higson, Andrew, The Concept of National Cinema, Screen, 30, no. 4 (Autumn 1989),
3646.
Hornborg, Anne-Christine, Kluskap As Local Culture Hero and Global Green
Warrior: Different Narrative Contexts for the Canadian Mikmaq Culture-Hero,
Acta Americana, 9, no. 1 (2001), 1738.
Kaplan, Amy, Left Alone with America: The Absence of Empire in the Study of
American Culture in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease (eds.), Cultures of United
States Imperialism, Durham: Duke University Press, 1993, pp. 321.
Karenga, Ron, Ron Karenga and Black Cultural Nationalism, Negro Digest, January,
1968, 59.
Krasner, David, The Pageant is the Thing in Jeffrey Mason and J. Ellen Gainor
(eds.), Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theater, Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1999, pp. 10622.
Lears, Jackson, A Matter of Taste: Corporate Cultural Hegemony in a MassConsumption Society in Lary May (ed.), Recasting America: Culture and Politics in
the Age of Cold War, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 3857.
Lincoln, Bruce, A Lakota Sun-dance and the Problematics of Sociocosmic Reunion,
History of Religions, 34, no. 1 (1994), 114.
Linton, Ralph, The Comanche Sun Dance, American Anthropologist, 37 (1935), 4208.
Logan, Brad, The Ghost Dance among the Paiute, Ethnohistory, 27, no. 3 (Summer
1980), 26788.
Lowie, Robert B., Sun Dance of the Shoshone, Ute, and Hidastsa, Anthropological
Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 16, no.1 (1919), 387431.
Lyons, Charles R. and James C. Lyons, Anna Deavere Smith: Perspectives on her
Performance within the Context of Critical Theory, Journal of Dramatic Theory
and Criticism (Fall 1994), 4366.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Martin, Carol, Anna Deavere Smith: The Word Becomes You, The Drama Review,
37, no. 4 (Winter 1993), 4562.
McConachie, Bruce, The Theatre of Edwin Forrest and Jacksonian Hero Worship in
Judith L. Fisher and Stephen Watt (eds.), When They Werent Doing Shakespeare:
Essays on Nineteenth-Century British and American Theatre, Athens, Georgia:
University of Georgia Press, 1989, pp. 318.
American Theatre in Context, from the Beginnings to 1870 in Don B. Wilmeth
and Christopher Bigsby (eds.), The Cambridge History of American Theatre, vol. i,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 11181.
McNamara, Brooks (ed.), Paterson Strike Pageant, Drama Review, 51 (Summer 1971),
6172.
Moraga, Cherre, Art in America con Acento in Diana Taylor and Juan Villegas (eds.),
Negotiating Performance, Durham: Duke University Press, 1994, pp. 306.
Mulvey, Laura, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen, 16, no. 3 (1975), 618.
Neal, Larry, The Black Arts Movement, in Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie
Y. McKay (eds.), The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., 1997, pp. 196072.
New Grapes, Newsweek, 31 July 1967, p. 79.
Nochlin, Linda, The Paterson Strike Pageant of 1913, Art in America, 52 (May/June
1974), 648.
Ostler, Jeffrey, Conquest and the State Wounded Knee, Pacific Historical Review, 65
no. 2 (May 1996), 21748.
Patraka, Vivian, Notes on Technique in Feminist Drama: Apple Pie and Signs of
Life,Women and Performance, 1, no. 2 (Winter 1984), 5872.
Pease, Donald E., National Identities, Postmodern Artifacts, and Postnational
Narratives in Donald E. Pease (ed.), National Identities and Post-Americanist
Narratives, Durham: Duke University Press, 1994, pp. 113.
Platt, Tony, Desegregating Multiculturalism: Problems in the Theory and Pedagogy
of Diversity Education, Notes for presentation at the annual conference of the
Sociology of Education Association, Pacific Grove, California, 24 February 2001,
unpublished.
Quinn, Michael, Celebrity and the Semiotics of Acting, New Theatre Quarterly, 6,
no. 22 (May 1990), 15461.
Rayner, Alice, Improper Conjunctions: Metaphor, Performance, and Text, Essays in
Theatre/Etudes Thea trales, 14, no. 1 (November 1995), 314.
Reed, John, Almost Thirty in Groff Conklin (ed.), The New Republic Anthology:
19151935, New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1936, pp. 5773.
Reinelt, Janelle, Tracking Twilight: The Politics of Location, Theatre Forum,
6 (Winter/Spring 1995), 527.
Performing Race: Anna Deavere Smiths Fires in the Mirror, Modern Drama, 39,
no. 4 (Winter 1996), 60917.
Renan, Ernest, What is a Nation? in Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay (eds.),
The Nationalism Reader, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995, pp. 14355.
Richards, Sandra, Caught in the Act of Social Definition: On the Road with Anna
Deavere Smith in Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan (eds.), Acting Out: Feminist
Performances, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993, pp. 3553.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Richardson, Gary A., In the Shadow of the Bard: James Nelson Barkers Republican
Drama and the Shakespearean Legacy in Judith L. Fisher and Stephen Watt (eds.),
When They Werent Doing Shakespeare: Essays on Nineteenth-Century British and
American Theatre, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1989, pp. 12336.
Joseph P. Roppolo, Uncle Tom in New Orleans: Three Lost Plays, New England
Quarterly, 27 (1954), 21326.
Russell, Phillips, The Worlds Greatest Labor Play: The Paterson Strike Pageant,
International Socialist Review, 14 ( July 1913), 79.
Savran, David, Queering the Nation in Jeffrey D. Mason and J. Ellen Gainor, Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theater, Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1999, pp. 21029.
Schechner, Richard, An Intercultural Primer, American Theatre (October 1991), 2831,
1356.
Sell, Mike, The Black Arts Movement: Performance, Neo-Orality, and the Destruction
of the White Thing in Harry J. Elam, Jr. and David Krasner (eds.), African
American Performance and Theater History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001,
pp. 5680.
Senelick, Laurence, Recovering Repressed Memories: Writing Russian Theatrical
History, paper presented at FIRT colloquium at Helsinki University on
Re/Writing National Theatre Histories, unpublished, 1997.
Tridon, Andre, Haywood, New Review, 1 (May 1913), 5026.
Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Significance of the Frontier in American History in
Richard D. Heffner (ed.), A Documentary History of the United States, rev. edn.,
New York: Mentor, 1961, pp. 17886.
Valdez, Luis, El Teatro Campesino Its Beginnings in Ed Ludwig and James
Santibanez (eds.), The Chicanos: Mexican American Voices, Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1971, pp. 11519.
The Tale of La Raza, in Ed Ludwig and James Santibanez (eds.), The Chicanos:
Mexican American Voices, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971, pp. 95100.
Pensamiento Serpentino in Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez Early
1990, pp. 16899.
Wilmer, S.E, The Lip Affair, New Society, 21 March 1974, pp. 6967.
Reifying Imagined Communities; Nationalism, Post-Colonialism and Theatre
Historiography, Nordic Theatre Studies, 12 (1999), 94103.
Books
Acuna, Rodolfo, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, third edn., New York: Harper
Collins, 1988.
Adams, John, The Political Writings of John Adams, edited by George A. Peek, Jr.,
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1954.
Papers of John Adams, edited by Robert J. Taylor, Mary-Jo Kline and Gregg L. Lint,
Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977, vol. ii.
Papers of John Adams, edited by Robert J. Taylor, Gregg L. Lint and Celeste Walker,
Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979, vol. iii.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, rev. edn., London: Verso, 1995.

