An Englishman Abroad Louis Calvert at the New Theatre, New York

Abstract

In November 1909 William Archer wrote an article for McClure's Magazine in which he surveyed developments in the American theatre over the past twenty years. The most innovative work had been undertaken by non-commercial companies, such as Victor Mapes' Chicago repertory and Winthrope Ames' Castle Square Theatre in Boston, and in the universities: ‘Brander Matthews at Columbia, W. L. Phelps at Yale, and George P. Baker at Harvard’. These ventures took as their models Antoine's Théâtre Libre in Paris; the Freie Bühne in Berlin; J. T. Grein's Independent Theatre, the Stage Society, Vedrenne-Barker at the Court, the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester and Charles Frohman's proposed repertory company at the Duke of York's Theatre. However whereas in the 1890s the progressive theatre in America had been heavily dependent on the European repertoire of plays, when he returned in 1907 Archer found ‘the scene entirely changed’: