Modern American Dramas [antikvár]

MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA The movement that produced the modern drama in Europe, England, and Ireland reached America last of all. In the forty years between the production of a DoWsHouse and Beyond the Horizon, the American theatre remained barren and provincial, the American playwrights weak and unaware. A few ofthe more publicized European and English play —A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, Mrs. Warren's Profession, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray—had sporadic productions in America. The native plays seem pale and superficial by comparison. They are interesting in a study of American cultural history, and they are important to the student of American drama as an expression of the national life. This period of drama is usually represented on its highest level by William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide, Augustus Thomas's The Witching Hour, Percy MacKaye's The Scarecrow, Clyde Fitch's The Truth, Eugene Walter's The Easiest Way, George M. Cohan's Broadway Jones, and the work of Bronson Howard, David Belasco, and Edward Sheldon. Ludwig Lewisohn's book The Modern Drama, published in 1915, completely ignored these American dramatists, except for an incidental reference to "the decorative sentimentalities of David Belasco." But the critics of a quarter of a century ago were not being merely disrespectful when, in writing about "modern drama," they passed over this American scene without mention. Their judgment was warranted and also inescapable. In a world-wide perspective the American drama as of the year 1915 was not very significant. While Lewisohn was yet reading the proofs of his essay, the ferment that would revolutionize the American stage was already at work. It was apparent in the talk among the young spirits that were gathering in Greenwich Village; it was manifest in the little theatre groups which they organized. Three of the most important of these—the Washington Square Players (later the Theatre Guild), the Neighborhood Playhouse, and the Provincetown—were all founded in 1915. These coteries were more nearly impromptu than those which founded the Théâtre Libre, Die Freie Bühne, The Moscow Art Theatre, The Abbey, and similar organizations in Europe. Unlike these groups that were mobilized to carry out a clear-cut purpose, the Americans had no well-defined program, no definite artistic creed, no precise goal or theory of drama. They were moved to action by their dissatisfaction with Broadway, its plays and production methods; they vaguely aspired to a richer, more acute dramaturgy and a livelier, more daring, and more experimental stage without knowing quite how these ideals were to be realized. Then the World War brought America and Europe more closely together; the Provincetown, more or less by accident, stumbled upon O'Neill; scenic designers like Lee Simonson„ Robert Edmond Jones and his producer-associate Kenneth MacGowan, asserted their fresh genius; and at one giant, ocean-bridging stride American drama not only joined the procession, but rapidly took its place in the vanguard. Nor was it