Anthony, Katharine, First Lady of the Revolution: The Life of Mercy Otis Warren, New
York: Doubleday and Co., 1958.
Anzaldua, Gloria, Borderlands = La frontera: the New Mestiza, San Francisco:
Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987.
Appiyah, Kwame, In my Fathers House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, Oxford: Oxford
Auster, Albert, Actresses and Suffragists: Women in the American Theatre, 18901920, New
York: Praeger, 1984.
Banning, Lance, The Jeffersonian Persuasion, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
Baraka, Imamu Amiri, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, New York:
Freundlich Books, 1984.
Berkovitch, Sacvan, The American Jeremiad, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1978.
Bhabha, Homi K. (ed.), Nation and Narration, London: Routledge, 1990.
Bharucha, Rustom, The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking through Theatre in an Age
of Globalization, London: Athlone Press, 2000.
Brennan, Tim, At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Brown, Alice, Mercy Warren, New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1896. Reprinted 1968,
Massachusetts Heritage Series, no. 3.
Brown, Janet, Taking Center Stage: Feminism in Contemporary US Drama, Metuchen,
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Case, Sue Ellen, Feminism and Theatre, London: Macmillan, 1988.
Chinoy, Helen and Linda Jenkins (eds.), Women in American Theatre, rev. edn., New
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Clurman, Harold, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties,
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Mason, Jeffrey D. and J. Ellen Gainor (eds.), Performing America: Cultural Nationalism
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McDonald, Forrest, Alexander Hamilton, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1982.
McLaughlin, James, My Friend the Indian, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
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Moody, Richard (ed.), Dramas from the American Theatre, Bloomington: Indiana
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Murphy, Brenda, Congressional Theatre: Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film and

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1976.
Wilmeth, Don B. and Christopher Bigsby (eds.), The Cambridge History of American
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vol. iv.
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Index
abolition, 8
abortion, 151, 162, 164, 184
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
(aids), 14, 181, 183186
Acres of Diamonds speech (Conwell),
11, 99
Across the Continent (McCloskey), 9
Act of Congress (1790), 9
Action for Women in Theatre, 161
actor-managers, 156157
Actors Alliance of America, 158
Actresses Franchise League, 156, 158
Adams, Abigail, 39, 152
Adams, John, 39, 41, 43, 4647, 152
Adams, Samuel, 39, 40, 42, 43, 49
Addison, Joseph, 18, 29, 40
Adulateur, The (Warren), 3940
Aeschylus, 165
affirmative action, 173
African American, 5, 8, 10, 12, 13, 99,
100, 101, 127129, 131, 132, 133138,
149, 174, 178181, 182, 185, 186, 187,
188, 189, 194
agit-prop, 119, 125
Agrell, Alfhild, 157
aids, see Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome
Aiken, George L., 8
Alans Wife (Robins), 157
Albee, Edward, 13
Alfieri, Vittorio, 2
Alianza Federal de Mercedes, La (Federal
Alliance of Land Grants), 129
Alien and Sedition Acts, 55, 74, 76, 99

Alien Act, 99
Sedition Act, 59, 62
Allegory, The (MacKaye), 100, 155
Allen, Ethan, 48, 50
American Communist Party, 103, 119
American Company, see London
Company of Comedians
American Dream, The (Albee), 13
American Dreams (Houston), 187
American Federation of Labor (AFL),
98, 109110
American Indians, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 2526, 31, 49, 65,
8097, 101, 129, 131, 138, 144, 149, 166,
175, 182, 183, 187, 193, 194, 196, 197,
198, 199
American Indian Movement (AIM),
129
Bureau of Indian Affairs, 129
Court of Indian Offences, 82
Red Power (see American Indian
Movement), 131
religious intolerance, 8384
Tribes: Arapaho, 86, 88, 92; Caddo, 86,
88; Cherokee, 9; Cheyenne, 86, 93;
Chichimec, 196; Chippewa, 83;
Comanche, 88; Kiowa, 86, 88;
Lakota, 8096: Teton Lakota:
Hunkpapa, 83, Itazipco, 83,
Minneconjou, 83, 95, Oglala, 83, 89,
91, Oohinumpa, 83, Sicangu, 83,
Sihasapa or Blackfeet, 83;

American Indians (cont.)
Yankton Lakota, 87; Mohican, 183;
Otomi, 196; Paiute, 85, 87, 88; Sachem,
49; Shoshoni, 88; Sioux (see Lakota);
Tuscarora, 19, 43; Wichita, 86
American jeremiad (Berkovitch), 7
American Me (Almos), 192
American Place Theatre, 152; see also
Womens Project
American Revolution, 5, 11, 3840, 47, 51,
53, 56, 62, 68, 73, 74, 101, 152
American Woman: Six Periods of American
Life (MacKaye), 155
Americans Roused in a Cure for the Spleen,
The (Sewall), 3538
Ames, Fisher, 55, 75
Anderson, Benedict, 1, 2, 177, 189
Anderson, Laurie, 169
Andre (Dunlap), 6569, 7679
Andre, Major John, 6569, 7679
Androboros (Hunter), 2021, 24, 34
Angels in America (Kushner), 14, 176,
181187, 199
Antony, Marc, 106
Anthony, Susan B., 153, 155
Antigone (Sophocles), 167
Antigone Too: Rites of Love and Defiance
(Boesing), 167
anti-war demonstrations, 130, 131, 141142,
145148, 149
anti-war performances, 132, 142143,
145148, 149150
Anzaldua, Gloria, 195, 196, 199
Aoki, Brenda Wong, 14, 176, 187, 189194,
196, 201
Appia, Adolphe, 103
Approaching Simone (Terry), 166
Argus, The, 6869, 78
Aristophanes, 156
Arm Yourself, or Harm Yourself ! (Baraka),
134
Arnold, Benedict, 51, 66, 67, 77, 78
As Is (Hoffman), 14
Asa Ga Kimashita (Houston), 187
Ashley, Jessie, 124
INDEX
Asian American, 13, 132, 174, 187, 189

