I want to begin with a memory of buried faith that speaks rather precisely to the argument that follows about the duplicitous nature of performance during the English Reformation. The memory belonged to Benjamin Franklin, who opened his Autobiography with an account of his Protestant family during the reign of Mary Tudor:

Music scholars Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff have researched what they call “a deep African American vaudeville theater tradition” in Memphis during the first decade of the twentieth century that helped lead the way to the commercialization of the blues. Their body of work provides a very useful and fascinating historical overview of the black vaudeville scene of the time on the national level. This article seeks to broaden that overview, using a much more focused, microhistorical perspective on the history of theatre management on one particular street in one particular, midsized southern city. It argues that in Memphis, the story of African American and Italian American theatre managers shows that realities were often much more complex than histories that portray a rigid and heavily drawn color line have suggested.

In 1874, a group of newsboys took on some of the wealthiest, most respected, and most powerful New Yorkers and emerged victorious. The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, a philanthropic organization that worked to guard public morals and championed Christian values, faced two challenges that year over the city's theatre licensing fee. Its prominent members and their financial power made the organization a formidable force in local city matters. As a result of the 1872 Act to Regulate Places of Public Amusement in the City of New York, theatre managers were required to pay $500 to the city for an operating license. The city gave the fees to the society, which it used to operate the city's House of Refuge. The society believed that theatres corrupted the city's youth and that, therefore, the theatres should help fund youth reform efforts. In its legal proceedings against theatres without licenses, the society typically targeted cheap entertainment establishments in poor neighborhoods. These playhouses “were not particularly powerful and presumably would not put up too strenuous a legal battle.”

The recently rediscovered dramatic works of a major thirteenth-century Egyptian author, Muhammad Ibn Dāniyāl, provides a striking example of how the strategies of microhistory can provide an important challenge to, and possible reassessment of, the grand narratives that theatre history has often accepted without serious question. Ibn Dāniyāl is an excellent example of the sort of outsider that has attracted the attention of microhistorians, one of those “peoples who would be left out by other methods.”

In this wide-ranging interview conducted by Associate Editor Harvey Young, Thomas Bradshaw reflects on his plays, talks about the determining influence of class in contemporary society, and comments on his reputation as a provocateur.