Theatrical Performance in Early Anglo-North America: Into the Hands of Fiorelli

• Published in: Reviews in American History Vol. 36; no. 2; pp. 171 - 177
• Main Author: Harvey, Douglas
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.06.2008
• Subjects: American history; Government subsidies; Ideology; Social networks
• ISSN: 0048-7511; 1080-6628; 1080-6628
• DOI: 10.1353/rah.0.0007

It, too, has its equivalent of "whiggism"-the positivist study of playhouses, players, and the plays themselves, often with a nationalistic approach.1 This literature-epitomized by historians such as Arthur Hornblow, Hugh Rankin, and Walter Meserve-Rosemarie K. Bank has argued, created an "evolutionary and totalized" historiographical trap.2 The books under consideration in this essay contribute to a growing body of work that confronts the counter-productive tropes and "over-remembered" aspects of positivist histories while avoiding, to a large extent, another feature of theater and performance history-debates over theory and epistomology.3 Odai Johnson and Heather Nathans are among a growing number of theater historians who have begun to construct a more nuanced history of Anglo-American theater in the colonial and early republic periods.4 Both authors confront some of the tropes of American theater history, including the so-called "battle" between pro-theater and anti-theater "forces" as well as the relationship between "Feds and Antis" in the 1790s. Influenced as well by historical theorists like Paul Ricoeur, Joseph Roach, and Hayden White, Johnson seeks to do something analogous for the history of colonial theater in British America.6 Johnson's fascinating book is enhanced by his rhetorical skill as well as his detective work.