Deck 14: Contemporary Theatre in the United States

Question 1

The proliferation of film, television, DVDs, computer games, and other electronic forms of entertainment all present a challenge to the continuation of live theatre.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Unfortunately the sheer diversity of the American theatre scene has become so fragmented that there is no longer enough audience support for live theatre to continue.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

The Royal National Theatre alone in Great Britain has a current annual budget of $30 million, which is more than 1/4 of the entire National Endowment for all of the arts in the U.S.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

England and numerous European countries invest significantly in the arts, and theatre specifically, to a far greater extent than the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States.

Question 5

Environmental theatre is the name given to the plethora of outdoor theatres that developed in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Question 6

Although the Federal Theatre Project was shut down by Congress in 1940, the thousands of African Americans who began working in theatre due to the Federal Theatre Project led to an eventual explosion of black theatre in the 1950's.

Question 7

Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, and Edward Albee are the most notable American playwrights of the twentieth century avant-garde theatre movement.

Question 8

Along with expressionism, futurism, and surrealism, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty and Jerzy Grotowski's poor theatre were among the most significant features of the avant-garde theatre movement.

Question 9

The type of theatre scene once found almost exclusively in New York City has become firmly established in numerous leading cities, such as Chicago, throughout the country, with a mix of theatre that is similar to the Broadway/off-Broadway/off-off-Broadway theatre model in NYC.

Question 10

Some of the most important contemporary avant-garde works can be found off-off-Broadway in theatres such as Café LaMama, the Living Theatre, Mabou Mines, and the Wooster Group, among others.

Question 11

It was rare to see African American performers on the stage in nineteenth century America.

Question 12

It was not until the twentieth century that African American performers presented Shakespeare.

Question 13

Beyond the confines of Broadway and touring professional theatre, there is not a great deal of diversity available in theatre around the country in the early twenty-first century.

Question 14

The Federal Theatre Project of the 1930s was created to help theatre artists through the Depression, and it included units for African Americans.

Question 15

Lorraine Hansberry is the African American author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Topdog/Underdog.

Question 16

August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences is a family drama set in the 1950s.

Question 17

Strictly speaking, there was no Native American theatre tradition; rather, there were spiritual and social traditions that had theatrical elements.

Question 18

Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre are two contemporary feminist playwrights.

Question 19

Possibly the most important production of the postwar era was A Raisin in the Sun.

Question 20

Shakespeare is alive and well in the U.S., with some 150 Shakespeare festivals around the country-30 in California alone.

Question 21

Black actor Paul Robeson had a record run of 296 performances in his 1943 production of Othello.

Question 22

August Wilson's ten-play cycle of plays chronicles the Asian American experience in the U.S., beginning with the "gold rush"
of 1849.

Question 23

El Teatro Campesino is one of the major theatres to arise in Native American theatre.

Question 24

One of the major playwrights to come out of the Cuban American theatre is Maria Irene Fornés.

Question 25

A Trip to Coontown was the first black musical, conceived, written, produced, and directed by Bob Cole and William Johnson in 1898.

Question 26

The Boys in the Band was the first play that brought gay life to the forefront of mainstream audiences.

Question 27

David Henry Hwang is the author of Angels in America.

Question 28

The Federal Theatre Project of the late 1930s also gave rise to a significant number of Cuban American plays, performed predominantly in Florida.

Question 29

Asian American theatre continues to thrive, as emerging playwrights Philip Kan Gotanda and Young Jean Lee are adding a more contemporary perspective to the already established works of David Henry Hwang and Tisa Chang.

Question 30

The African Grove Theater was the first black theatre company in the United States to produce major musicals.

Question 31

Native Voices at the Autry, founded by Randy Reinholz and his wife Jean Bruce Scott, is one of the most important and prolific producers of new Native American plays.

Question 32

Performance art began as a form that predominantly combined ballet with special sound effects and limited visual design elements.

Question 33

Performance art has since undergone several shifts of emphasis as visual artists continue to explore the temporal nature of theatrical performance, and yet the vocal presentation of text continues to be dominated by the use of text as visual image.

Question 34

Performance art has been at the center of a controversy over funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Question 35

Postmodernism is an approach to drama that strives to achieve a correct interpretation of a play through extensive background research and intense bibliographic rigor.

Question 36

An example of the postmodernist mixing of high and low art is the musical The Lion King.

Question 37

Both performance art and postmodernist approaches to theatrical production are more similar to the work of an auteur director, since the scripted dramatic work is subjugated to the creative vision and focus of the director.

Question 38

Why might theatre be important to groups who have traditionally been discriminated against? What power does theatre have that might be attractive to groups trying to increase a sense of unity and support in a community?

Question 39

England and numerous countries throughout Europe support a national theatre, while the United States does not. The U.S. did establish a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA, which covers visual art, music, dance, and theatre) while the example in your textbook indicates that one single theatre operation in England receives funding that is equivalent to about one-quarter of the entire NEA budget for all of the arts in the U.S. Why do you think the U.S. government does not support the arts in a similar fashion? In what ways do you think the country would benefit if there were more national support for theatre and the other arts?

Question 40

The use of blackface is outlawed in many states. Discuss whether this is appropriate, and why such actions may have been taken. Discuss the tradition in terms of masks and certain traditions of Asian theatre. How is it similar? How is it different?

Question 41

Why did Ben Vereen's performance tribute to Bert Williams, one of black musical's earliest and greatest performers, at President Ronald Reagan's inaugural gala in 1981 cause such a large controversy for both whites and blacks? Just as Williams had done, Vereen came on stage as a typical minstrel show character in baggy clothes and blackface makeup, and he proceeded to shuffle about the stage. If Vereen had not done this on such a grand stage, a presidential inaugural gala, another generation may have never learned of Bert Williams's contributions to the birth of musical theatre and how integral black performers were in its development. Was it right for Vereen to appear in blackface even though he knew it might be controversial? Was it wrong because he knew it would cause a great turmoil and angry reactions?

Question 42

Most of these theatres of diversity arose out of political movements. Yet many of the plays are not overtly political in their subject matter. Discuss why this might be. Was the production of a play by a minority dramatist in itself a political act? Is it now?

Question 43

As more playwrights from these theatres move into the mainstream, they often find themselves accused of "selling out,"
because they have attempted to address larger audiences. Discuss the reasons for such accusations, and whether artists are abandoning their roots in seeking a wider audience.

Question 44

In 1985 when the National Endowment for the Arts budget was almost $20,000,000 higher than it is in 2008, it was publicly noted that the entire NEA budget was only enough money to run the U.S. military for 10 minutes. (1985 NEA $163,660,000; 2008 NEA $144,706,800) Assuming there is no question that every country must fund a military operation, discuss the value of the arts in this country versus the value of one single B-2 stealth bomber, which costs $1.2 billion to build.

Question 45

While there is a history of political theatre going back to Aristophanes, there are many who feel that politics and art does not mix, or at the very least politics has a negative influence on the value of art. Do you agree? Is theatre an effective or ineffective way to make a political point?

Question 46

Some of the plays that fall within the theatre of diversity are intended to provoke strong responses from the audience. Sometimes the playwrights and performers do and say shocking things in order to make their point. This has led to condemnation from political and religious leaders and criticism of the National Endowment for the Arts for helping to fund such art. Discuss what purposes such shock tactics might have, and whether such art has value. Should it receive public funding?

Question 47

Postmodern theatre artists often deconstruct classic plays; in the process they may foreground structures of latent cultural power that inform the original text. Shakespeare's The Tempest, has been used to address postcolonial issues to unravel patriarchal structures including those of race and gender. Address these concerns.