Establishing the New York Hippodrome as an Intrinsically ‘American’ Entertainment Venue Through Publicity & A Yankee Circus on Mars’s Performance Practice

Abstract

Publicity materials heralded the New York Hippodrome as the world's largest theatre and the National Theatre. Managers Elmer Dundy and Fred Thompson based their claim for national status on the venue's size. Their ideology considered big to be better because it proclaimed success, efficiency, and the organisation and consumption of pleasurable experiences to be the responsibility of every American citizen-consumer. Using publicity, costume designs, sketches, illustrations, production stills, newspaper reports and a scrapbook, I explore their nationalistic vision. I demonstrate how the opening's entertainments performed Dundy and Thompson's populist Americanness through narrative, design aesthetics and moments that exceeded the dramatic frame. The first of the two night's productions, A Yankee Circus on Mars (1905), presented Mars as an idealised surrogate America. The production deliberately centred circus to designate their venue as ‘American’ due to circus's status as an intrinsically American entertainment. Circus provided practical benefits in filling the vast interior with spectacle and covering long stage waits. Presenting circus end-on in the New York Hippodrome designated the venue ‘American’, but created an experience that was akin to circus. Focusing on responses to aerial acts, I demonstrate the visual gains and visceral losses to experiencing aerialists within the Hippodrome space.