assimilation, 82, 8586, 94, 95, 97, 128, 132,
133, 141, 174, 193
anti-assimilation, 94, 95, 97, 140, 149
Astor Place Riots, 8
At the Foot of the Mountain, 163, 164, 168
Augur, Gen. Christopher, 85
Aztecs, 13, 131, 139, 143, 145, 149
Baile de los Gigantes, El, 144
Baptists, 99
Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones), 13, 131,
132139, 149
Barker, James Nelson, 6
Barnum and Baileys Circus, 104, 119
Barre, Isaac, 48
Barrymore, Ethel, 153, 155
Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, The
(Rabe), 145
Basshe, Em Jo, 125
Bates, Esther Willard, 100
Battle of Little Bighorn, 94
Beauty and the Beast, 169
Beauvais, Bishop (Pierre Cauchon), 7071
Bedford, Duke of, 70
Bell, Gertrude, 157
Belle Reprieve (Split Britches and
Bloolips), 170
Belmont, Mrs. O. H. P., 160
Belt, The (Sifton), 125
Benmussa, Simone, 169
Benny, Jack, 134
Benston, Kimberly, 117118
Bent (Sherman), 14
Berkovitch, Sacvan, 7
Bernard, William Bayle, 7
Bernhardt, Sarah, 156
Berrigan, Daniel, 145
Bhabha, Homi, 1, 15
Bharucha, Rustom, 174175
Bider, Haydee Tamara Bunke, 166
Big Foot, 93, 95
Bill of Rights, The, 5
Bimson, Chief of Police, 110, 117
Bird, Robert Montgomery, 7
INDEX
Bits and Pieces ( Jacker), 165

Bjrnson, Bjornstjerne, 2
Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School in
Harlem, 131, 134135
Black Arts/West, Oakland, California
(Black House), 137
Black Arts/West, Seattle, Washington,
137
Black Elk, 84, 89, 9293
Black House, 137
Black Ice (Patterson), 134, 135
Black Mass (Baraka), 135
Black Nationalists, 13, 128129, 133134,
137, 149
Black Panthers, 128, 129, 137
Black Pit (Maltz), 100
Black Power, 128, 129, 131, 133, 149, 173
Black Revolutionary Theatre, 13, 134, 136,
138, 139, 149
Blockade of Boston, The (Burgoyne), 47
Blood for Blood speech (Tresca), 107,
115
Bloolips, 170
Boesing, Martha, 163, 167
Booth, Edwin, 156
Border Art Workshop/Taller de Arte
Fronterizo, 197
Border Brujo (Gomez-Pena), 197199, 200
Boston Gazette, 46, 57, 58
Boston Massacre, 39
Boston Tea Party, 19, 39, 43
Boucicault, Dion, 8
Bourne, Bette, 170
Bourne, Randolph, 123
Bowdoin, James, 41, 43
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry, 31
Brady, William A., 120
Brattle, William, 41, 43
Bread and Puppet Theatre, 145
Brecht, Bertolt (Brechtian), 38, 70, 168,
169
Broadway, 113, 125, 132, 145, 153, 155, 160,
161
Brougham, John, 9
Brown, Gov. Edmund, 139
Brown, William Wells, 8

Building Bridges Not Walls (Smith, A.), 177
Bullins, Ed, 136
Bunker-Hill; or, The Death of General
Warren (Burk), 6, 53, 5965, 66, 68,
70, 73, 76, 77, 79
Burgoyne, General, 47
Burk, John, 6, 53, 54, 5657, 5965, 68,
6976, 77, 78, 79
Burke, Edmund, 48
Burke, Kenneth, 81
Burr, Aaron, 59
Caldwell, Ben, 136
Camden, Lord (Charles Pratt), 48
Candida (Shaw, G. B.), 157, 159
Candidates; or, The Humours of a Virginia
Election, The (Munford), 2729
capitalism, 11, 12, 13, 98, 99, 100, 101, 105,
107, 109, 119, 124, 125, 126, 133, 143, 199
Carby, Hazel, 174
Carlson, Marvin, 2
Carmichael, Stokely, 128
Carnegie steel plant strike, 98
Carnegie, Andrew, 98, 99
Carpa de los Rasquachis, La (Valdez and
Teatro de Campesino), 145
Catholics, 4, 8, 11, 48, 49, 121, 166, 182,
186, 195, 196, 198
Cato (Addison), 18, 29
Centuries, The (Basshe), 125
Chaikin, Joseph, 164
Chapel Street Theatre, 17, 18
Chautauquas, 1112, 99100, 111
Chatham, Lord William, 48
Chavez, Cesar, 138
Checkley, John, 17
Chicano Power, 131
Chicanos/as, 13, 129, 131132, 138145, 149,
173, 198201
Chicomoztoc Mimixcoa Cloud Serpents
(Colorado Sisters), 196
child-labor, 110
Childress, Alice, 165
Chinese Exclusion Act, 11, 98

Chinoy, Helen, 161
Christians, 23, 24, 166, 180, 194, 195;
see also separate denominations
Church of England, 16, 21, 22
Church Street Theatre (Charleston), 17
Churchill, Caryl, 169
Cihuacoatl (goddess), 195
Civil Rights Movement, 127129, 137, 151,
161, 173, 174, 187
Civil War (American), 8, 10, 101, 130
Cixous, Helène, 163
Clapp, William, 57, 58
Cleaver, Eldridge, 137
Close, Glenn, 172
Clothesline Project, 172
Cloud Nine (Churchill), 169
Clurman, Harold, 100
Coatlicue (goddess), 195
Coatlicue Theatre Company (Colorado
Sisters), 166, 194, 199
Cold War, 127, 173
College of New Jersey (Princeton
University), 30
College of Philadelphia (University of
Pennsylvania), 2931, 33
College of William and Mary, 29
Colorado Sisters, 14, 176, 187, 194196, 201
Colorado, Elvira, 194
Colorado, Hortensia, 194
Columbia Centinel, 6364
Columbus (Morton), 6364
Columbus, Christopher, 195, 197, 199, 200
Comaroff, Jean and John, 81, 116
Common Sense (Paine), 38, 48
communally helping out (methexis),
117
Communists, 103, 119, 125, 127, 141, 143,
148, 186
Conboy, Sarah, 109110
Concept East, 137
Conduct of Life, The (Fornes), 168
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 129
Conrad, Robert T., 7
Constant State of Desire, The (Finlay), 167
Constitution of the United States, 5, 53,
54, 76, 160
INDEX
Contemporaries (Steele), 124

