University of Nevada Press From San Francisco Eastward: Victorian Theater in the American West

Carolyn Grattan Eichin's From San Francisco Eastward explores the presence and influence of theater in the West during the Victorian era. San Francisco, Eichin argues, served as the center of the western theatrical world, having attained prominence behind only New York and Boston as the nation's most important theatrical center by 1870. As a trade center and place of intellectual dynamism, San Francisco exerted a major social influence on western frontier communities that often imitated the cultural production of big-city dynamics. Using the vagaries of the West's notorious boom-bust economic cycles, Eichin traces the fiscal and literary influences that shaped western theater. With an emphasis on the 1860s and 70s, this thoughtfully researched work uses diverse notions of ethnicity, class, and gender to outline the parameters of Western theater. From San Francisco Eastward is a thorough analysis of the ever-changing theatrical personalities and strategies that shaped Victorian theater and its eastward expansion, and how these complex environments created a new democratized era of theater in the post-Civil War-era. Review From San Francisco Eastward offers a colorful, engaging analysis of activities that may at first seem frivolous or extraneous to the history of the American West, but in fact offer valuable insights into the nation's social and cultural development.-- "California History""... a dynamic contribution to American theater history."-- "The Journal of Arizona History"Eichin provides well-written prose and well-documented history of theater in the American West. . . this book is a welcome addition to the 19th-century history of Nevada theater. -- "Nevada Historical Quarterly"...the best, most thought-provoking study of the subject to date.-- "True West"To date, most large-scale studies of theatrical performance in the nineteenth-century U.S. West have taken the form of chronicles as opposed to analyses, and have tended to be limited in geographical scope. From San Francisco Eastward is a refreshing departure from this tradition on both counts.-- "Andrew Gibb, associate professor of Theater and Dance, Texas A & M University" About the Author Carolyn Grattan Eichin has been published in Utah Historical Quarterly, Mark Twain Annual, and the Nevada Historical Quarterly. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From San Francisco Eastward: Victorian Theater in the American West Introduction Reflecting on a nineteenth-century theatrical performance on the East Coast, an American theater historian recently wrote: &;Their close-to capacity audiences were as unsophisticated as anything encountered by actors out West during the Gold Rush and Silver Fever years.&;[1] This characterization of unsophisticated hooting, hollering, hand-clapping, and foot-stomping westerners has long prevailed. Out of this boisterous vitality, the western theater acquired a persona that would, correctly, mark it as distinctive. This distinctiveness makes us ask:  How did the theater as a social institution affect its patrons in this way? Who were these patrons, these performers, the theatricalities? Why was their need for entertainment manifested in these &;unsophisticated&; ways? What was the importance of entertainment in the lives of ordinary people coming to grips with the realities of life in nineteenth-century western towns? The story of Victorian theater is multifaceted, supported by colorful personalities and challenging environments. Victorian theater was ultimately a capitalist endeavor focused on selling cultural forms; thus economics ruled the theater, while culture shaped its importance. Just like today, people of the Victorian era shared a complex set of social behaviors, customs, values, and beliefs used to cope with their everyday realities. Our current beliefs differ from those of the past, of course, but the ways in which these shared values shaped the Vic