The Play Must Go West Essays - Ludlow, New Orleans,

The Play Must Go West Soon after the American Revolution, Americans began their expansion to the west. It was our Manifest Destiny to tame the wilds of the west and expand our nation from coast to coast. Families from all over would load up their belongings and travel to the newly purchased lands. People from New York, Philadelphia, Boston and all parts of the new nation brought with them their language, culture and belief systems. Along with this they also brought the theater. It was not long after people would begin to live in an area that the theater would take root. The progress of the theater in the United States can be traced along the same routes as the settlement of the west. Beginning on the east coast with early colonies the theater was carried with our ancestors to their new homes in the west. From St. Louise to Kansas City, from Kansas City to California and all parts in between. Horace Greeley said Go west young man and the theater followed. In 1492 Christopher Columbus left Azones on a trip to discover a western sea route to the Orient. Seventy days later Columbus made land fall on what he thought was an outlying portion of Asia. Columbus would go to his death believing he had landed in Asia, he was wrong. Although he did open up a new world for Europeans to expand their culture into.(Billington 15) Thought many early attempts where made to settle this new land. Most ended in disaster. In 1620 however, 128 years after Columbus made his brave but mistaken discovery of the new world, the pilgrims set out to make a permanent settlement in America. They put a shore in what is now called Massachusetts and formed a thriving, self governed colony.(Billington 57) 10 years later, John Wintrope brings 1000 colonist and founds the city of Boston. Wintropes British settlement had not been in the new world long, in fact less than a year, when they discovered that the Dutch had formed their own nearby settlement. The Dutch called their town New Amsterdam. This caused immediate competition and rivalry between the settlements.(Billington 60) After a war with the Dutch the city of New Amsterdam came into the possession of the British Empire and King Charles the Second. King Charles had newly been restored to the throne of England after a long forced vacation on the mainland of Europe. As a reward to those who supported his return, he annexed New Amsterdam and renamed it New York and gave large portions of it to his most loyal supporters.(Billington 67) In the ensuing years many English colonist came to the new world setting up towns and cities all along the Atlantic coast line. It is in these towns and cities that we see European culture, especially E nglish culture, being planted in the new world. With this new culture being brought to this new and untamed land it is natural that the forms of entertainment would also not be far behind. The lands of the new world where now fertile for the seed of the theater. In 1716 we have records of a theater being built in Willamsburg Virginia. This is probable the first theater built in the Americas. While there where probable plays and some small theatrical productions being done earlier, this is our first ever record of a building being built for this specific purpose.(Hornblow) We know that in New York in 1752, the Hallams performed the Merchant of Venice. We also know that the Hallams used a theater that was build for use by Murray and Kean who had a troupe who had performed the same play along with Richard the III many years earlier. (Hornblow) So theater came early to the Americas but was contained to the coastal areas much like the colonies where. It would take the formation of a new country and an expansion of the boarders of this new country to help theater on its western trek across the great expanses of North America. Caused by what they believed was an erosions of their natural rights and being governed with out representation The colonies in America decided to take a bold move and break their