An Ideal Theater ─ Founding Visions for a New American Art

A wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theater movement as told, at the time of its making, by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters, and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. The founding visions of theaters from across the country are represented here, including: Arena Stage (Washington, DC), El Teatro Campesino (California), Barter Theatre (Virginia), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Roadside Theater (Kentucky), Second City (Illinois), Theatre 47 (Dallas), Bread and Puppet (Vermont), The Actor's Workshop (California), Public Theater (New York), Minnesota Theatre Company, The Group Theatre (New York), and dozens more. This celebration of the artists who came before is an exhilarating look backward, as well as toward the future.

Todd London is in his fifteenth season as artistic director of the Tony Award–winning New Dramatists, where he has worked closely with more than a hundred of America's leading playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. The author of The Artistic Home and Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, he has written, edited, and/or contributed to eleven books.

TODD LONDON is in his fifteenth season as artistic director of New Dramatists, where he has worked closely with more than a hundred of America’s leading playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. A former Managing Editor of American Theatre magazine and the author of The Artistic Home, published by TCG, he has written, edited, and/or contributed to eleven books. Last fall saw the completion and publication of Theatre Development Fund’s (TDF) Outrageous Fortune, a four-year study of new play production in America, for which Todd has served as project director and senior writer. His particular brand of advocacy journalism has focused on both the lives and livelihoods of individual artists and on the not-for-profit theatre movement, especially the impact of institutionalization on the field. His magazine essays and articles on the theatre have been translated for publication in Russia, North and South Africa, Scandinavia, Serbia, and Romania. Todd won the prestigious George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his essays in American Theatre and a Milestone Award for his first novel, The World’s Room, published by Steerforth Press. In 2001 he accepted a special TonyR Honor on behalf of New Dramatists, and in 2005 he represented New Dramatists at the Obie Awards, where the organization was honored with the Ross Wetzsteon Award for excellence. In 2009, Todd was recognized by TCG with the inaugural Visionary Leadership Award, for an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theatre field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.