Continental Congress, 17, 20, 32, 3435,
38, 47
Contrast, The (Tyler), 6
Convert, The (Robins), 158
Conwell, Russell, 99
Cooke, George, 230
Cooke, Gen. Philip, 84
Cooper, Samuel, 66
Cortez, Hernando, 195, 199
Cotter, Holland, 174
counterculture movement, 130, 131, 149
Counter-Inaugural March, 160
Court Theatre, 157
Courts of Inspection, 35
Craig, Edward Gordon, 103
Crandell, William, 146148
Cromwellian rebellion, 22
cross-dressing, 169170
Crothers, Rachel, 153154
Crown Heights (New York) riots (1991),
178
Crucible, The (Miller, A.), 13
cultural genocide (Holler), 83
cultural imperialism, 96, 180, 198
Current Opinion, 121
Custer, General George, 94
Daily Picayune, 8
daily plebiscite (Renan), 2
Daly, Augustin, 9
Daniels, Sarah, 168
Darbys Return (Dunlap), 65
Dashiki Project Theatre, 137
Daughters Cycle, The (Womens
Experimental Theatre), 165
Davies, Reverend Samuel, 16
Davy Crockett (Murdock), 7
De Lauretis, Teresa, 167
Dead March (tune), 106, 114
Death of a Salesman (Miller, A.), 13
Debates at the Robin-Hood Society in the
City of New-York, On Monday Night
19th July, 1774, 34, 35, 36
Debs, Eugene, 98
Defeat, The (Warren), 36, 39, 4043
INDEX
Defence of the Constitutions of Government

of the United States of America
(Adams), 54
Democratic National Convention, 130
Democratic Republicans, 54, 5556, 57, 59,
60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 70, 74, 76, 78
Denny, Reginald, 178
Depot (Ensler), 170
Depression, the Great, 12, 100, 125, 193
Derr, W. R., 7
Dialogue, Between a Southern Delegate,
and His Spouse, on his Return from the
Grand Continental Congress, A
(Mary V. V.), 3435
Dialogue Containing Some Reflections
(anon.), 21, 22, 2324, 25, 29
Disappointment, The (Forrest, T.), 18
Dodge, Mabel, 102104, 115, 124
Dolan, Jill, 161, 163, 167
Dolls House, A (Ibsen), 153
Dont You Want to be Free? (Hughes), 101,
125
Dos Caras del Patroncito, Las (El Teatro
Campesino), 139
Douglass, David, 17, 18, 27
Drew, Mrs. John (Louisa Lane), 154
Drexler, Rosalyn, 163
Du Bois, W. E. B., 102, 132
Dunlap, William, 53, 56, 6469, 75,
7679
Dunmore, Lord John, 50
Dutchman (Baraka), 131, 132133, 134
ecriture feminine (Cixous), 163
El Movimiento, 140
Emancipation of Women, The
(Samolinska), 153
Emma (Little Flags), 166
Emmatroupe, 168
End of the Line (Gomez-Pena), 197
Ensler, Eve, 14, 170172
Episcopal Church, 193
Equal Rights Amendment, 160, 161
Equal Rights Pageant (MacKaye), 155
Equality League of Self-Supporting
Women, 159
Escape; or, A Leap from Freedom, The

(Brown), 8
essentialism, 138, 149, 173, 174
strategic essentialism, 171
Execution of Justice (Mann), 161
Exercise Consisting of a Dialogue and Ode,
Sacred to the Memory of his late
Gracious Majesty George II, An, 2930
Exercise Containing a Dialogue and Ode,
on the Accession of his Present Gracious
Majesty George III, An, 30
Exercise Containing a Dialogue and Ode,
on the Occasion of Peace, An, 31
Exercise Containing a Dialogue and Two
Odes, An, 31
Fall of British Tyranny, The (Leacock),
4751, 52
Farrakhan, Louis, 178
Fashion (Mowatt), 153
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
137
Federal Street Theatre, 56, 57, 58, 59
Federal Theatre Project, 125
Federalist Papers, The, 64, 179
Federalists, 6, 53, 5456, 57, 61, 62, 63, 64,
6567, 7374, 75, 76, 77
Female Patriotism (Burk), 6976, 79
feminine morphology (Case), 162
feminism,
liberal (bourgeois), 161, 162, 163, 172
radical (or cultural), 161, 162, 163, 164,
167, 170, 171, 172
materialist (or socialist), 161, 162, 167,
169, 170, 172
Ferrazzano, Toto, 107
Fetterman Massacre, 84
Field, Joseph M., 8
Fierstein, Harvey, 14
Fifth Avenue Theatre, 155
Fin del Mundo, 145
Finlay, Karen, 167
Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights,
Brooklyn and Other Identities
(Smith, A.), 177, 178, 180181
Fish, Stanley, 175, 180

Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 153
Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 107108, 110, 111,
115, 120, 122
for colored girls . . . (Shange), 163, 164
Ford, Henry, 98
Fornes, Maria Irene, 168
Forrest, Edwin, 7, 8, 9
Forrest, Thomas, 18
Fort Laramie Treaty, 94
Forte, Jeanie, 167
Fox, Claire, 197
Fractura Minimi Digiti (Dunlap), 66
Franklin, Benjamin, 21
Free Speech Movement, 130
Freire, Paulo, 190
French and Indian War, 24, 25, 30
French Revolution, 2, 6, 54, 55, 62, 65, 66,
71, 73, 75
Freneau, Philip, 31, 68
Freud, Sigmund, 171
From the Outside Looking In (Smith, A.),
177
Fuller, Charles, 136
Furies of Mother Jones, The (Little Flags),
166
Gage, Gen. Thomas, 18, 32, 44, 45, 47,
50
Gainor, J. Ellen, 4
Gamut Club, 160
Garvey, Marcus, 133
gay, 13, 14, 130, 161, 170, 172, 181187, 194,
201
Gaye, Marvin, 133
Geertz, Clifford, 81, 89
Gender Bending: On the Road Princeton
University (Smith, A.), 177
George Barnwell (Lillo), 17
George II, King of England, 30, 33
George III, King of England, 24, 30, 31,
49
Getting Out (Norman), 163, 168
Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion, The
(La Barre), 80
Ghosts (Ibsen), 157, 159
Gillespie, Patti, 161, 164
INDEX
Girl Starts Out . . . A Tragedy in 4 Parts,

A (Emmatroupe), 168
Giuliani, Mayor Rudolph, 172
Giving Up the Ghost (Moraga), 163
Gladiator, The (Bird), 7
Glaspell, Susan, 124, 154
Globe and Commercial Advertiser, 104105
Glory Box (Miller, T.), 14
Glory of Columbia: Her Yeomanry, The
(Dunlap), 69, 7678, 79
Gnostics, 166
Godfrey, Thomas, 18
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 2
Gold, Mike, 124
Goldberg, Whoopi, 172
Goldemberg, Rose Leiman, 165
Golden, John, 109110
Goldman, Emma, 166, 167
Gomez-Pena, Guillermo, 14, 176, 187, 194,
196201
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 173
Gordon, Linda, 152
Gould, George Jay, 98
Greenblatt, Stephen, 1
Greenwich Street Theatre, 64
Grein, J. T. ( Jacob Thomas), 157
Group, The (Warren), 39, 4447, 152
Guevara, Che, 166
Hairy Ape, The (ONeill, E.), 124
Haley, Alex, 173
Hallam, Lewis, 17, 18, 27
Hamilton, Cicely, 156
Hamilton, Alexander, 5455, 76
Hamlet (Shakespeare), 18
Hancock, John, 49
Hanover, Donna, 172
Hapgood, Hutchins, 111, 112, 113, 116,
124
Harburger, Sheriff, 115, 118, 119
Harlem Equal Rights League, 159
Harlem Renaissance, 12, 132, 160
Harlem Suitcase Theatre, 125
Harriman, Edward H., 98
Harvard University, 51, 103, 104
Haymarket Theatre, 57, 58
INDEX
Haywood, William, 102109, 111112, 114,

