American Theatre History web sites

Postmodernism
Vaclav Havel on the postmodern condition - the first section is a good description
T. Holt has some interesting ideas about what postmodernism means - also some art pictures.
Robert Smithson's massive postmodern jetty art.
Robert Wilson home page - includes a bio and interesting page of 'art to buy'

Performance Art
Some more performance art pages. These groups belong to a broad definition of performance art.
A Karen Finley page with some good pictures and descriptions.
Coagula named Finley "artist of the decade".
1-900-All-Karen.
This list of famous censorship cases includes the NEA Four, Annie Sprinkle, and Frank Zappa.
One performer's definition of the form.
Ping Chong's home page.
Eric Bogosian's home page.
Laurie Anderson's home page.
A brief Spalding Gray biography.
The Surveillance Camera Players.

Theatre of the 60s and 70s
A drawing of the Arena Stage.
Pictures of the thrust stage of the Guthrie Theatre.
The theatres of the Actor's Theatre of Louisville.

Political Theatre
Bread and Puppet does not have their own web pages. But information and pictures can be found here and here.
Home page of The Living Theatre

20th century
Electronic Eugene O'Neill Archive has an online forum, several complete texts, an audio archive, and a production archive with scanned images relating to quite a few O'Neill works.
Some designs by Adolphe Appia
This page has some info about the Provincetown Players and a picture of the original theatre.

Machinal sites
http://www.ukans.edu/~mreaney/machinal/
http://www.du.edu/thea/designs/Design-Machinal.html
http://www.nunews.neu.edu/nu-news/Issues/021799/y1.html
http://www.webspawner.com/users/jimfritzler/machinal.html
http://www.theatrescene.net/ts%5Carticles.nsf/0/AD9009A3580FBAC385256DE200759F6B?OpenDocument

19th century

Since we were talking about banks and states printing their own money - check out this picture - a guy found a box that, among other things, had some uncut sheets of bank money. This one is of $2 and $3 bills.
Here's a contract between Haverly's Minstrels and a theatre they're touring to.
Here's a program for a major New York Theatre - Booth's - in 1873.
This page has audio and visual of vaudeville acts.

18th Century Theatre
The Douglass-Hallam Theatre in Williamsburg
The Chestnut Street Theatre reconstruction project.

Evaluating Internet Resources
Ten Cs of Internet Evaluation - quick list of criteria
Checklist for an Informational Web Page - questions to ask to determine value
University of Albany's outline for evaluating internet resources
MLA guidelines - Scroll down the frame on the left for examples of all kinds of sources, including internet sites.

Sites to Begin Theatre Research on the Web
Here's a web site for a free program that formats your bibliography MLA style automatically.
The WWW Virtual Library - look at the Theatre Images Collections Online and the Theatre Studies, Articles and Resources sections.
Artslynx International Theatre Resources - don't just look at the Theatre History links; others may work too.
Theatre History Web Sites - a good collection covering selected time periods.
Association for Theatre in Higher Education: Learning for a Lifetime Brochure - parents picking on you for your theatre major, or for taking theatre classes? This is a handy argument for the value of a theatre arts education.

 

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