As America’s melting pot coalesced in the 19th and 20th centuries, Danish immigrants comprised a small portion of the millions of new citizens. Between 1840 and 1914, around 300,000 Danes arrived in America (by comparison, more than four million Italians and four million Irish immigrated during this period).
When the Industrial Revolution swept across England in the 19th century, Luton’s hat industry was transformed.
For nearly three decades, Suzan-Lori Parks’ distinct style has solidified her status as one of theater’s most imaginative, respected writers.
An epic journey. Lyrical language. A devoted dog. These are a few recognizable elements from the famed poem, The Odyssey, which playwright Suzan-Lori Parks uses as loose source material for Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3). A staple of high school curricula for generations, The Odyssey is one of the…
The Jim Crow era. The great migration of blacks from Southern to Northern cities. The Harlem Renaissance. The Civil Rights Movement. The 20th century’s horrors, triumphs, stagnations and progress are the stuff of history books now.
When the Delany sisters, born in 1889 and 1891, were small children, they could sit anywhere they pleased on streetcars in their hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina.
“Nine girls in uniform stretch in a circle on an AstroTurf indoor soccer field. They do the same stretch at the same time for the same amount of time.” This first stage direction in The Wolves introduces us to the activity that the 16- and 17-year-old characters will do for most of the play: warming…
Charles Dickens was born February 7, 1812, the second of eight children. His father, John Dickens, worked as a naval pay clerk, but his poor financial habits landed him in debtor’s prison when the younger Dickens was 12. While the rest of his family was imprisoned with his father, Charles was forced to work in…
Nearly each day of the year, somewhere in America, an actor strides on stage and declares, “This play is called Our Town…The name of the town is Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes.” ...
“If Juliet is represented as a girl ‘very like Juliet’…..moving about in a ‘real’ house with marble staircases, rugs, lamps and furniture, the impression is irresistibly conveyed that these events happened to this one girl, in one place, at one moment in time. When the play is staged as Shakespeare intended it, the bareness of…
