Theater in North America, 1880-1980

Abstract

Gerald M. Berkowitz. New Broadways : Theatre Across America, 1950-1980. Totowa. N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982. 208 pp. L. W. Conolly, ed. Theatrical Touring and Founding in North America. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1982. 245 + xiv pp. Robert Karoly Sarlos. Jig Cook and the Provincetown Players: Theatre in Ferment. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982. 265 + xii pp. Theater in North America from 1880 to the present day—its actors, touring companies, professional theaters, regional companies, noncommercial insti- tutional playhouses, alternative theaters, experimental companies, and the contemporary realignment of theatrical organizations for economic and political reasons—is the subject of this review essay. The three books under consideration treat of different aspects : L. W. Conolly has edited thirteen essays written by notable theater scholars and focusing on actors and com- panies and theaters—European, British, American and Canadian—as they toured North America from 1880 to the present. Robert K. Sarlos studies only one of these companies, the Provincetown Players, in its brief history of seven years, 1915 to 1922; Gerald Berkowitz describes the evolution of a national American theater beginning and ending with Broadway but having traversed the continent and returning home a far different theater from its initial leavetaking. This clear and sweeping view of theater in North America over the past one hundred years leaves the reader quite breathless and much more knowledgeable of roots.