115, 118, 122, 123, 124
He and She (Crothers), 154
Hecht, Rabbi Shea, 180181
Hedda Gabler (Ibsen), 156, 159
Heidi Chronicles, The (Wasserstein), 164
Hellman, Lillian, 160
Henry VI Part I (Shakespeare), 70, 71
Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 11
Heroes and Saints (Moraga), 167
heterosexual, 12, 14, 127, 162, 169, 170, 185
Hicks, Granville, 124
Higson, Andrew, 3
History of the American Theatre (Dunlap),
65
History of the Revolution (Warren), 54
Hodgkinson, John, 56, 63, 69, 76, 79
Hoffman, Abbie, 130
Hoffman, William, 14
Holler, Clyde, 83
Holocaust, the, 178
Home of the Brave (Anderson), 169
Homestead strike, 98
homosexuality, see gay and lesbian
hooks, bell, 162
Horizon (Daly), 9
House Arrest (Smith, A.), 177
House Committee on un-American
Activities, 127
House of Burgesses, 27
Houston, Velina Hasu, 187189, 194, 196,
201
How I Learned to Drive (Vogel), 168, 170,
172
How the Vote Was Won (Hamilton), 156
Huerta, Dolores, 129, 131
Hughes, Langston, 100101, 125
Hugo, Victor, 2
Hunt, Edward, 104
Hunt, Gen. Washington, 84
Hunter, Robert, 20
Huntington, David, 10
Hutchinson, Foster, 39, 44
Hutchinson, Gov. Thomas, 36, 3945
Hutchinson, Thomas (son of Governor),
39
I Have a Dream speech (King), 127

Ibsen, Henrik, 2, 153, 157, 159
Imagined Communities (Anderson), 1, 2,
177, 189
immigration, 45, 6, 8, 9, 10, 98, 99,
100, 102, 111, 126, 153, 175, 182, 197,
201
Impressionistic Sketch of the Anti-Suffragists
(Shaw, M.), 159
Impressions, The, 133
In Mourning and in Rage . . . , 168
Independent Theatre, 157
Independent, 108, 121
Indians, see Native Americans
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
98, 102, 106111, 115, 116, 117, 119124
Interart, 163
Interior Scroll (Schneeman), 167
International Socialist Review, 109, 112,
114, 116, 120, 122
Internationale, The (song), 108, 109, 113
Interurban Council of Women Suffrage
Clubs, 159
Intolerable Acts, 32
Irving, Henry, 155
Its All Right to be Women, 164
Jack Benny Show, 134
Jack Cade (Conrad), 7
Jacker, Corinne, 165
Jackson, President Andrew, 7
Jackson, Reverend Jesse, 173
Jamieson, George, 8
Japanese internment, 12, 193
Jays Treaty, 55
Jefferson College, 59
Jefferson, President Thomas, 38, 55, 59,
62, 76
JELLO (Baraka), 134
Jenkins, Linda Walsh, 151, 169
Jesus Christ, 16, 24, 166
Jews, 4, 132, 166, 169, 178, 182, 183, 185, 186,
187
Jihad Productions, 135
Jim Crow laws, 8, 11
Joan of Arc, 7074, 75

John Street Theatre (New York), 17
Johnson, Eleanor, 168
Johnson, Georgia Douglas, 160
Johnson, Hester, 160
Jones, LeRoy, see Amiri Baraka
Jones, Mother, 167
Jones, Robert Edmond, 103
Joseph, May, 187
Judas, 24
Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), 18
Kaddish, 184, 186
Kahn, Otto, 124
Karenga, Ron, 137
Karin (Agrell), 157
Katona, Jozsef, 2
Kent State University, 130
Kentuckian, The (Bernard), 7
Kerner Commission report, 179
Kerry, Senator John, 130
King, Martin Luther Jr., 127128, 129
King, Rodney, 178
Kisfaludy, Karoly, 2
Kicking Bear, 93, 94
Kit Carson, the Hero of the Prairie (Derr), 7
Klein, Maxine, 166
Kleist, Heinrich von, 2
Klopstock, Friedrich, 2
KNBC television, 141
Koettgen, Ewald, 122
Kramer, Larry, 14
Kushner, Tony, 14, 176, 181187, 188, 196,
201
Kuwapi, 87
La Barre, Weston, 80
labor unions, 98, 100, 109, 112, 114, 119,
129, 138139, 166; see also IWW and
UFW
LaFollette, Fola, 156
Lament for Three Women, A (Malpede),
165
Lawson, John Howard, 124
Lea, Marion, 156157
Leacock, John (alias Dick Rifle), 4751
Leave It to Beaver, 127
INDEX
Lee, Gen. Charles, 51

lehrstucke, 38
Leonard, Dr. William T., 8
lesbian, 161, 162, 164, 167, 169170, 171
Lessig, Adolph, 107, 115
Letters Home (Goldemberg), 165
Levy, Carolyn, 168
liberals, 175
Lillo, George, 17
Lincoln, President Abraham, 84
Lincoln, Bruce, 89
Lindsley, A. B., 6
Lion of the West (Paulding), 7
Little Flags, 166
Living Newspaper, 125
Living Theatre, The, 145
Llorona, - The Wailing Woman, La
(Coatlicue), 195
Lock and Key (Hoare), 57
London Company of Comedians, 1718,
20
Loneliness of the Immigrant, The
(Gomez-Pena), 201
Loomba, Ania, 81
Lorde, Audre, 162
Los Angeles Feminist Theatre, 163
Louisiana Purchase, 5
Love and Friendship (Lindsley), 6
Loyalists, 5, 29, 31, 3438, 42, 43, 44, 47,
52, 66; see also Tories
Lysistrata (Aristophanes), 156
MacKaye, Hazel, 155156
MacKaye, Percy, 99
Macready, William Charles, 8
Madison, President James, 179
Madonna, 185
Magdalene, Mary, 166
magical realism, 182
Malpede, Karen, 165
Maltz, Albert, 100
Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, The
(France), 103
Mans World, A (Crothers), 154
Mandan Pioneer, The, 87
Manifest Destiny, 14, 82
INDEX
Mann, Emily, 161

