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Winner of the 2006 Barnard Hewitt Award for Excellence in Theatre
History
Between 1904 and the Great Depression, Circuit Chautauquas toured
the rural United States, reflecting and reinforcing its citizens’
ideas, attitudes, and politics every summer through music (the
Jubilee Singers, an African American group, were not always welcome
in a time when millions of Americans belonged to the KKK), lectures
(“ Civic Revivalist” Charles Zueblin speaking on “ Militancy and
Morals” ), elocutionary readers (Lucille Adams reading from Little
Lord Fauntleroy), dramas (the Ben Greet Players’ cleaned-up version
of She Stoops to Conquer), orations (William Jennings Bryan
speaking about the dangers of greed), and special programs for
children (parades and mock weddings).
Theatre historians have largely ignored Circuit Chautauquas
since they did not meet the conventional conditions of theatrical
performance: they were not urban; they produced no innovative
performance techniques, stage material, design effects, or dramatic
literature. In this beautifully written and illustrated book,
Charlotte Canning establishes an analytical framework to reveal the
Circuit Chautauquas as unique performances that both created and
unified small-town America.
One of the last strongholds of the American traditions of
rhetoric and oratory, the Circuits created complex intersections of
community, American democracy, and performance. Canning does not
celebrate the Circuit Chautauquas wholeheartedly, nor does she
describe them with the same cynicism offered by Sinclair Lewis. She
acknowledges their goals of community support, informed public
thinking, and populareducation but also focuses on the reactionary
and regressive ideals they sometimes embraced. In the true
interdisciplinary spirit of Circuit Chautauquas, she reveals the
Circuit platforms as places where Americans performed what it meant
to be American.
Peer-reviewed journal of theater history and scholarship published
annually by the Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC)
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