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Reviewed by:
  • The Women of Provincetown, 1915–1922
  • Anne Beck
The Women of Provincetown, 1915–1922. By Cheryl Black. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2002; pp. xvi + 245. $29.95 cloth.

Cheryl Black's well-documented The Women of Provincetown narrates the flourishing and dissolution of the Provincetown Players, one of America's most adventurous theatre groups. Members and friends of the group included stellar names from early twentieth-century theatre and politics. Created in the spirit of radical activism and artistic experimentation, the group worked best in its early years, seemingly in the midst of collective confusion, more concerned with the regeneration of the theatre than with critical acclaim. The Players' vision of theatre, formulated by George Cram Cook and playwright Neith Boyce in the group's first policy statement, read: "True drama is born only of one feeling animating all the members of a clan, a spirit shared by all and expressed by the few for the all" (33). Black covers the group's origins in Provincetown, but it was in Greenwich Village—rife with organizations discussing companionate marriage, birth control, suffrage, and labor initiatives (among many topics)—that the women found their theatre community. Black quotes Provincetown actress, director, and executive committee member Ida Rauh, reflecting on the group's utopian ideals: "We were no lost generation. We had faith—we were creating a new world, we were creating a new theatre" (7).

Black breaks new ground with her detailed study of the creative work the women did as writers, performers, directors, designers, and managers. To the list of notable Provincetown discoveries headed by Susan Glaspell and Eugene O'Neill, Black adds more than a few extraordinarily talented artists. Further, she examines their initial work within the feminist climate of Greenwich Village in the pre-World War I years and follows it through the period of disintegrating radical politics that undermined the group dynamic.

Black introduces the flamboyant founding members of the Players in her first chapter, "Creating Women," which effectively describes the antic excitement of the Village, and most importantly, anchors the women's activities within a specific cultural moment. Subsequent chapters devoted to each of the major production areas illuminate the women's talents as well as their fruitful interdependence. Many women of the Players enthusiastically participated in the Bohemian mandate to interrogate philistine mores, especially women's roles in personal relationships. Clearly the female protagonists in the myriad of one-act plays written [End Page 719] by the women reflected the complicated dramas of their off-stage lives. Black personalizes the women's histories in a lively narration of their work and with a careful handling of the facts. Photographs of the principals aid the reader in keeping track of the many women involved and their changing roles in the theatre's operation. Production photographs illustrate the range of theatrical styles with which the Players experimented and demonstrate the artistry of scene designer Marguerite Zorach and costume designers Helen Zagat, Blanche Hays, and Lucy L'Engle. Women were prominent in stage direction—a major feat in any time period—and Black recounts in "Staging Women" the work and methodology of Nina Moise, who directed more of the Provincetown productions than anyone else (97). An important story included in this chapter concerns Ida Rauh's blocking the use of blackface performance for nonwhite roles in O'Neill's The Dreamy Kid, preferring the performances of the African American cast she recruited in Harlem.

Perhaps the most compelling chapter, "Managing Women" delves into the structure of the Players and belies the general understanding that the group was nonhierarchical. Though initially conceived as a communal endeavor, the "collective egalitarianism began to wane" when the Players moved to New York in the fall of 1916 (34). Black discusses the pragmatic management style of Edna Kenton, who promoted hierarchy as the most efficient means of policy making and was a fierce champion of the company's noncommercial and experimental status. A five-member executive committee charged with deciding the bill for each season managed the Players. Women were part of each committee and, perhaps because of their presence, women's plays were included in all eight seasons: forty...

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