- https://doi.org/10.31500/2309-8813.21.2025.345538
The Washington Theater Club: A Cautionary Tale of Cultural Innovation and Bureaucratic Interference, 1957–1974
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Between 1957 and 1974, a small professional theater company in Washington, D.C. staged ninety Equity (union) productions and ten non-Equity shows, including ten world premieres, four American premieres, thirty Washington premieres, and works by sixty-four writers whose works had not been performed previously in the Washington region. The Washington Theater Club staged new works by several of the era’s leading English-language playwrights. The club also served as a proving ground for actors starting out their careers, including several who would come to dominate the American stage and screen. By the time the club closed, it had played a far more important role in the evolution of American regional theater than its diminutive size might suggest. Theater enthusiasts Hazel and John Wentworth opened the Washington Theater Club during the late 1950s. Hazel and John were hungry for innovative drama of a sort absent in Washington. They established their group to promote fresh dramatic forms, to present new ideas, and to support novice playwrights and their works. They nurtured a slightly bohemian tone, often presenting non-mainstream works. The Wentworths viewed their theater’s mission to rise above artistic achievement to embrace social activism. They sought to present quality productions performed and enjoyed by diverse casts and audiences outside the restrictions of Washington’s racial segregation of the period. From the beginning, the Club promoted Black theater and Black writers and artists. The club’s story also is one highlighting the destructive power of bureaucratic and political petty tutelage. Washington remained under the direct control of the U.S. Congress throughout this period. The commissioners and bureaucrats charged by Congress to run the city remained unaccountable to the city’s residents. In the end, a tax code unfavorable to cultural institutions undermined the club’s survivability. Various courts ruled against the Club, leaving the club with an expensive property tax bill that it could not cover. Bankers foreclosed on their loans. The rise and fall of the Washington Theater Club offers a cautionary tale of what can happen when a community’s fate is left in the hands of those who have little connection to it. This loss of accountability can breed oppression, servility, cruelty, and loathsome in its own way, idiocy.
- Single Book
65 - 10.1525/9780520931640
- Dec 31, 2006
This fascinating exploration of a work that was the epitome of German literary modernism illuminates in chilling detail the death of the Weimar Republic's left-leaning culture of innovation and experimentation. Peter Jelavich examines Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), a novel that questioned the autonomy and coherence of the human personality in the modern metropolis, and traces the radical discrepancies that came with its adaptation into a radio play (1930) and a film (1931). Jelavich explains these discrepancies by examining not only the varying demands of genre and technology but also the political and economic contexts of the media—in particular, the censorship practices in German radio and film. His analysis culminates in a richly textured discussion of the complex factors that led to the demise of Weimar culture, as Nazi intimidation and the economic strains of the Depression induced producers to depoliticize their works. Jelavich's book becomes a cautionary tale about how fear of outspoken right-wing politicians can curtail and eliminate the arts as a critical counterforce to politics—all in the name of entertainment.
- Book Chapter
- 3
- 10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0441
- Nov 8, 2017
- Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
The development of the seemingly simple cultural invention of reading alters the brain of each literate individual, propulses the intellectual development of the species, and provides human beings with a history of past knowledge as a foundation for future thought. Understanding how this happened in the species provides unexpected lessons for how children learn, how teachers teach, and how the brain learns anything new. Understanding the intrinsic plasticity of the reading brain circuit provides a cautionary tale for examining the cognitive impact of different media on how we read and how we think.
