In American culture, and possibly throughout the modern world, there is a split between art & entertainment. Art seems to be thought-provoking, stylish and of the higher mind. Entertainment is for amusement and escapism, lacking in thought, more low brow. This split is possibly the greatest hurdle to making great art/entertainment. It is at the heart of our challenge in making better entertainment.
I've wondered where this split originated. It is possible that it has always been around. However, when the first professional theatres were built in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare and his contemporaries understood the need to play to both the drunken apprentices standing in the yard along with the nobles sitting on padded chairs in the boxes behind the stage. Shakespeare wrote for the basest part of the human and our highest level of spirit. Good entertainment and high profits demanded it.
If I had to pick a moment when the rift occurred in America, I'd point to the Macbeth Riots of 1849. Whether it was a cause or a result, it is an interesting event.
When I lived in New York, down on 10th Street between First & Second, I walked through Astor Place every day on the way to the subway. There was a triangular building on the west side of the square with a Starbucks on the first floor. Each day as I walked back and forth to the subway, I mused how it was the perfect place and building for a theatre. For some reason I had a deep connection to that place.
By 1848, the American actor, Edwin Forrest, had risen to be the continent's first acting superstar. He had had success playing across the States and in Europe. Depending on who you asked, he was good or better than the leading English actor of the day Charles Macready. Forrest was known for physical and declamatory style playing the Indian Metamora, the Gladiator Spartacus and Shakespeare's greatest tragic characters. Macready was known for his refined, well spoken, naturalistic performances of the classics. For a time Forrest and Macready were friends until a hiss came from the box Forrest was in during a performance of Hamlet by Macready. After many letters to the newspapers, Forrest finally admitted to the hiss. He wrote that he was enjoying Macready's performance of Hamlet until Macready added a "fancy dance" to the action for which Forrest felt compelled to hiss.
The great feud grew between these actors. It played out in the papers, on the streets, in the playhouses. The feud struck a chord in the fledgling country still straining from its forebear.
In May of 1849, Macready was announced to be playing Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House in the same week Forrest was to play the role at the Bowery Theatre. The Astor Place Opera House was the venue for the elite and well off of the city. People arrived by carriage with footmen and came dressed in tails and fine gowns. The Bowery Theater was the people theatre. It was a rowdy playhouse filled with the workers in this growing city.
On May 9th, Macready was shouted from the stage at the Astor Opera House. There was an increased threat of violence if he continued his run. Forrest capitulated and changed his bill for the night of May 10th to Spartacus. The owners of the Astor Place Opera House and other men of note in the city met with the Mayor and Police Chief demanding that Macready be allowed to play. For what is freedom if a man cannot speak Shakespeare without being hooted from the stage.
On the night of May 10th police surrounded the Opera House. The crowd formed to see what would happen. As Macready began to perform the crowd inside and outside the theater grew out of control, the militia was called. Shots were fired. By the end of the night at least 25 people lay dead with over 100 wounded. New York City was under martial law, something that would not occur again until Sept. 11, 2001.
While many other factors inflamed the riot, the central cause was how to play Shakespeare. The battle between Art and Entertainment.
Years after I left New York, I learned that the triangular building on the west side of the square with the Starbucks on the first floor sat on the site of the Astor Place Opera House. I've always wondered if it was why I felt so attracted to the place.
You can find the full account of the Shakespeare Riot in: The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America by Nigel Cliff.
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