Theater in the United States is part of the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater. The central hub of the American theater scene is Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway. Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York, many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons, with some works being produced regionally with hopes of eventually moving to New York. U.S. theater also has an active community theater culture, which relies mainly on local volunteers who may not be actively pursuing a theatrical career.Stephen Watt, and Gary A. Richardson, American Drama: Colonial to Contemporary (1994).
The Tony Awards presented annually by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway LeagueGans, Andrew (December 18, 2007). "League of American Theatres and Producers Announces Name Change" . Playbill. Retrieved September 13, 2013. The League of American Theatres and Producers was renamed "The Broadway League".Frequently Asked Questions, Tony Awards. Accessed January 15, 2024. "Only Broadway productions that open in designated Broadway theatres in Manhattan are eligible for Tonys." recognize excellence in live Broadway theatre and are the New York theatre industry's highest honor.
Early history
Before the first English colony was established in 1607, there were Spanish dramas and Native American tribes that performed theatrical events. Representations continued to be held in Spanish-held territories in what later became the United States. For example, at the Presidio of Los Adaes in the New Philippines (now in Louisiana), several plays were presented on October 12, 1721.
Although a theater was built in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1716, and the original Dock Street Theatre opened in Charleston, South Carolina in 1736, the birth of professional theater in the English colonies may have begun when Lewis Hallam arrived with his theatrical company in Williamsburg in 1752. Lewis and his brother William, who arrived in 1754, were the first to organize a complete company of actors in Europe and bring them to the colonies. They brought a repertoire of plays popular in London at the time, including Hamlet, Othello, The Recruiting Officer, and Richard III. The Merchant of Venice was their first performance, shown initially on September 15, 1752. Encountering opposition from religious organizations, Hallam and his company left for Jamaica in 1754 or 1755. Soon after, Lewis Hallam, Jr., founded the American Company, opened a theater in New York, and presented the first professionally mounted American play—The Prince of Parthia, by Thomas Godfrey—in 1767.The Prince of Parthia: A Tragedy By Thomas Godfrey, reprinted 1917 by Little, Brown.
In the 18th century, laws forbidding the performance of plays were passed in Massachusetts in 1750, in Pennsylvania in 1759, and in Rhode Island in 1761, and plays were banned in most states during the American Revolutionary War at the urging of the Continental Congress. In 1794, president of Yale College, Timothy Dwight IV, in his "Essay on the Stage", declared that "to indulge a taste for playgoing means nothing more or less than the loss of that most valuable treasure: the immortal soul."
In spite of such laws, a few writers tried their hand at playwriting. Most likely, the first plays written in America were by European-born authors—we know of original plays being written by Spaniards, Frenchmen and Englishmen dating back as early as 1567—although no plays were printed in America until Robert Hunter's Androboros in 1714. Still, in the early years, most of the plays produced came from Europe; only with Godfrey's The Prince of Parthia in 1767 do we get a professionally produced play written by an American, although it was a last-minute substitute for Thomas Forrest's comic opera The Disappointment; or, The Force of Credulity, and although the first play to treat American themes seriously, Ponteach; or, the Savages of America by Robert Rogers, had been published in London a year earlier.Meserve, Walter J. An Outline History of American Drama, New York: Feedback/Prospero, 1994. 'Cato', a play about revolution, was performed for George Washington and his troops at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777–1778.
The Revolutionary period was a boost for dramatists, for whom the political debates were fertile ground for both satire, as seen in the works of Mercy Otis Warren and Colonel Robert Munford, and for plays about heroism, as in the works of Hugh Henry Brackenridge. The postwar period saw the birth of American social comedy in Royall Tyler's The Contrast, which established a much-imitated version of the "Yankee" character, here named "Jonathan". But there were no professional dramatists until William Dunlap, whose work as playwright, translator, manager and theater historian has earned him the title of "Father of American Drama"; in addition to translating the plays of August von Kotzebue and French melodramas, Dunlap wrote plays in a variety of styles, of which André and The Father; or, American Shandyism are his best.
The 19th century
Prewar theater At 825 Walnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the Walnut Street Theatre, or, "The Walnut". Founded in 1809 by the Circus of Pepin and Breschard, "The Walnut" is the oldest theater in America. The Walnut's first theatrical production, The Rivals, was staged in 1812. In attendance were President Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette.
