An Ideal Theater: Founding Visions for a New American Art

by Todd London

An Ideal Theater is a wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theatre movement as told by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator, Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. This celebration of the artists who came before is an exhilarating look backward, as well as toward the future, and includes contributions

Jane Addams • William Ball • Julian Beck • Herbert Blau • Angus Bowmer • Bernard Bragg • Maurice Browne • Robert Brustein • Alison Carey • Joseph Chaikin • Harold Clurman • Dudley Cocke • Alice Lewisohn Crowley • Gordon Davidson • R. G. Davis • Doris Derby • W. E. B. Du Bois • Zelda Fichandler • Hallie Flanagan • Eva Le Gallienne • Robert E. Gard • Susan Glaspell • André Gregory • Tyrone Guthrie • John Houseman • Jules Irving • Margo Jones • Frederick H. Koch • Lawrence Langner • W. McNeil Lowry • Charles Ludlam • Judith Malina • Theodore Mann • Gilbert Moses • Michaela O’Harra • John O’Neal • Joseph Papp • Robert Porterfield • José Quintero • Bill Rauch • Bernard Sahlins • Richard Schechner • Peter Schumann • Maurice Schwartz • Gary Sinise • Ellen Stewart • Lee Strasberg • Luis Miguel Valdez • Nina Vance • Douglas Turner Ward

As well as the founding visions of theatres from across the

The Actors Studio • The Actor's Workshop • Alley Theatre • American Conservatory Theater • American Repetory Theater • Arena Stage • Barter Theatre • Bread and Puppet Theater • The Carolina Playmakers • The Chicago Little Theater • Circle in the Square Theatre • The Civic Repertory Theatre • Cornerstone Theater Company • The Federal Theatre Project • Ford Foundation Program in Humanities and the Arts • The Free Southern Theater • The Group Theatre • The Hull-House Dramatic Association • KRIGWA Players • The Living Theatre • La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club • The Mark Taper Forum • The Mercury Theatre • Minnesota Theater Company (Guthrie Theater) • The National Theatre of the Deaf • The Negro Ensemble Company • The Negro Theatre Project, Federal Theatre Project • The Neighborhood Playhouse • New Dramatists • The New York Shakespeare Festival • The Open Theater • Oregon Shakespeare Festival • The Performance Group • The Provincetown Players • The Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center • The Ridiculous Theatrical Company • Roadside Theater • The San Francisco Mime Troupe • The Second City • Steppenwolf Theatre Company • El Teatro Campesino • Theater '47 • The Theatre Guild • The Theatre of the Living Arts • The Washington Square Players • The Wisconsin Idea Theater • Yale Repertory Theatre • The Yiddish Art Theatre

Genres: Theatre, Nonfiction

600 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Heralded by Publisher's Weekly as "a writer to watch" with a "magnificent sense of character and ear for dialogue," Todd London is an award-winning novelist and essayist, whose second novel, If You See Him, Let Me Know, was published this February by Austin Macauley. Writer Lorrie Moore called his first novel, The World's Room, a "stunning book...written as if by a spellbinding and spellbound angel." Spring of 2020 will also see the publication of This Is Not My Memoir, co-authored with Andre Gregory (Farrar, Straus, Giroux).

Todd London has worked in the American theater for more than thirty years, supporting the flourishing of individual artists, advocating for best practices, creating connection between independent artists and producing theaters, and documenting the evolving field. His service has taken many shapes: artistic director, educator, arts journalist and essayist, public speaker, and theater historian. His theater books include: An Ideal Theater: Founding Visions for a New American Art (Theatre Communications Group); The Importance of Staying Earnest (NoPassport); 15 Actors, 20 Years (Dutch Kills Press); Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (Theatre Development Fund); and The Artistic Home (TCG). Todd was the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group's Visionary Leadership Award for advancing "the theatre field as a whole."

A former artistic director of New Dramatists and executive director of the University of Washington's School of Drama, Todd is Director of Theater Relations for the Dramatists Guild and Head of MFA Playwriting at the New School. A former managing editor of American Theatre magazine, he won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his essays. A past winner of the Miss Lilly Award (from the Lilly Awards), Todd received an honorary doctorate from DePaul University's schools of Theatre and Music in 2016. He is founder of The Third Bohemia, a traveling, interdisciplinary retreat for artists.