A Feminist Legacy: The Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Gertrude Buck

5. The Little Theater Movement and Buck’s Democratized View of Drama

} ™ 5 the little theater movement and buck’s democratized view of drama The movement [Poughkeepsie Community Theatre] is experimental in character and differs from any other community theatre now in existence. It seems, however, to be adapted to the needs of Poughkeepsie and has already received enthusiastic support from all classes of towns-people. The possibilities of a really democratic participation in this movement and of genuine artistic achievement seem almost limitless. —Laura Johnson Wylie, “Report of the Department of English,” 1919–20 uring the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Vassar College in 1915, Vassar presented the Pageant of Athena, which “represented the weaving of a web of noble women by the maidens of Athena; each scene depicting an incident from the life of some typically great woman, and covering the period from the early days of Greece to the 16th century” (“Christening of the Outdoor Theater” 1). Women honored in the performance included Sappho, Hortensia, the Abbess Hilda of Whitby, Marie de France, Isabella d’Este, Lady Jane Grey, and Elena Lucrezia Cornaro (Rourke, Fiftieth Anniversary 223–46). The pageant involved a cast of more than four hundred Vassar students and was directed by Hazel MacKaye, a pageant maker who knew the political and propagandistic potential of theater (K. Taylor 4; Blair 139). MacKaye created several all-women’s pageants, which served as persuasive tools in promoting suffrage and equal rights for women.1 The year that the Pageant of Athena was presented, Gertrude Buck became involved in the Little Theater movement through her participa- the little theater movement } k tion in George Pierce Baker’s innovative “47 Workshop” at Radcliffe College. The Little Theater movement eventually succeeded pageantry; however, from 1905 to 1925, the pageant, “a large and spectacular outdoor civic rite,” was extremely popular, particularly among women (Blair 118, 143). Middle-class women’s organizations endorsed pageantry because it supported their civic goals. Pageantry provided beneficial recreation, education, and aesthetic appreciation, while demonstrating “America’s special democratic effort to involve all citizens in all its work” (Blair 121). However, as Karen J. Blair explains, “The massive effort required to produce pageants was simply too taxing to be sustained,” and the Little Theater movement became its successor (143). The Little Theater movement provided a more manageable and less costly form of drama than pageantry, but it still achieved some of the same “recreative, moral, and cooperative goals as pageantry” (Blair 143). Buck participated actively in the Little Theater movement in the early decades of the twentieth century and was one of Baker’s first women students.2 She not only pioneered the introduction of the new drama curriculum in women’s colleges but also helped to organize the Poughkeepsie Community Theatre, creating an egalitarian connection between the town and the college. In significant ways, Buck’s participation in this movement represented her attempt to improve understanding and relations between these two groups. Beyond healing divisions within her community, Buck’s workshop had broader social significance. Buck’s drama courses provided a space for her female students to explore themes that challenged traditional gender roles, to write and receive feedback from an all-female audience, and to work collaboratively and develop as writers. In A Group of Their Own: College Writing Courses and American Women Writers, 1880–1940, Katherine H. Adams asserts that through workshops like Buck’s, college writing courses, literary magazines, college newspapers, and collaborative groups made possible through their college experience, “many women writers found their own voices and began to find their own futures” (97). One such woman was Edna St. Vincent Millay, among the first students of Buck’s dramatic workshop courses. Ultimately, as Adams argues, the first generations of college-educated women used their collaborative groups to transform writing itself. Buck joined many other women who participated in the Little Theater movement. The Progressive Era’s climate of reform was also felt in the little theater movement } g the arts; and similar to several other reform efforts during this period, middle-class women played a central role. As Blair emphasizes, “From the start, women were the mainstay of the movement in every capacity from audience member to player, donor to seamstress, director to founder” (145). Women ran playhouses across the nation, and women’s organizations were extremely active in supporting the Little Theater movement (Blair 145). In addition, according to Baker, who taught playwriting classes at Harvard...