Conceptualizing Americanness: U.S. Drama in Spain, 1910–1930

Abstract

This essay surveys presence of North American dramatic works (1) in Spain in early twentieth century, and seeks to investigate shifting conception of Americanness of audiences who consumed American plays, and critics who discussed, and companies which produced, them. While in an early moment being American was disconcertingly something that even a play not written by an American could be, throughout 1930s, coinciding with profound revolution in all orders of life which culminated in Spanish Civil War, American theater came to be seen more and more diverse; an American play was merely one written by an American, without that nationality precluding any kind of play. Such a truism was not easy to embrace, there were still those who believed America could only produce one specific kind of (highly successful and popular) commodity. This indispensable step toward a less univocal, more nuanced appreciation of American drama could not have been taken without work of theater critics. Whatever one is to think about job (not a few American playwrights have resented their power), Spanish critics of 1920s rendered an invaluable service of dis-essentializing Americanness in theater. popular perception for a long time was that American theater started with Eugene O'Neill, and we have all found him referred to more than once father of American drama, as though American theatre came into existence a sudden grace with Eugene O'Neill and his suitcase of plays its only begetter (Wilmeth and Bigsby, Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume Two xv). (2) Curiously enough, a Spanish history of American drama could never start by surveying O'Neill's work, latter was only culminating point of a long exposure to purely commercial offerings America (while more and more voices, nevertheless, claimed that another American drama existed). Thomas Postlewait, in The Hyeroglyphic Stage: American Theatre and Society, Post-Civil War to 1945, posits Gilbert Seldes's 1924 volume Seven Lively Arts among first books to vindicate popular tradition of theater and entertainment, from minstrelsy, circuses, and vaudeville to popular entertainment of modern stage, screen, radio, and television the definitive achievement of American culture and failing to honor it not only incomplete but myopic (125). Postlewait goes on to object to realism and naturalism's being considered starting points of any worthwhile theatrical tradition, something which obviously marginalizes all other forms of theatrical expression, especially less logocentric ones (125-26). Spain, however, makes it possible to historicize American theater in a wholly different way. As we will promptly see, in matter of importations America, curtain opened on all more popular hits, with their panoply of tricks, stage effects, surprising plot twists and whatnot, while more serious drama would only come much later. It is not easy to pinpoint when exactly first American play was produced in Spain, but there is evidence that it was not before 1910s. Before this decade, shows derived some American novel or short story could be seen occasionally, but were so much tampered with that little of original (if anything) lived on in stage work inspired by it. Such is case of Lagricultor de Xicago, a Catalan playscript which opened in Barcelona in 1909, based on Gabriel Timmory's 1906 Le cultivateur de Chicago. Timmory drew inspiration Mark Twain's How I Edited an Agricultural Paper but moved in directions not distantly anticipated or suggested by American original. Even before that, Uncle Tom's Cabin had had a fruitful life on Spanish stages ever since its first occurrence in Madrid in 1853. Early in twentieth century playscript, based once more on a French version, went back to Spanish theaters for generally successful runs. …