theater for all Americans

From 1935 to 1939, the U.S. Federal Theatre Project (FTP) created jobs for out-of-work theater professionals.  It organized and funded a wide range of productions — “from productions of sacred plays of the Middle Ages to classic plays by William Shakespeare and Richard Brinsley Sheridan and modern works by George Bernard Shaw, Gerhard Hauptmann, Lillian [...]


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resenting communications industry development

O how refin’d how elegant we’re grown! What noble Entertainments Charm the Town! Whether to hear the Dragon’s roar we go, Or gaze surpriz’d on Fawks’s matchless Show, Or to the Opera’s, or to the Masques, To eat up Ortelans, and empty Flasques And rifle Pies from Shakespear’s clinging Page, Good gods! how great’s the [...]


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regulating theater in eighteenth-century Paris

In pre-Revolutionary France, the French king awarded theater-process patents to particular theater companies.  The Académie d’Opéra, founded in 1669, received letters patent giving it exclusive rights to present to the public works with texts that were sung or danced.  The Comédie-Française, which incorporated Molière’s acting company, received the exclusive right to present drama in verse.  [...]


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