The History of Western Theatre

United States.

By the beginning of the 1950s the vitality of American theatre was acknowledged around the world. The international reputation of Eugene O'Neill was complemented by two potent young dramatists: Arthur Miller, who turned the ordinary man into a figure of tragic stature in Death of a Salesman (1949) and The Crucible (1953), and Tennessee Williams, who created a world festering with passion and sensuality in plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). At the same time, the director Lee Strasberg, together with Elia Kazan, was codifying the teachings of Stanislavsky into "the Method," which generated both controversy and misunderstanding. Although the Actors Studio, founded by Kazan in 1947, produced many fine actors, including Marlon Brando, Geraldine Page, and Paul Newman, the Method proved inadequate as an approach to acting in classical plays; it was best suited to the realism of the new American plays and films.

Off-Broadway.

This phenomenon developed as a reaction to the commercialism of New York theatre. More experimental plays could be presented in smaller buildings outside the main theatre district. The artistic success of many of these productions meant that some writers (Edward Albee, for example), could graduate to Broadway. Off-Broadway also enabled black playwrights such as James Baldwin and Leroi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka) to dramatize racial issues with a frankness that had not previously been seen on the American stage.

During the 1960s, a strong avant-garde theatre movement known as "Off-Off-Broadway" emerged. Among the most influential groups were Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre, Richard Schechner's Performance Group, Julian Beck's and Judith Malina's Living Theatre, and Peter Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theatre. These groups sought to smash the barriers between the actor and the audience, exploring ritual, sexuality, nudity, and primitivism. They also signaled, however, a movement away from literary values: coherent speech and concise dialogue were in most cases replaced by improvisations, grunts, and shrieks. As with the British "fringe theatre," this movement generated great excitement and vitality, but at its worst it produced gratuitous violence, self-indulgence, and ultimately the alienation of the very audience that it set out to embrace. The political wing of the avant-garde was street theatre, or "guerrilla theatre," where short agitprop ("agitational propaganda") plays were performed on city streets or in parks. In this manner, the San Francisco Mime Troupe combined political protest with the techniques of the commedia dell'arte to reach a non-theatregoing public. By the late 1970s, the wild experiments had dissolved into conventional playwriting, mostly of mediocre quality; Sam Shepard and David Rabe were exceptions. Even by the mid-1980s, very little had emerged to replace the exuberance of that period when theatre seemed to have found a new immediacy and a fresh way of involving all segments of the community.

Government subsidy.

In spite of state aid from organizations such as the New York State Council on the Arts, created in 1960, and the National Endowment for the Arts (1965), the running of American theatre has remained strongly commercial. The most consistently successful American playwright from the 1960s to the 1980s has been Neil Simon, whose comedies such as The Odd Couple (1965) and Plaza Suite (1968) have fared very well. On Broadway theatre management, because of economic factors, has been reluctant to stage serious new plays unless they have been proven successes in London. A notable exception to this situation has been the New York Shakespeare Festival, founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 under the name Shakespeare Workshop. From 1962 it has occupied a permanent site--the outdoor Delacorte Theatre in Central Park--where it offers free entertainment. Since 1981, it has received a regular subsidy from New York City. Outside New York City, regional theatre has continued to expand with resident professional companies being established in many cities--the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minn., for example. Such companies offer both commercial and experimental theatre as an alternative to touring Broadway hits.

The musical comedy.

After Rodgers and Hammerstein breathed new life into the musical comedy with Oklahoma! (1943), the form acquired more sophistication with such Broadway successes as Guys and Dolls (1950) and My Fair Lady (1956), and it broke new ground in West Side Story (1957), which conveyed much of the plot through dance. The range of subjects widened: hippie culture was introduced in Hair (1967); religion was popularized in Godspell (1971) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971); and dance became the central element in shows such as A Chorus Line (1975) and Dancin' (1978). By the 1980s, Stephen Sondheim had become the most innovative force in the musical theatre, combining the roles of lyricist and composer in such works of immense technical sophistication as Company (1970), A Little Night Music (1973), and Sunday in the Park with George (1984).

University theatre.

Another major source of theatre in the United States is supplied by the drama departments of colleges and universities. The American Educational Theatre Association (AETA) was established in 1936 with 80 members, but by the 1980s, as the American Theatre Association (ATA), it included about 1,600 U.S. college and university drama departments. All of these have their own theatre; some are as well equipped as Broadway and regional theatres. In addition to promoting work by local student groups, many university theatres from time to time employ professional actors and directors for summer stock productions.