Manzoni, Alessandro, 2
Marble, Danforth, 7
March on Washington, 127
Marseillaise (tune), 105, 106, 108, 109,
117, 120
Marx on her Mind (Little Flags), 166
Marxist, 137, 143, 144, 149
Massachusetts Spy, 39, 46
Master Builder, The (Ibsen), 157
Masterpieces (Daniels), 168169
Matthews, John, 109
Maxwell, Elsa, 160
May, Elaine Tyler, 127
Maya, 13, 131, 144, 149
McCarthy, Senator Joseph, 13, 127, 181
McCloskey, James, 9
McConachie, Bruce, 7
McLaughlin, James, 9495
Medina, Louisa, 7
Melinda and Her Sisters (Belmont and
Maxwell), 160
Melting Pot, The (Zangwill), 99
Metamora; or, The Last of the Pollywogs
(Brougham), 9
Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags
(Stone), 7, 9
methexis, 117
Mexican American, 121, 129, 138, 139, 140,
141
Miguel, Muriel, 165
Miles, Julia, 152
Military Glory of Great Britain, The, 30
Miller, Arthur, 13
Miller, John C., 7475
Miller, Tim, 14
minstrel shows, 8
Miracles, The, 133
Miss in her Teens (Garrick), 56
Moderwell, Hiram, 124
Modestino, Mrs., 107, 114
Modestino, Valentino, 106107
Modjeska, Helena, 154
Monroe Doctrine, 11
Monroe, President James, 59
Montgomery, Robert, 7
Monthly Magazine, 76
Mooney, James, 8592, 94
Moore, Honor, 165
Moraga, Cherre, 162, 163, 167, 176,
201202
Morgan, J. P., 98
Mormons, 182, 185, 186, 187, 193
Morning Has Broken (see Asa Ga
Kimashita), 187
Morning Telegraph, 155
Motion of History, The (Baraka), 137138
Mourning Pictures (Moore), 165
Movimiento, El, 129, 140
Mowatt, Anna Cora, 153
Mrs. Warrens Profession (Shaw, G. B.), 159
Muhammad, Elijah, 128, 133
multiracialism, 180
Mulvey, Laura, 162163, 167
Mundo Mata (Valdez), 145
Munford, Robert, 2729
Muntu Reading Group, 136
Murdock, Frank, 7
musicals, 125
Mutation Show (Open Theatre), 164165
Nation of Islam, 120
National American Womans Suffrage
Association (NAWSA), 155
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), 129
National Chicano Moratorium, 141
National Rainbow Coalition, 173
National Womens Party, 155, 160
nationalism, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 25, 31, 33,
38, 52, 53, 54, 56, 62, 64, 67, 69, 76, 77,
78, 79, 133, 135, 137, 143, 149, 176, 200,
201; see also Black Nationalists
nation-state, 1, 2, 5, 6, 16, 56, 62, 82, 86,
153, 176
Native Americans, see American Indians
Nazimova, Alla, 153
Neal, Larry, 133, 135, 136
Necessary Targets (Ensler), 170
Negro Digest, 137
New Playwrights Theatre, 124

New York Call, 108, 115, 117, 120
New York Dramatic Mirror, 154
New York Evening Post, 7778
New York Evening World, 113114
New York Herald, 113, 117
New York Journal, 19
New York Press, 107, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118,
120, 121
New York Spirit of the Times, 8
New York Times, 84, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106,
108, 113, 118, 120, 121, 122, 146, 159
New York Tribune, 101, 105, 106107, 114,
115, 119, 120
New York World, 114, 121
Newsweek, 139
Newton, Huey, 128
Niccolini, Giambattista, 2
Nick of the Woods (Medina), 7
1992: Blood Speaks (Colorado Sisters),
195196
Nineteenth Amendment of the
Constitution (ratification), 160
Nixon, President Richard M., 130, 137
Normal Heart, The (Kramer), 14
Norman, Marsha, 163, 168
Nurses for Peace, 146
Obake (Aoki), 189
Obeyesekere, Gananath, 81
Obie awards, 131, 140, 166, 171
Octoroon; or, Life in Lousiana, The
(Boucicault), 8
Odets, Clifford, 100
Oehlenschlager, Adam, 2
off-Broadway, 161
OKeefe, John, 65
Old American Company, 64
Old Plantation; or, Uncle Tom As He Is,
The ( Jamieson), 8
Oliver, Andrew, 39, 40, 42, 43
Oliver, Peter, 39, 40, 44
On Black Identity and Black Theatre
(Smith, A.), 177
On the Road: A Search for American
Character (Smith, A.), 177
INDEX
On to Victory ( Johnson), 160

One-Third of a Nation, 125
ONeill, Eugene, 124
ONeill, James, 156
Open Theatre, 164
Operation Rapid American Withdrawal
(Vietnam Veterans Against the
War), 146
Oresteia (Aeschylus), 165
Organization for Afro-American Unity,
120
Organization of African Unity, 120
Otis, James, 39, 40, 43
Our Town (Wilder), 186
Ozzie and Harriet, 127
Pageant of Susan B. Anthony (MacKaye),
155
Pageants and Pageantry (Bates), 100
Paine, Thomas, 38, 48, 55, 132, 150
pamphlet plays
religious, 17
political, 20, 3451
Park Theatre, 65
Parker, Charlie, 133
Parks, Rosa, 167
Parrots Cage, The (Shaw, M.), 159
Paterson Evening News, 122
Patraka, Vivian, 164
Patriots, 5, 16, 19, 20, 3152, 68; see also
Sons of Liberty
Patriots, The (Munford), 5, 16, 19, 20,
3152, 68
Patterson, Charles, 134
Paul, Alice, 155, 160
Paulding, James Kirke, 7
Pavis, Patrice, 175176, 177
Paxton Boys, The, 2123, 24, 28, 29
Paxton Rebellion (Paxton Boys), 2124
peace movement, 130, 131, 146148; see also
anti-war demonstrations; anti-war
performances
Peace of Paris, 5
Pearl, Precious, 170
Pease, Donald, 7
INDEX
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 190

penis envy (Freud), 171
Penn, Thomas, 33
Pensamiento Serpentino (Valdez), 144
Peters, Paul, 100
Philadelphia Guerrilla Theatre, 146
Plath, Sylvia, 165
Poem on the Rising Glory of American
Being an Exercise Delivered at the
Public Commencement of
Nassau-Hall, A (Freneau and
Brackenridge), 31
Political Reverie, A (Warren), 43
Ponteach; or, The Savages of America
(Rogers), 2527, 29
Pontiac (Ponteach), 21, 2527
Poor Soldier (OKeefe), 65
Pope, Gen. John, 82, 84
Popular Front plays, 125
postmodernism, 176
Power Pipes (Spiderwoman Theatre
Company), 168, 195
Prayer Meeting: or, The First Militant
Preacher (Caldwell), 136
Presbyterians, 16, 2124
Prescot, Gen. William, 50
Presidents March, The, 75
Prince of Parthia, The (Godfrey), 18
Princeton University, 30, 31, 177
Prolet-Buhne, 125
Protestants, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14, 48, 59, 99,
110; see also separate denominations,
182, 183, 185, 187
Provincetown Playhouse, 124, 154
Public Theatre (New York), 178
Puerto Ricans, 129, 142
Pulitzer Prize, 136, 168, 170, 172
Pullman strike, 98
Puritans, 16, 182
Pushkin, Alexander, 2
Putnam, Gen. Israel, 51
Quakers, 4, 16, 2124, 36, 37, 38
Queens Garden, The (Aoki), 189, 190192,
194
Quinlan, Patrick, 107, 115