Provincial theaters frequently lacked heat and minimal theatrical property ("props") and scenery. Apace with the country's westward expansion, some entrepreneurs operated floating theaters on barges or riverboats that would travel from town to town. A large town could afford a long "run"—or period of time during which a touring company would stage consecutive multiple performances—of a production, and in 1841, a single play was shown in New York City for an unprecedented three weeks.
William Shakespeare's works were commonly performed. American plays of the period were mostly melodramas, a famous example of which was Uncle Tom's Cabin, adapted by George Aiken, from the novel of the same name by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
In 1821, William Alexander Brown established the African Grove Theatre in New York City. It was the third attempt to have an African-American theater, but this was the most successful of them all. The company put on not only Shakespeare, but also staged the first play written by an African-American, The Drama of King Shotaway. The theater was shut down in 1823.World Encyclopedia, p. 402 African-American theater was relatively dormant, except for the 1858 play The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom by William Wells Brown, who was an ex-slave. African-American works would not be regarded again until the 1920s Harlem Renaissance.
A popular form of theater during this time was the minstrel show, which featured white (and sometimes, especially after the Civil War, black) actors dressed in "blackface (painting one's face, etc. with dark makeup to imitate the coloring of an African or African American)." The players entertained the audience using comic skits, parodies of popular plays and musicals, and general buffoonery and slapstick comedy, all with heavy utilization of racial stereotyping and racist themes.
Throughout the 19th century, theater culture was associated with hedonism and even violence; actors (especially women) were looked upon as little better than prostitutes. Jessie Bond wrote that by the middle of the 19th century, "The stage was at a low ebb, Elizabethan glories and Georgian artificialities had alike faded into the past, stilted tragedy and vulgar farce were all the would-be playgoer had to choose from, and the theater had become a place of evil repute". On April 15, 1865, less than a week after the end of the United States Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, while watching a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., was assassinated by a nationally popular stage-actor of the period, John Wilkes Booth.
Victorian burlesque, a form of bawdy comic theater mocking high art and culture, was imported from England about 1860 and in America became a form of farce in which females in male roles mocked the politics and culture of the day. Criticized for its sexuality and outspokenness, this form of entertainment was hounded off the "legitimate stage" and found itself relegated to saloons and barrooms. The female producers, such as Lydia Thompson were replaced by their male counterparts, who toned down the politics and played up the sexuality, until the burlesque shows eventually became little more than pretty girls in skimpy clothing singing songs, while male comedians told raunchy jokes.
The drama of the prewar period tended to be a derivative in form, imitating European melodramas and romantic tragedies, but native in content, appealing to popular nationalism by dramatizing current events and portraying American heroism. But playwrights were limited by a set of factors, including the need for plays to be profitable, the middle-brow tastes of American theater-goers, and the lack of copyright protection and compensation for playwrights. During this time, the best strategy for a dramatist was to become an actor and/or a manager, after the model of John Howard Payne, Dion Boucicault and John Brougham. This period saw the popularity of certain native character types, especially the "Yankee", the "Negro" and the "Indian", exemplified by the characters of Jonathan, Sambo and Metamora. Meanwhile, increased immigration brought a number of plays about the Irish and Germans, which often dovetailed with concerns over temperance and Roman Catholic. This period also saw plays about American expansion to the West (including plays about Mormonism) and about women's rights. Among the best plays of the period are James Nelson Barker's Superstition; or, the Fanatic Father, Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion; or, Life in New York, Nathaniel Bannister's Putnam, the Iron Son of '76, Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana, and Cornelius Mathews's Witchcraft; or, the Martyrs of Salem. At the same time, America had created new dramatic forms in the Tom Shows, the showboat theater and the minstrel show.
Postwar theater
During postbellum North, theater flourished as a postwar boom allowed longer and more-frequent productions. The advent of American rail transport allowed production companies, actors, and large, elaborate sets to travel easily between towns, which made permanent theaters in small towns feasible. The invention and practical application of electric lighting also led to changes to and improvements of scenery styles as well as changes in the design of theater interiors and seating areas.
In 1896, Charles Frohman, Al Hayman, Abe Erlanger, Mark Klaw, Samuel F. Flenderson, and J. Fred Zimmerman, Sr. formed the Theatrical Syndicate, which established systemized booking networks throughout the United States, and created a management monopoly that controlled every aspect of contracts and bookings until the turn of the 20th century, when the Shubert brothers founded rival agency, The Shubert Organization.