The Theatre History Podcast

The phrase "morality play" often comes off as pejorative today; it's a phrase that we use when we want to dismiss something as dull and didactic. But Dr. Matthew Sergi of the University of Toronto begs to differ. He's been studying and, most importantly, staging these works, and he's come to some unexpected conclusions about how these plays function and what performing them today can tell us about our own world.

Most of us know Oscar Wilde for his sparkling, witty comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. But he also wrote tragedies, most notably the scandalous Salomé. He'd intended the play, which dramatizes the biblical episode in which the title character causes the death of John the Baptist, as a star vehicle for the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt, but his plans never came to fruition. Eleanor Fitzsimons, author of Wilde's Women: How Oscar Wilde Was Shaped by the Women He Knew, joins us the story of this unique play.

What was it like to be a working actor in the United States in the nineteenth century? The diary of Harry Watkins—who made a living acting, playwriting, and stage managing in the antebellum era—provides us with some insight into the way in which life in the theatre has and hasn't changed over the last century and a half. Dr. Amy Hughes, Dr. Naomi Stubbs, and Dr. Scott D. Dexter are our guests this week, and they've been working on producing both scholarly and digitized versions of Watkins's diary.

Since the 1870s, a mysterious play manuscript has sat in the Boston Public Library, largely ignored except by the library's dedicated staff. Dr. Joe Stephenson of Abilene Christian University aims to change that. He's reevaluated the anonymous play, entitled The Dutch Lady and written sometime in the late 1660s or early 1670s, and is preparing to release a scholarly edition in 2018 of this surprisingly engaging Restoration comedy. He's also working with Fred Theatre in the United Kingdom to produce the play, bringing it back to the stage for the first time in over 300 years. Joe joins us to explore The Dutch Lady and its place in Restoration-era theatre.

Many medieval convents were major centers of dramatic activity, with nuns and other members of their communities frequently participating in plays and other performances. However, because much of the evidence of this activity in the British Isles was destroyed during the Reformation, English-speaking scholars tend to ignore the crucial role played by women in medieval drama. The Medieval Convent Drama project, based at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, is trying to change this through scholarship and performances. The project's members join us to tell us about this surprising, richly-varied, and woman-centered drama.

Did you know that novelist Edith Wharton was also a playwright? Dr. Mary Chinery and Dr. Laura Rattray join us this week to talk about her work for the theatre, in particular her play The Shadow of a Doubt, which had languished in obscurity after it failed to make it to Broadway at the turn of the twentieth century. Thanks to Laura and Mary's work, it's now back in the public consciousness.

When it opened in the 1870s, the Alexandra Palace, or "Ally Pally," was a massive entertainment complex, meant to serve as "the People's Palace." Over the course of its lifetime, it's seen multiple fires, served as an internment camp during the First World War, and been the site of one of the first television broadcasts. It's also home to a spectacular and historically-significant Victorian theatre. James White, our guest this week, is a curator working on restoring the complex, as well as the theatre.

The Free Southern Theater was one of the most important activist theatres in the United States, bringing politically- and socially-engaged theatre to poor African American communities in the South throughout the 1960s and 1970s. One of the performers who joined the Theater was Seret Scott, who went on to play key roles on Broadway in My Sister, My Sister and for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. Her memories of engaging with the Free Southern Theater's audiences offer new suggestions for how theatre activists can engage with the economically-disadvantaged and politically-marginalized.

Few, if any, stage designers have had the impact of Jo Mielziner, who designed the sets for the original productions of Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, Carousel, and South Pacific, among many others. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts recently added two private collections of Mielziner's work to their already-extensive holdings, and the newly-acquired works are now on display at the library's Lincoln Center location. Assistant Curator Annemarie van Roessel joins us to talk about Mielziner's work, as well as what a curator in a performing arts archive does.

For over forty years, artists and scholars have gathered at Chamizal National Memorial to perform, study, and celebrate works from the Siglo de Oro, the Spanish golden age that brought us the work of Calderon, Lope de Vega, and Cervantes, among many others. Dr. Esther Fernandez of Rice University joins us to talk about the festival, as well as Siglo de Oro's place in American theatre.