STAGING GROUND
LESLIE STAINTON
STAGING GROUND
AN AMERICAN THEATER
AND ITS GHOSTS
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA
A KEYSTONE BOOK®
Keystone Books are intended to serve the citizens of Pennsylvania. They are accessible, well-researched explorations into the history, culture, society, and environment of the Keystone State as part of the Middle Atlantic region.
Portions of this book have been previously published in somewhat different form:
The Prologue incorporates material from “Stage-Struck,” in “The Documentary Imagination (Part Two),” ed. Tom Fricke and Keith Taylor, special issue, Michigan Quarterly Review 45, no. 1 (2006).
Chapter 3 incorporates material from “Conestoga,” in “Due North,” special issue, Crab Orchard Review 17, no. 2 (2012).
Chapter 15 incorporates material from “Players,” Common-place 8, no. 4 (2008). Courtesy of Common-place, http://common-place.org.
The excerpt from Indians, by Arthur Kopit, is copyright © 1969 by Arthur Kopit. Reprinted by permission of Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stainton, Leslie, 1955– , author.
Staging ground : an American theater and its ghosts / Leslie Stainton.
p. cm
“Keystone books.”
Summary: “Through both history and personal memoir, examines the role of the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the shaping of American identity from colonial times to the present”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-271-06365-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Fulton Opera House—History.
2. Theater—Pennsylvania—Lancaster—History.
3. Theater and society—United States—History.
4. Stainton, Leslie, 1955– .
5. Yecker, Blasius, 1834–1903.
I. Title.
PN2277.L362F857 2014
792.09748’15—dc23
2013049311
Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802–1003
The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
This book is printed on paper that contains 30% post-consumer waste.
Frontispiece: Yecker’s Fulton Opera House, ca. 1897 (fig. 21). Courtesy of Barbara Dorwart Lehman.
For STEVE
For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, not in its gold. Its glory is in its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.
—JOHN RUSKIN
Not to know what happened before we were born is to remain perpetually a child. For what is the worth of a human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?
—CICERO
Where memory is, theater is.
—HERBERT BLAU
CONTENTS
2 Mr. Yecker Opens a Theater: 1866
3 The Killing of the Conestogas: 1763
5 Mr. Hager Builds a Hall: 1852
6 “What Has the North to Do with Slavery?”: 1852–1861
7 Interlude
8 Theater of War: 1861–1865
9 Mr. Yecker Opens an Opera House: 1873
10 In Transit
Gallery of Figures
11 Buffalo Bill and the American West: 1873–1882
12 Memory Machine
13 The Minstrel’s Mask: 1852–1927
14 Empty Space
15 Players: 1886–1893
16 Women’s Work: 1870–1931
