The essays gathered together in Volume 15 of the annual journal Theatre Symposium investigate how, historically, the theatre has been perceived both as a source of moral anxiety and as an instrument of moral and social reform.

   

Essays consider, among other subjects, ethnographic depictions of the savage “other” in Buffalo Bill’s engagement at the Columbian Exposition of 1893; the so-called “Moral Reform Melodrama” in the nineteenth century; charity theatricals and the ways they negotiated standards of middle-class respectability; the figure of the courtesan as a barometer of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century moral and sexual discourse; Aphra Behn’s subversion of Restoration patriarchal sexual norms in The Feigned Courtesans; and the controversy surrounding one production of Tony Kushner Angels in America, during which officials at one of the nation’s more prominent liberal arts colleges attempted to censor the production, a chilling reminder that academic and artistic freedom cannot be taken for granted in today’s polarized moral and political atmosphere.

A substantive exploration of theatrical costume
 
Stage costumes reveal character. They tell audiences who the character is or how a character functions within the world of the play, among other things. Theatrical costuming, however, along with other forms of theatre design, has often been considered merely a craft, rather than part of the deeply systemic creation of meaning onstage. In what ways do our clothes shape and reveal our habits of behavior? How do stage costumes work to reveal one kind of habit via the manipulation of another? How might theatre practitioners learn to most effectively exploit this dynamic? Theatre Symposium, Volume 26 analyzes the ways in which meaning is conveyed through costuming for the stage and explores the underlying assumptions embedded in theatrical practice and costume production.

THEATRE SYMPOSIUM, VOLUME 26

MICHELE MAJER
Plus que Reine: The Napoleonic Revival in Belle Epoque Theatre and Fashion

CAITLIN QUINN
Creating a Realistic Rendering Pedagogy: The Fashion Illustration Problem

ALY RENEE AMIDEI
Where'd I Put My Character?: The Costume Character Body and Essential Costuming for the Ensemble Actor

KYLA KAZUSCHYK
Embracing the Chaos: Creating Costumes for Devised Work

DAVID S. THOMPSON
Dressing the Image: Costumes in Printed Theatrical Advertising

LEAH LOWE
Costuming the Audience: Gentility, Consumption, and the Lady’s Theatre Hat in Gilded Age America

JORGE SANDOVAL
The RuPaul Effect: The Exploration of the Costuming Rituals of Drag Culture in Social Media and the Theatrical Performativity of the Male Body in the Ambit of the Everyday

GREGORY S. CARR
A Brand New Day on Broadway: The Genius of Geoffrey Holder’s Artistry and His Intentional Evocation of the African Diaspora

ANDREW GIBB
On the [Historical] Sublime: J. R. Planché’s King John and the Romantic Ideal of the Past