Staging Ground. Leslie Stainton

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      LESLIE STAINTON

      STAGING GROUND

      AN AMERICAN THEATER

      AND ITS GHOSTS

      THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

       UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA

      A KEYSTONE BOOK®

      Keystone Books are intended to serve the citizens of Pennsylvania. They are accessible, well-researched explorations into the history, culture, society, and environment of the Keystone State as part of the Middle Atlantic region.

      Portions of this book have been previously published in somewhat different form:

      The Prologue incorporates material from “Stage-Struck,” in “The Documentary Imagination (Part Two),” ed. Tom Fricke and Keith Taylor, special issue, Michigan Quarterly Review 45, no. 1 (2006).

      Chapter 3 incorporates material from “Conestoga,” in “Due North,” special issue, Crab Orchard Review 17, no. 2 (2012).

      Chapter 15 incorporates material from “Players,” Common-place 8, no. 4 (2008). Courtesy of Common-place, http://common-place.org.

      The excerpt from Indians, by Arthur Kopit, is copyright © 1969 by Arthur Kopit. Reprinted by permission of Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Stainton, Leslie, 1955– , author.

      Staging ground : an American theater and its ghosts / Leslie Stainton.

      p. cm

      “Keystone books.”

      Summary: “Through both history and personal memoir, examines the role of the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the shaping of American identity from colonial times to the present”—Provided by publisher.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-271-06365-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      1. Fulton Opera House—History.

      2. Theater—Pennsylvania—Lancaster—History.

      3. Theater and society—United States—History.

      4. Stainton, Leslie, 1955– .

      5. Yecker, Blasius, 1834–1903.

      I. Title.

      PN2277.L362F857 2014

      792.09748’15—dc23

      2013049311

      Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States of America

      Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,

      University Park, PA 16802–1003

      The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

      It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

      This book is printed on paper that contains 30% post-consumer waste.

      Frontispiece: Yecker’s Fulton Opera House, ca. 1897 (fig. 21). Courtesy of Barbara Dorwart Lehman.

      For STEVE

      For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, not in its gold. Its glory is in its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.

      —JOHN RUSKIN

      Not to know what happened before we were born is to remain perpetually a child. For what is the worth of a human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

      —CICERO

      Where memory is, theater is.

      —HERBERT BLAU

      CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Prologue: 1961

1 Haunted

2 Mr. Yecker Opens a Theater: 1866

3 The Killing of the Conestogas: 1763

4 Sacred Space

5 Mr. Hager Builds a Hall: 1852

6 “What Has the North to Do with Slavery?”: 1852–1861

       7 Interlude

       8 Theater of War: 1861–1865

       9 Mr. Yecker Opens an Opera House: 1873

       10 In Transit

       Gallery of Figures

       11 Buffalo Bill and the American West: 1873–1882

       12 Memory Machine

       13 The Minstrel’s Mask: 1852–1927

       14 Empty Space

       15 Players: 1886–1893

       16 Women’s Work: 1870–1931

       СКАЧАТЬ