Forgotten Broadway: Dramatizing Women's Limited Choices in Selected Plays by Rachel Crothers - Hardcover

by Rachel Crothers (Author), Karin Maresh (Editor)

This collection brings Rachel Crothers' best plays back into the public eye, outside of archives, to prove their continued relevance to life in the 21st century.

Rachel Crothers was considered in her own time to be "the most famous woman playwright in America" (Charles E. Barnum, Sunday Morning Star). At her peak, 26 of her plays graced Broadway and touring stages, on par with Eugene O'Neill's record, and Hollywood adapted more than half of those for the silver screen, making her one of the most prominent playwrights of the early 20th century.

Forgotten Broadway is the first edited collection of plays by Crothers, demonstrating her impressive accomplishments as a writer-director during one of the most important periods of Broadway history. Known by her contemporaries as an "all-around woman of the theatre" due to her double duty as a writer and practitioner, despite all her successes, her plays have fallen out of print and are rarely produced in any theatrical setting.

The issues raised in plays such as He and She (1911), Mary the Third (1923), Let Us Be Gay (1929) and A Little Journey (1918) concern career versus motherhood/parenthood, marriage, the double standard, and generational divisions, providing representations that audiences today understand and appreciate.

This is a landmark play collection from one of the most celebrated female theatre practitioners of the 20th century.

Author Biography

Karin Maresh is a Professor of Theatre and Chair of Communication Arts at Washington & Jefferson College, and Vice President of Alpha Psi Omega. Her research has appeared in Theatre History Studies, International Women Stage Directors (2013), and Theatre Journal, and she has presented her work on Irish and American women directors and playwrights at numerous conferences.