Theatre Histories: Realized White American Identity

It can be argued that Theatre Histories leads the reader too much with it’s active voice in approaching the history of American frontier theatre, colouring the view of the reader with it’s specific bias much in the way that the History of the Theatre does. This is true as the bias of the writers will come out within the writing. What must be considered though is that Theatre Histories presents a more racially equitable representation of the theatre when explaining this time that deepens the readers understanding of how theatre shapes nations and nations shape the theatre. In letting this perspective run through its narrative, it is able to construct a well rounded view of how theatre developed in the United States and its influence of it’s nationalistic rhetoric in creating a racialized theatre to promote of an idealized white American identity; that we can still see echoing in todays society.
It presents the events and facts as being a self contained entity without having influence on a greater scale, which is simply not true. The linear cause and effect plotting of the history leaves out any nuance with in the narrative which then excludes the complicated origins of performance and cultural practices, and especially when they are problematic to the keeping the pristine a-political nature of art that the History of the Theatre wants to convey. In it’s attempt to simplify and create a linear encyclopedia, it leaves the reader without the history of theatrical performance but instead with technical specs of theatres and industrial