Performing Political Persuasion in the United States in the Early Years of the Republic

Tomas Kacer

doi:10.14198/raei.2021.35.03

Abstract

Theater productions were born out of a paradox in the United States of the Revolutionary War and shortly afterwards. While the nation’s dominant ideology was anti-theatrical, theater often served a nationalist agenda, co-defining the new American nation and its nascent identities – such were, for example, productions of Joseph Addison’s Cato at Valley Forge in 1778 and William Dunlap’s André at the New Park in New York in 1798. These theater events empowered the audience to publicly perform their national identity as Americans and exercise their republican fervor. Similarly, a production of Bunker-Hill by J. D. Burk at the Haymarket in Boston in 1797 was crucial in helping define the social and political identities of its audiences, who were motivated to attend the performances as an expression of their partisan preferences. This article shows that literary, theatrical and social practices served to constitute performatively the early American national identity.

Highlights

Various seminal concepts of performativity, such as Austin 1962, date back nearly sixty years, recent years have seen a renewed interest in performance and performance studies among scholars from a variety of fields
The paper explores how notions of performativity help understand historical events as dynamic, constitutive activities, which have helped to define some of the most fundamental issues in American culture. Issues such as republicanism, American national identity, and abelief in a social class system will be shown as constituted in performance through an active participation of performers as well as audiences
Three case studies will show, (1) how a text performs republican values; (2) how a theater production constitutes national identity through symbolic gestures; and (3) how theater attendance as such becomes a performance of political views, as in a visit to the Haymarket theater in Boston to see Bunker-Hill by J

Summary

Introduction

Various seminal concepts of performativity, such as Austin 1962, date back nearly sixty years, recent years have seen a renewed interest in performance and performance studies among scholars from a variety of fields. Issues such as republicanism, American national identity, and a (dis-)belief in a social class system will be shown as constituted in performance through an active participation of performers as well as audiences.

Results

Conclusion