Little Theatre Movement

As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theater as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. The Little Theatre Movement served to provide experimental centers for the dramatic arts, free from the standard production mechanisms used in prominent commercial theaters.^[1] In several large cities, beginning with Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and Detroit, companies formed to produce more intimate, non-commercial, non-profit-centered,^[2] and reform-minded entertainments.^[3]

Sensational

Chicago's philanthropists and arts patrons Arthur T. and Mary Aldis established an artists' colony called The Compound in Lake Forest, Illinois. In 1910, Mary founded there the Aldis Playhouse, "a predecessor to the 'little theater' movement".^[7] The Hull House settlement theatre group, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, was the first to perform several plays by Galsworthy, Ibsen, and Shaw in Chicago.^[8] Maurice Browne, director and co-founder of the Chicago Little Theatre with Ellen Van Volkenburg, responding to having often been called the founder of the Little Theatre Movement, instead credited Hull House director Laura Dainty Pelham with being the "true founder of the 'American Little Theatre Movement'".^[9][10] Nevertheless, Browne and Van Volkenburg's company had, as the first little theatre to use the term, provided the movement with its name and inspired the creation in 1914 of Margaret Anderson's influential Chicago periodical The Little Review.^[11]

Alice Gerstenberg, an original member of the Chicago Little Theatre, expanded the movement to include children, founding the Chicago Junior League Theatre for Children in 1921. Gerstenberg was also producer and president of The Playwrights' Theatre of Chicago, 1922–1945. She was active in the Alice Gerstenberg Experimental Theatre Workshop in the 1950s and the Alice Gerstenberg Theatre in the 1960s, which helped to cultivate the legacy of the Little Theatre Movement of the early 20th century.

In 1912, two theatre groups were formed, the Toy Theatre in

Actor Harold Lloyd and others founded the Beverly Hills Little Theatre for Professionals in 1931.^[19] It was originally housed at the Wilkes Vine Street Theatre, and by 1938 had moved to Santa Monica boulevard.^[20] This 400-seat theater bore the names of the founder-subscribers on the seat backs.^[19] A piece in Variety noted that Lloyd's mother, Sarah Elisabeth Fraser, along with Gladys Lloyd Cassell (wife of Edward G. Robinson), and their friend Sam Hardy raised funds for it.^[19] Even before it opened there were rumors in Hollywood that something from the little theatre movement was on its way.^[21] Cal York (a Photoplay gossip column pseudonym for an amalgam of California and New York), overheard Franc Dillon ask Kenneth Harlan to be in one of the future plays. They were all at Estelle Taylor's estate when this conversation occurred, and from the beginning it attracted a film industry crowd.^[21] It served as a showcase for young talent, as a place for stars of the silent era to demonstrate their voices for talking pictures, and as an elegant way to transition from stage to film by being seen by Hollywood talent scouts.^[22][23] MGM dramatic coach Oliver Hinsdell was a frequent director there in the early years.^[24]

The Little Theatre Movement began in the early 20th century and was a result of young theatre practitioners, dramaturges, stage technicians, stage designers, and actors, who were influenced by European Theatre. More specifically, they were interested in the ideas of Max Reinhardt, a German director, the designing techniques of Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig, and the staging methods at the Théâtre Libre in Paris, the Freie Bühne in Berlin, and the Moscow Art Theatre.^[1]

Seeking larger audiences and with more complicated production ambitions, by the early 1920s, several leading companies of the movement had turned professional. The Provincetown Players, who produced O'Neill's first one-acts, moved to New York in 1916; members of the former Washington Square Players formed the Theatre Guild in 1919;^[25] but in its heyday, dozens of Little Theatre groups presented alternatives to mainstream commercial theatre. Numerous small companies had flourished, creating environments for diverse voices and viewpoints.

The Provincetown Players brought the first important playwright, O'Neill, to fruition. The Provincetown Players were founded in 1915, by three people: Neith Boyce, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell, who undertook Realism, an eccentric form of theatre at the time. O'Neill joined the Provincetown Players in 1916; they performed his first play Bound East for Cardiff that year. After moving to New York, they formed the Provincetown Playhouse, which is still in operation.^[2]

Other new little theaters started as community theater groups and university drama programs in the United States and Canada.