Percy MacKaye: Spatial Formations of a National Character by Michael Peter Mehler B.S., Northwestern University, 1991 M.F.A., University of Texas at Austin, 1994 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2010 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Michael Peter Mehler It was defended on January 29, 2010 and approved by Attilio Favorini, Professor, Theatre Arts Kathleen E. George, Professor, Theatre Arts Edward K. Muller, Professor, History Dissertation Advisor: Bruce A. McConachie, Professor, Theatre Arts ii Copyright © by Michael Peter Mehler 2010 iii PERCY MACKAYE: SPATIAL FORMATIONS OF A NATIONAL CHARACTER Michael Peter Mehler, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2010 Percy MacKaye has been mostly ignored by theatre historians and dramatic critics despite the large numbers of spectators, participants, and readers who encountered his work during the first third of the twentieth century. The fifth son of nineteenth-century theatre impresario, Steele MacKaye, Percy first embarked on a career in the commercial theatre, writing for established stars such as Julia Marlowe. However, MacKaye garnered much more public attention for his endeavors into community performance, what he termed civic theatre. He wrote several treatises and delivered countless speeches advocating for the civic theatre. In 1914, at the peak of his career, MacKaye wrote and produced The Masque of Saint Louis, which incorporated thousands of community performers and drew nightly audiences that averaged nearly 100,000. This investigation of MacKaye’s works relies heavily on spatial analysis, looking at how contemporary American spaces related to the scenographic spaces in these plays and masques. Specifically, this dissertation investigates how immigration and settlement house activities, world’s fairs, the City Beautiful movement, and national parks and monuments presented idealized versions of the American landscape and how these activities affected both MacKaye and participants and spectators. Throughout his symbiotic relationship with these cultural components, MacKaye continually asserted the importance of an American theatrical tradition distinct from its European influences. MacKaye yearned to forge a national character through community performances that tied American identity to its landscape. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... vii 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION ............................................... 4 1.2 AMERICAN PAGEANTRY ............................................................................. 10 1.3 AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL ........................................................................ 18 1.4 SPATIAL PRACTICE ...................................................................................... 20 2.0 STAGED REFORMANCE ....................................................................................... 28 2.1 CIVIC AND EDUCATIONAL THEATRE .................................................... 29 2.1.1 Reformance .................................................................................................. 32 2.2 SELF SACRIFICE ............................................................................................ 36 2.2.1 Fenris the Wolf and Jeanne d’Arc .............................................................. 38 2.2.2 The Scarecrow .............................................................................................. 46 2.3 BREEDING AND BETTER AMERICAN ...................................................... 51 3.0 IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION...................................................... 70 3.1 THE IMMIGRANTS AND THE MELTING POT ........................................... 77 3.2 RESTRICTION, ASSIMILATION, AND PLURALISM .............................. 94 3.2.1 Naturalization: The New Citizenship ........................................................ 102 4.0 FROM SAVAGERY TO ENLIGHTENMENT .................................................... 114 4.1 MARSHALLING THE TROUPES ............................................................... 118 4.2 WORLD’S FAIRS, WHITE CITIES, AND CULTURES ON DISPLAY .. 125 4.3 ENLIGHTENED AMERICANS .................................................................... 131 4.4 URBAN, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ........ 139 4.4.1 The Shakespeare Masque ......................................................................... 142 4.4.2 Caliban by the Yellow Sands ..................................................................... 147 v 5.0 FOLK DRAMA: THE PERFORMANCE OF NATIONAL LANDSCAPE ...... 158 5.1 YANKEE FANTASIES .................................................................................... 162 5.2 WASHINGTON: THE MAN WHO MADE US .............................................. 171 5.2.1 French and English Allies ........................................................................ 177 5.3 APPALACHIA: KENTUCKY MOUNTAIN FANTASIES ........................... 184 5.4 HOLIDAY PLAYS .......................................................................................... 192 5.4.1 Wakefield .................................................................................................... 196 5.5 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 200 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 201 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would very much like to extend his thanks to the many people and institutions that helped him on this long journey. First recognition goes to Susan Harris Smith, who first introduced me to Percy MacKaye’s Saint Louis and Caliban masques during a seminar on modern American drama. The bulk of research for this project would not have been possible without a grant from the College of William & Mary during the summer of 2005. It provided the time and resources to pore over the many documents related to Percy MacKaye’s productions and personal life at the Harvard Theatre Collection (referenced in footnotes as HTC), Rauner Special Collections at Dartmouth College Library (DCL), the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library (BRTC), and the Missouri Historical Society (MHS). I am grateful to the individuals at these institutions for providing me access to literally hundreds of boxes of materials collected over the years. Lastly, I am grateful to Bruce McConachie for his patient encouragement during the many years it took to complete this project. On a personal level, I am incalculably thankful to Sara Angelino Mehler, who has tolerated my early morning absences to write before the normal workday began. Additional thanks are due to my parents for their cheerleading and other personal support with each step I took on this path. vii 1.0 INTRODUCTION A mostly ignored figure in recent theatre histories, Percy MacKaye was once hailed by his contemporaries as the first great American playwright. Son of the nineteenth-century theatrical actor-producer Steele MacKaye, Percy began his writing career by providing the choral lyrics to Steele’s World Finder, an epic about Columbus performed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. A decade before the George Pierce Baker’s famous Workshop 47 course, MacKaye continued his dramatic endeavors while a student at Harvard. There, in 1897, he delivered the valedictory address, “The Need of Imagination in the Drama of Today,” a call for revolutionary changes in American theatre similar to those occurring in Europe. E.H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe optioned his first commercial scripts and staged the premiere of Jeanne d’Arc in 1906. Past and present critics consider his best drama to be Scarecrow, an adaptation of Hawthorne’s Feathertop that premiered on Broadway in 1911, by which time MacKaye had established himself as one of the brightest young writers for the stage. However, like many theatre artists of the early twentieth century, he sought to break away from the commercial model. MacKaye thought of himself as part of a “poets’ onset upon the theatre” along with Ridgely Torrence, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and his longtime friend, William Vaughn Moody. Yearning to break from European cultural dominance, these writers desired “to develop in America drama of spiritual depth commensurate with the great dramas of past epochs, yet nonetheless modern and indicative of the future.”1 Edmund Clarence Stedman, a popular poet and critic forty years MacKaye’s elder, labeled the foursome an “inspired phalanx of American poets.”2 The veracity of these titles is of less importance than the attitudes they 1 Arvia MacKaye Ege. The Power of the Impossible: The Life Story of Percy and Marion MacKaye (Falmouth, ME: The Kennebec River Press, 1992), 136-137. MacKaye attended Harvard from 1893-1897, and graduated valedictorian; Moody received an A.B. in 1893, an A.M. in 1894, and taught in the English department during the 1894-1895 academic year; Robinson attended Harvard from 1891-1893; Torrence, the same age as MacKaye received his education at Miami University of Ohio. 2 Ibid., 147-148. 1 reflect and the mutual support the quartet offered each other. MacKaye