Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players

Summary

The Provincetown Players created a revolution in American theatre, making room for truly modern approaches to playwriting, stage production, and performance. In Staging America, Jeffery Kennedy gives listeners the unabridged story in a meticulously researched and comprehensive narrative that sheds new light on the history of the Provincetown Players.

At the center of the study is an extensive account of the career of George Cram Cook, the Players' leader and artistic conscience, as well as one of the most significant facilitators of modernist writing in early twentieth-century American literature and theatre. It traces Cook's mission of "cultural patriotism," which drove him toward creating a uniquely American identity in theatre.

Kennedy has paid particular attention to the many legends connected to the group, and also adds to the biographical record of the Players' forty-seven playwrights. Kennedy also examines other fascinating artistic, literary, and historical personalities who crossed the Players' paths, including Emma Goldman, Charles Demuth, Berenice Abbott, Sophie Treadwell, Theodore Dreiser, Claudette Colbert, and Charlie Chaplin. Kennedy highlights the revolutionary nature of those living in bohemian Greenwich Village who were at the heart of the Players and the America they were responding to in their plays.