Aesthetic re/visioning in the efforts of the Drama League of America, 1910--1931

Prior to the 1910s, theatre in the U.S. was largely seen as a form of popular entertainment and, thereby, not considered by Americans to be one of the “fine arts.” The well-documented historical anti-theatrical prejudice in the U.S. ensured that contemporary theatre and drama was not taken seriously as art or literature by writers, scholars, critics, theatre practitioners, or audiences. Theatre-going was not regarded as having particularly strong intellectual or cultural value, and there was little interest amongst the public for reading plays, especially modern drama. Theatre by and large did not exist as an activity or a subject in primary or secondary schools, and it was certainly not deemed appropriate for scholarly study and analysis in colleges and universities. By the end of the 1920s, however, all this had changed: A new aesthetic in theatre and drama had ostensibly emerged. One of the most important groups in shaping this new aesthetic was the Drama League of America (DLA), a national organization formed largely from women's drama reading clubs in 1910. The tens of thousands of members of the DLA, mostly women, were critical of what they believed to be the mediocre quality of the drama that was being produced in the commercial theatres throughout the U.S. The focus of the League's endeavors was always fundamentally grounded in a concern for theatrical scripts—that is, drama; League members wanted to try to raise the standards of commercial productions through their work by advocating the staging of “better” drama. This dissertation examines what those standards were—moral, social, and aesthetic—and explores the relationships between gender, privilege, and power involved in such advocacy. By providing a thorough and critical account of DLA ideals and activities, the study reveals a complex and ubiquitous nexus of socio-economic, gender, and aesthetic issues that pervaded the work of the Drama League. In so doing, this dissertation provides historians with a more transparent picture of the lasting impact of the Drama League of America in re/visioning and popularizing the new American theatre and drama aesthetics that emerged in this period.