Keystone Books

An American Theater and Its Ghosts

Leslie Stainton

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780271064345
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Sozialwissenschaftliche Biographien

In this poignant and personal history of one of America's oldest theaters, Leslie Stainton captures the story not just of an extraordinary building but of a nation's tumultuous struggle to invent itself. Built in 1852 and in use ever since, the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is uniquely ghosted. Its foundations were once the walls of a colonial jail that in 1763 witnessed the massacre of the last surviving Conestoga Indians. Those same walls later served to incarcerate fugitive slaves. Staging Ground explores these tragic events and their enduring resonance in a building that later became a town hall, theater, and movie house—the site of minstrel shows, productions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, oratory by the likes of Thaddeus Stevens and Mark Twain, performances by Buffalo Bill and his troupe of "Wild Indians, " Hollywood Westerns, and twenty-first-century musicals.

Interweaving past and present, private anecdote and public record, Stainton unfolds the story of this emblematic space, where for more than 250 years Americans scripted and rescripted their history. Staging Ground sheds light on issues that continue to form us as a people: the evolution of American culture and faith, the immigrant experience, the growth of cities, the emergence of women in art and society, the spread of advertising, the flowering of transportation and technology, and the abiding paradox of a nation founded on the principle of equality for "all men, " yet engaged in the slave trade and in the systematic oppression of the American Indian.

Table of contents

• COVER Front
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Prologue: 1961
• Notes to Prologue
• Chapter 1: Haunted
• Notes to Chapter 1
• Chapter 2: Mr. Yecker Opens a Theater: 1866
• Notes to Chapter 2
• Chapter 3: The Killing of the Conestogas: 1763
• Notes to Chapter 3
• Chapter 4: Sacred Space
• Notes to Chapter 4
• Chapter 5: Mr. Hager Builds a Hall: 1852
• Notes to Chapter 5
• Chapter 6: “What Has the North to Do with Slavery?”: 1852–1861
• Notes to Chapter 6
• CHapter 7: Interlude
• Notes to Chapter 7
• Chapter 8: Theater of War: 1861–1865
• Notes to Chapter 8
• Chapter 9: Mr. Yecker Opens an Opera House: 1873
• Notes to Chapter 9
• Chapter 10: In Transit
• Notes to Chapter 10
• Figure Section
• Chapter 11: Buffalo Bill and the American West: 1873–1882
• Notes to Chapter 11
• Chapter 12: Memory Machine
• Notes to Chapter 12
• Chapter 13: The Minstrel’s Mask: 1852–1927
• Notes to Chapter 13
• Chapter 14: Empty Space
• Notes to Chapter 14
• Chapter 15: Players: 1886–1893
• Notes to Chapter 15
• Chapter 16: Women’s Work: 1870–1931
• Notes to Chapter 16
• Chapter 17: Cartography
• Notes to Chapter 17
• Chapter 18: Images, Moving and Still: 1896–1930
• Notes to Chapter 18
• Chapter 19: Ghost Dance: 1896–1997
• Notes to Chapter 19
• Epilogue: 2008
• Notes to Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Notes to Index
• COVER Back