PART III - Theatre, culture, and reflected identity

Summary

As theatre grew in popularity during the Washington, Adams, and Jefferson administrations, it generated its own local theatre cultures in the expanding number of cities that engaged with professional companies. Those performance cultures in turn had their influence on other cultures, even among citizens who were not necessarily aficionados of the stage or only occasionally attended. Literate residents of any city of size would have encountered advertisements in newspapers when the companies were in town or playbills posted at various points in the city on the day of performance. Actors were well-known personages, even those who repeatedly appeared in subordinate roles, and individual players often generated a corps of followers or a band of detractors. Just the fact of theatre itself could create controversy, despite the removal of legal barriers to theatre construction or performance, as citizens chose to scorn the profession or the politics they thought they observed in the playhouse. Some Americans wanted to see themselves more clearly represented in their republican identity. As one writer to a newspaper complained in 1794 of the Charleston theatre and its British offerings:

If on the American Stage we are to be entertained with dramatic productions exhibiting the theatrical foppery of passionate Kings, pouting Queens, rakish Princes, and flirting Princesses, knavish Ministers and peevish Secretaries, lamenting misfortunes in which the bulk of mankind are no way concerned; daggering, poisoning, or hanging themselves for grievances that are purely imaginary, better we were without them.