Quinta Temporada, La (El Teatro
Campesino), 139
Rabe, David, 145, 149
Raped: A Womans Look at Bertolt
Brechts The Exception and the Rule
(At the Foot of the Mountain),
168
raza, la, 138, 143, 149
Reagan, President Ronald, 170, 173, 185
Red Cloud, 82, 84
Red Flag, The (song), 108, 109
Red Ladder, 169
Reed, John, 103105, 115, 122, 123124
Reinhardt, Max, 121
religious rituals, 8081, 96, 97
Renan, Ernest, 12
Republicans, 184; see also Democratic
Republicans
Revere, Paul, 32
Revolutionary Theatre, The (Baraka),
134
Richard III (Shakespeare), 18
Richards, Sandra, 180
Richardson, Gary, 66
Rifle, Dick (Leacock), 47
right to vote (women), 12, 153, 156
Rights of Man (Paine), 55
riots (theatre), 8, 18, 19, 56
Robin, Claude, 51
Robins, Elizabeth, 14, 156159
Rochambeau, Gen. Jean Baptiste
Donatien de Vimeur, 77
Rockefeller, John D., 98, 99
Rogers, Robert, 25
Roman Church, see Catholics
Romanticism, 2, 3, 11
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 64
Roosevelt, President Franklin, 12
Roosevelt, President Theodore, 99
Roots (Haley), 173
Rosenberg, Ethel, 127, 181182, 184
Rosenberg, Julius, 127, 184
Rosler, Martha, 167

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 11, 25
Rubin, Jerry, 130
Ruggles, Timothy, 45
Rush, Benjamin, 62
Russell, Lillian, 154, 155, 160
Russian Revolution, 37, 103, 124
Ryder, Winona, 172
sadomasochist (masochist, sadist),
162163, 168
Said, Edward, 1
Salazar, Ruben, 142
Salt of the Earth, 121
Samolinska, Theofilia, 153
San Francisco Mime Troupe, 131, 145
San Jose State College, 131
Sanchez, Sonia, 136
Sanger, Margaret, 124, 167
Savran, David, 185
Schanke, Robert, 158
Schechner, Richard, 80, 186
Scherman, Bernadine Kielty, 104
Schiller, Friedrich, 2
Schneeman, Carolee, 167
Scott, Alexander, 107
Scott, Leroy, 124
Seale, Bobbie, 128
search-and-destroy enactments, 132, 146
Sellers, Cleveland, 129, 137
Selwyn, William, 87
Senelick, Lawrence, 2
separatism
ethnic, 128, 129, 137, 173, 200, 201
gender, 164
Sewall, Jonathan, 36, 42
Shakespeare, William, 17, 18, 64, 70, 185
Shakti (goddess), 166
Shange, Ntozake, 136, 163, 164
Shaw, George Bernard, 157, 159
Shaw, Mary, 159160
Shaw, Peggy, 169170
Shekina (goddess), 166
Sherman, Gen. William T., 8485
Sherman, Martin, 14
Shohat, Ella, 175, 201
INDEX
Short Bull, 83, 8788, 93

Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa, The
(Valdez), 131, 140
Sifton, Paul, 113, 125
Silverman (Silberman), Hannah, 104,
106, 110, 114, 115
Sinclair, Upton, 125
Singing Jailbirds (Sinclair), 125
Singular Life of Albert Nobs, The
(Benmussa), 169
Sitting Bull (Arapaho), 92
Sitting Bull (Lakota), 9495, 97
Sklar, George, 100
Sklar, Roberta, 165166
Slave, The (Baraka), 132133, 134
Slave Ship (Baraka), 135136
Smith, Anna Deavere, 14, 176184,
186190, 192, 194, 196, 201
Smith, Bessie, 133
social Darwinism, 14
socialism, 14, 98, 99, 108, 118, 120, 124, 125,
162, 169, 185
Socialist Party, 98, 107, 117
Soldado Razo, 143
Soldiers Play, A (Fuller), 136137
Solidarity, 123
Sollee, John, 64
Solomon, King, 48
Sons of Liberty, 18, 19; see also Patriots
Sophia (goddess), 166
Sophocles, 167
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC), 129
Southwark Theatre (Philadelphia), 17
Spiderwoman Theatre Company, 165,
166, 168, 172, 195
Spirit House, 131, 135, 136
Split Britches, 169170, 172
Stage Struck Yankee, The (Marble), 7
Stam, Robert, 175, 201
Stamp Act (riots), 5, 18, 19, 25, 31, 39, 40,
41
Star of Ethiopia, The (Du Bois), 100
Steele, Wilbur Daniel, 124
Steinem, Gloria, 166
INDEX
stereotypes
African American, 89, 12, 131
American character, 67, 99, 110
American Indian, 9
gender, 151, 160, 169
Irish, 8
Mexican American, 141
Stevedore (Peters and Sklar), 100, 125
Sticks and Bones (Rabe), 145
stock market, crash of 1929, 100, 125
Stokes, Rose Pastor, 108
Stone, Augustus, 7
Stonewall riot, 130
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 8
Streamers (Rabe), 145
street theatre, 132, 146
Streetcar Named Desire, A (Williams), 170
Strike While the Iron is Hot (Red Ladder),
169
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), 129
Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS), 129
Studio Watts Workshop, 137
Suffolk Resolves of Massachusetts, 32,
34, 35, 36
suffragists (suffragettes), 14, 153, 154, 156,
157, 158160, 172
suffragist theatre, 12, 14, 154, 156160,
161
Sufis, 166
Summary View of the Rights of British
America, The ( Jefferson), 38
Sun Dance, 83, 85, 88, 89, 95, 96
Sword, George, 91
Survey, The, 111, 113, 120
symbolic action (Burke), 81
tableaux vivants, 160
Taft, President William, 99
Take Back the Night, 167, 168, 172
Talbot, Lord John, 7
Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 74
Tammany, Chief, 49
Tania (Little Flags), 166
Tannenbaum, Frank, 124

