Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856–1951

Drawing on fascinating archival discoveries from the past two centuries, Brent Salter shows how copyright has been negotiated in the American theatre. Who controls the space between authors and audiences? Does copyright law actually protect playwrights and help them make a living? At the center of these negotiations are mediating businesses with extraordinary power that rapidly evolved from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries: agents, publishers, producers, labor associations, administrators, accountants, lawyers, government bureaucrats, and film studio executives. As these mediators asserted authority over creativity, creators organized to respond, through collective minimum contracts, informal guild expectations, and professional norms, to protect their presumed rights as authors. This institutional, relational, legal, and business history of the entertainment history in America illuminates both the historical context and the present law. An innovative new kind of intellectual property history, the book maps the relations between the different players from the ground up.

Theresa J. May. Earth Matters on Stage: Ecology and Environment in American Theater.

In Earth Matters on Stage, Theresa J. May explores a range of significant plays and productions from crucial moments in the United States’ environmental history to demonstrate the myriad ways that American theatre has represented, challenged, and been complicit in environmental imperialism.

Muslim Integration and the Hijabi Monologues Ireland

In 2012 and 2013, two productions of the Hijabi Monologues, an American theatre project featuring the stories of Muslim women, were staged in Ireland. This essay considers their relationship to state-sponsored and community-led interculturalism during the Celtic Tiger and post-Tiger years. Both productions centred on the act of storytelling and tended to downplay xenophobia, instead enacting the type of feel-good intercultural exchange that has dominated Irish and European integration efforts since the late 1990s. At the same time, the 2013 production, on which the essay focuses, employed coalition-building strategies borrowed from the field of migrant activism, thereby ensuring Muslim involvement throughout the production process. The Hijabi Monologues Ireland furnishes a snapshot of a transitional moment in Irish intercultural programming when the state-funded projects of the Celtic Tiger era were giving way to migrant-led initiatives. By examining the production's artistic process, community participation, and funding streams, the essay assesses its successes and shortcomings in addressing the complex challenges of Muslim integration.