Introductory

"Oh, for a muse of fire..."

Because an overwhelming number of people (three, last I counted) have requested it, I am going to write a fairly concise version of theatre history according to...me!

DJ holds forth (with vodka)
at his last history class

What a GRAND idea!

And an ambitious project...but then I have time on my hands, and while I have little desire to get back into the classroom, I think this might be a good way to make relatively permanent a course I have loved teaching for more than twenty years. Former students might find it a useful review, others might just enjoy what I hope will be a good read, other scholars can scoff, as is there wont. So let's begin and see what happens!

There are as many versions of theatre history as there are people to tell that story. I grew up with Oscar Brockett's version of it, last time I checked in its tenth edition, translated into ceveral languages,  certainly the most widely read of English-language histories. I taught using a book called Living Theatre: A History by Edwin Wilson and Alvin Goldfarb, two authors who write with Brockett's method and philosophy in mind, but who took a more lively and less detailed approach than the great Oscar did. In my undergraduate education I was taught by a vibrant storyteller of a professor, Bob Boyd, whose style in the classroom I tried to emulate. He knew that even theatre majors were not all that likely to love the history of their form, but were more excited by practical course in their areas of interest. So while he didn't stint on the facts and theory, he made the course a joy for his students -- while he was not able to reach all of them he made many converts. I noted this and attempted in my own classes to employ as much wit with as many visuals as I was able to muster. I took the theatre history sequence again at Catholic University while earning my master's degree from a Yale-educated professor named Gary Williams, who was drier than Boyd but who packed his lectures with excellent and authoritative detail. I scribbled notes as fast as my left hand could fly during his lectures, and still have them. How I was able to read them I'm not quite sure.

As I had completed the history sequence for my master's I was not required to take it for my Ph.D., but I took an excellent history of American theatre course, a history of directing course (by the great Stanley Kaufffmann), and several period history courses such as Judith Milhous's class on Restoration and Eighteenth Century Theatre. Judy was one of the three professors I chose for my dissertation committee. Her area of interest was not that of my topic, but she assured me that I would write excellently...or she would not approve it! Walter Meserve, the great historian of early American theatre history chaired that committee in a wonderfully demanding and giving approach. and the committee was rounded out by perhaps the best known of all of them, Marvin Carlson, who wrote THE theoretical bible Theories of the Theatre, and who I grew to know rather well as he summered in Ithaca NY, where I taught for twenty-plus years.

So that's my background. It was all fairly conservative, and I still honor that approach today. But there are many recent historians and writers of theatre history who sought to revise the Brockett-style history of theatre. I must admit that their postmodern approach sometimes puts me off, while I appreciate the expansion of focus they bring to the discipline. That's my apologia.

Dr Jack "graduates"
May 2011

The plan, as of now, though it well could evolve (or devolve), is to post maybe twice a week, in chronological order, the highlights and most important facts to remember about different periods of theatre history. For my readers it would not be unlike attending class twice a week, but with no tests to panic them, or papers assigned to fluster and frustrate them. Should be fun!

Wish me luck, and I wish you happy reading. The first post, on the origins of theatre, will follow in the next day or so!