Steele MacKaye

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Portrait of MacKayes

James Morrison Steele MacKaye (born June 6, 1842 in Buffalo , † February 25, 1894 ) was an American actor, theater producer and inventor. He is considered one of the most famous theater people of his generation.

biography

Steele MacKaye was born in Buffalo . His father, the lawyer and Colonel James M. MacKaye, was a staunch opponent of slavery , and his mother died very early. He had three sisters: Sarah MacKaye Alling (1809–1904), Emily MacKaye von Hesse (1838–?), Sarah MacKaye Warner (1840–1876), and two half-brothers: William Henry MacKaye (1834–1888) and Henry Goodwin MacKaye ( 1856-1913).

As a young man, Steele attended Roe's Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York State, and the William Leverett Boarding School in Newport. He studied painting with William Morris Hunt and then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Because of the Civil War , he returned home and served in the New York Seventh Regiment and became a major . The memorial of the regiment in New York, which John Quincy Adams Ward created, is modeled after him.

Statue of the 7th regiment

In 1869 MacKaye traveled back to Paris and studied drama with François Delsarte . In 1873 he was the first American to portray Hamlet in London .

MacKaye's lecture on the Delsarte System Secret of Feeling at Boston Music Hall , 1874

MacKaye wrote over 30 pieces. As a dramaturge, he incorporated realism and naturalism into his plays. His first play was Hazel Kirke in 1880. Around 1885 he was involved in founding the first drama school in the USA, the predecessor of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA). More than 100 patents can be traced back to his ingenuity, including fireproof curtains, folding seats and a smoke machine .

The New York theaters of St. James, Madison Square and the Lyceum Theater are MacKayes foundations. MacKaye's first wife was Jeannie Spring (daughter of Marcus Spring ). The marriage quickly fell apart. His second marriage to Mary K. Medbery was in 1865. The couple had six children, including James MacKaye , Percy MacKaye, and Benton MacKaye . Percy, who became a noted playwright and poet, published the biography Epoch: The Life of Steele MacKaye in 1927 .

Works

MacKaye in pose

He wrote the plays Monaldi and Marriage . Include other works:

  • The Twins (1876)
  • Won at Last (1877)
  • Through the Dark (1878), later renamed Money Mad
  • Hazel Kirke (1880)
  • Anarchy (1887), first Paul Kauvar; or Anarchy , later Anarchy and then again Paul Kauvar. titled

literature

  • Bordman, Gerald. 1994. American Theater: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1869-1914 . Oxford University Press.
  • Brace, Gerald Warner. Days that Were . New York: WW Norton & Company. 1976. ISBN 0-393-07509-5 .
  • Glassberg, David. 1990. American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century . Chapel Hill: UNC Press.
  • Hornblow, Arthur. 1919. A History of the Theater in America from Its Beginnings to the Present Time . Philadelphia: JB Lippincott Company.
  • Quinn, Arthur Hobson. 1917. Representative American plays . New York: The Century Co.
  • Ruyter, Nancy Lee Chalfa. 1999. The Cultivation of Body and Mind in Nineteenth-Century American Delsartism . Greenwood Publishing Group.
  • Yann Rocher, Théâtres en utopie , Actes Sud, Paris, pp. 62-67.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Glasberg, p 167
  2. ↑ Quinn, p. 495
  3. ↑ " Guide to the Papers of MacKaye Family, 1751-1990 ". Rauner Special Collections Library.
  4. ^ Bordman, p. 43
  5. ↑ Ruyter, p. 17
  6. ^ Archive entry of the Seventh Regiment Memorial in the Smithsonian Institution's information system
  7. ↑ Hornblow, p. 269
  8. ↑ Quinn, p. 497
  9. ^ Steele MacKaye , The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008
  10. ↑ Glasberg, p 168
personal data
SURNAME MacKaye, Steele
ALTERNATIVE NAMES MacKaye, James Morrison Steele (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor, theater producer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Buffalo
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1894