Tantric Buddhism, 166
Tea (Houston), 187188
Tears and Smiles (Barker), 6
Teatro de la Esperanza, 140
Teatro Campesino, El, 131, 132, 138145,
149
Teatro de la Gente, 140
Teatro Nacional de Aztlan, El
(TENAZ), 140
Ten Days that Shook the World (Reed),
103
Terry, Megan, 166
Thatcher, Prime Minister Margaret, 170
Theatre Union, 125
Three Weeks in May, 167
Tijerina, Reies Lopez, 129
Time Piece, The, 68, 69, 74
Tomlin, Lily, 172
Tonantzn, 144, 145
Top Girls (Churchill), 169
Torch Song Trilogy (Fierstein), 14
Tories (see also Loyalists), 19, 3436, 44,
46, 49, 50
Treadwell, Sophie, 160
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 5, 129
Tresca, Carlo, 106, 107, 108, 115
Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Berrigan),
145
Trifles (Glaspell), 154
Trinity College Dublin, 59
Turner, Fredrick Jackson, 10
Turner, Victor, 80
Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 (Smith, A.),
177, 178179, 180, 192
Tyler, Royall, 6
Uncle Gunjiros Girlfriend (Aoki), 189,
193194
Uncle Sam, 7, 14
Uncle Toms Cabin (Stowe), 8
Uncle Toms Cabin in Louisiana (Leonard),
8
Uncle Toms Cabin: or Life in the South As
It Is (Field), 8

Union Club, 159
Unionists, 158
United Farmworkers Union (UFW), 129,
131, 132, 138, 139, 140, 149
University of California, Berkeley,
130
University of Pennsylvania (College of
Philadelphia), 29, 30, 31, 33
Uno, Roberta, 188
Unthinking Eurocentrism (Shohat and
Stam), 175, 201
Until Someone Wakes Up (Levy), 168
Urban League, 129
Utley, Robert, 94
vagina envy, 171
Vagina Monologues, The (Ensler), 14,
170172
Valdez, Luis, 13, 131, 132, 138145
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 98
Vassar College, 156
Vaudeville Theatre (London), 156
vaudeville, 155
V-Day (Victory, Valentines and Vagina
Day), 171172
vehicle of history-in-the-making
(Comaroff ), 116
Vendidos, Los (Teatro Campesino), 141
Verdi, Giuseppe, 2
Vermont Wool Dealer, The (Marble), 7
Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW),
148
Victoria Theatre, 155
Vietnam Campesino (Teatro Campesino),
142
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
(VVAW), 13, 130, 131132, 141,
146149, 150
Vietnam War, 13, 130, 141, 142143,
145150, 151, 161, 173, 191
Vinegar Tom, (Churchill), 169
Virgen del Guadalupe, 144, 145, 167
Vital Statistics (Rosler), 167
Vogel, Paula, 168, 170, 172
Voices of Bay Area Women (Smith, A.), 177
INDEX
Vorse, Mary, 124

Votes for Women (Robins), 156, 157159
Wagner, Richard, 2
Waiting for Lefty (Odets), 100, 125
Walker, James, 86
War of Independence, see American
Revolution
Warren, James, 39, 43, 4647
Warren, Joseph, 50, 53, 59, 6062, 63
Warren, Mercy Otis, 36, 3947, 48, 52, 54,
99, 152153
Washington, President George, 6, 17, 27,
38, 48, 51, 53, 67, 68, 77
Wasserstein, Wendy, 164
Watts riots, 129, 179, 180
Wayne, John, 147
We Fight Back, 168
Weaver, Lois, 169170
Wedding Band (Childress), 165
Weil, Simone, 166
West Street Theatre (Annapolis), 17
Whigs, 16, 18, 31, 32, 33, 36, 40, 48, 49
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP),
see Protestants
Whitman, Walt, 185
Wild West shows, 9, 94
Wilder, Thornton, 186
Wilkes, John, 48
Williams, Tennessee, 170
Williamsburg Theatre, 17
Wilson, August, 136
Wilson, President Woodrow, 99, 155, 156,
160
Winthrop, Hannah, 44
Winthrop, John, 43
Womans National Theatre, 160
Womens Experimental Theatre, 165
Womens Project, 152; see also American
Place Theatre
Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret! A
(Centlivre), 18
Word to the Wise, A (Kelly), 19
Workers Laboratory Theatre, 125
World War I, 99
INDEX
World War II, 12, 127, 147, 150, 160, 187,

193
Wounded Knee,
massacre at, 86, 87, 91, 95
second battle of, 95, 129
Wovoka, ( Jack Wilson), 85, 86, 87, 90,
93
WOW Cafe, 169
X, Malcolm (Malcolm Little), 128, 133

X, Y, Z Affair, 74, 76
Yeats, William Butler, 2
Youth International Party (Yippy), 130
Zangwill, Israel, 99
Zoot Suit (Valdez), 145

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Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN AMERICAN THEATRE AND DRAMA

Theatre, Society and the Nation

From British colony to independent nation: refashioning

Federalist and Democratic Republican theatre: partisan

Independence for whom? American Indians and the

The role of workers in the nation: the Paterson Strike

Staging social rebellion in the 1960s

Reconfiguring patriarchy: suffragette and feminist plays

Imaging and deconstructing the multicultural nation

I want to thank my colleagues in the School of Drama at Trinity College,

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

were excluded. Non-English-speaking immigrants such as Germans were

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

American dialect and exhibited a homespun wisdom unsullied by old world

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

Other ethnic characters such as Irish Americans and Native Americans

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

were often represented (and sometimes appeared) in playhouses, this chapter

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

Americans appeared as comic characters, Asian Americans as evil men or

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

The political turbulence in the 1960s encouraged women to reexamine

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

soon became a focus for displays of political sentiment. At performances by

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

Early dramatic propaganda: loyalty to King and country

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

The Presbyterian boasts that he has collected thousands of pounds in

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

Stir then good People be not still nor quiet,

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

British government tried to place a greater share of the financial burden

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

That I have Warriors, am myself a King,

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

Beget more Sons, fresh Troops collect and arm,

The Candidates; or, the Humours of a Virginia Election, a satirical farce on

The play provides a remarkable picture of eighteenth-century election

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

drunkenness is used for satirical effect, the playwright evidently wished

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

Majesty George II glorified the reign of the previous King of England

Likewise at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), a musical

In the following year, the Dialogue in the commencement exercises at the

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

George gave the word and bade mankind repose

The ode re-emphasized the students loyalty to the British empire:

A similar approach was taken by A Poem on the Rising Glory of America

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

Implicit in the poem was an emerging notion of a new nation, equal to

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION

At the 1775 commencement of the College of Philadelphia, which took

The dialogue commented on the recent outbreak of warfare, the British

THEATRE, SOCIETY AND THE NATION

Loyalist propaganda plays

FROM BRITISH COLONY TO INDEPENDENT NATION