An Actor's Tale
Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States
The nineteenth-century US entertainment industry through the perspective of an ordinary actor
Description
Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edges of it. He performed alongside the brightest stars, wrote scores of plays, and toured the United States and England, but he never became a household name. Inspired by this average performer’s life and labor, An Actor’s Tale offers an alternative history of nineteenth-century theater, focusing on the daily rhythms and routines of theatrical life rather than the celebrated people, plays, and exceptional events that tend to dominate histories of US theater and performance. In the process, Hughes asks uncomfortable questions about the existence, predominance, and erasure of White male mediocrity in US culture, both in the past and present. When historians focus only on performers and plays with artistic “merit,” what communities, perspectives, and cultural trends remain invisible? How did men like Watkins advance themselves professionally, despite their mediocrity? Why did men like Watkins embrace and perpetuate myths like the American Dream, the “self-made man,” and meritocracy, and how have these ideals shaped casting, producing, and celebrity worship in today’s US entertainment industry?
Ultimately, Hughes reveals how this actor’s tale illuminates the widespread tendency to ignore, deny, and forgive White male mediocrity in US culture, and how a deeper understanding of people like Watkins can transform our understanding of the past—and our understanding of ourselves.
Amy E. Hughes is Professor of Theatre & Drama at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Spectacles of Reform: Theater and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America (2012) and co-editor of A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century U.S. American Actor (2018).
Reviews
“This book has almost too many strengths to list. The writing is clear and dynamic. The research into Watkins’ diary is imaginative. The methodological choices are inspiring and thoughtful. The historiographical implications of this history for the present day delineate the stakes for every historical project. The book is sure to appeal to a broad range of readers and be accessible to anyone interested in the experiences of an ordinary person who happened to make their living as an actor.”
- Charlotte M. Canning, The University of Texas at Austin
“In this marvelously readable new microhistory, Hughes weaves tales of the past together with present-day conversations about the development of US theatre, including issues of identity, representation, and privilege. Through her protagonist, Harry Watkins, she creates a window into a cultural landscape few have explored in such detail. Her study is accessible, teachable, and models the kind of scholarship that will generate conversations for years to come.”
- Heather S. Nathans, Tufts University
“American history has been narrated from the top down and the bottom up—but what about the middle? In this lively, innovative, spectacularly well-researched book, Amy Hughes re-approaches nineteenth-century theatre through the life of a mediocre White man, an actor whose ambition and sense of importance exceeded his accomplishments. Through Harry Watkins, Hughes asks, how does White ordinariness reproduce itself—and to what effects? And what can the vast middle reveal about America's popular culture industry?”
- Robin Bernstein, Harvard University
"After unearthing and co-editing the 1200-page diary of the “lackluster” actor/playwright/manager Harry Watkins, Amy E. Hughes now offers an extraordinarily prismatic and provocative “alternative theater history” focused on his workaday routines and rhythms in the pivotal years leading to the US Civil War. With unflinching intersectional acuity, she artfully distills and structures the book to reveal myriad ways White male mediocrity perpetuated itself at others’ expense that resound to the present day. An Actor’s Tale powerfully culminates her long journey with Watkins and moves theatre and performance historiography in ever more vital directions."
- Kim Marra, University of Iowa
“Instead of a professional history tracking Watkin's vita across the landscape of pre-Civil War American circuits, this is a biographically inflected inquiry that emphasizes how capability opportunity, and speculation figured in Watkins's professional and personal lives.”
- Tracy C. Davis, Theatre Survey