(Minor Field) American Performance 1787-1992

RATIONALE The term "performance" applies more aptly to this list than "plays" or "drama" simply because I intend to explore those works and forms, both high and popular, that utilize and dramatize the performance of identity as the basis for expression, not, in Richard Schechner's terms, as "restored behavior." I've set certain other guidelines on this list to give it shape and personal relevance to later projects. To this end, I've chosen texts that imagine the Western frontier, a phenomenon that builds on American landscapes and mindscapes, values, history and subjectivity. These texts helped fashion our ideas of the West either as a process, an experience, or a memory, and therefore play a crucial role in mapping out American culture and character. I've also attempted to expand this exploration of American performance by looking at texts about popular performance forms, forms more invested in oral than literary values, including vaudeville, minstrel shows, musicals, and wild west shows.

PRIMARY READINGS Royall Tyler — The Contrast (1787) William Dunlap — Andre (1798) James Nelson Barker — The Indian Princess (1808) John Augustus Stone — Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanogs (1829) James Kirke Paulding — The Lion of the West (1831) Robert Montgomery Bird — The Gladiator (1831) Louisa Medina — Nick of the Woods (1839) William Henry Smith — The Drunkard (1844) Anna Cora Mowatt — Fashion (1845) George Aiken — Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) Dion Boucicault — The Octoroon (1859) Augustin Daly — Horizon (1871) Frank Murdoch — David Crockett, or Be Sure You're Right Then Go Ahead (1872) Joaquin Miller — The Danites of the Sierras (1882) Denman Thompson — The Old Homestead (1887) Bronson Howard — The Henrietta (1887) — Shenandoah (1888) David Belasco — The Girl I Left Behind Me (1893) — The Girl of the Golden West (1905) William Gillette — Secret Service (1895) William Vaughn Moody — The Great Divide (1906) Susan Glaspell — Trifles (1916) Eugene O'Neill — The Moon of the Caribees (1918) — The Emperor Jones (1920) — Anna Christie (1921) — The Hairy Ape (1922) — Desire Under the Elms (1924) — Lazarus Laughed (1928) — Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) — The Iceman Cometh (1939) — Long Day's Journey Into Night (1941) Elmer Rice — The Adding Machine (1923) — Street Scene (1929) Sophie Treadwell — Machinal (1928) Langston Hughes — Mulatto (1935) Clifford Odets — Waitingfor Lefty (1935) — Awake and Sing! (1935) Maxwell Anderson — Winterset (1935) Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman — Once in a Lifetime (1936) Thorton Wilder — Our Town (1938) — The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) Lilliam Heliman — Little Foxes (1939) Rodgers and Hammerstein — Oklahoma! (1943) Irving Berlin — Annie Get Your Gun (1946) Tennessee Williams — A Streetcar Names Desire (1947) — Camino Real (1953) — Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) Arthur Miller — Death of a Salesman (1949) — The Misfits (1961) William Inge — Picnic (1953) Lorraine Hansberry — A Raisin in the Sun (1959) Jack Gelber — The Connection (1959) Edward Albee — Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) Amiri Baraka — Dutchman (1964) James Baldwin — Blues for Mr. Charlie (1964) Arthur Kopit — Indians (1968) Sam Shepard — Operation Sidewinder (1970) — Cowboy Mouth (1971) — The Tooth of Crime (1972) — Curse of the Starving Class (1976) — Buried Child (1978) — True West (1980) Suzan-Loir Parks — The America Play (1992)

SECONDARY READINGS Robert W. Snyder The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York (1989) Lawerence Levine Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1990) Eric Lott Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (1995) Joseph Roach Cities of the Dead: Social Foundations of Aesthetic Forms (1996) David Nasaw Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (1999) Paul Reddin Wild West Shows (1999)