Embracing the Lackluster: Investigating the Life (and Afterlives) of a Nineteenth-Century Workaday Actor

peer-reviewed article

Amy E. Hughes

aehugh@umich.edu
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor (United States)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7710-2062

Abstract

US actor-manager Harry Watkins (1825–1894) was no one special. He yearned for fame, but merely skirted the edges of it. If Watkins has any “historical significance” at all, it is because he left behind a voluminous diary in which he chronicled his experiences during the years leading up to the US Civil War. When the author discovered the manuscript in 2008, Watkins’s lackluster became the subject of her research, focused on the question: what could this minor actor reveal about nineteenth-century US culture—a culture as obsessed with fame and achievement as today’s culture? The author argues that Watkins is significant precisely because of his ordinariness, his obscurity, his run-of-the-mill-ness. His experiences illuminate how “white mediocrity” (Koritha Mitchell) works and deepens our understanding of the insidious power of the American Dream. Watkins’s lack of visibility during his lifetime and subsequently suggests that mediocrity is a stigmatized state of being, a form of abjection. His cyclical highs and lows bring into focus the cultural forces that still shape the aspirations of today’s theater artists, and the triumphs and failures that define their (our) inexorably ordinary lives.


Keywords:

United States, nineteenth century, theater, meritocracy, American Dream, white mediocrity

Adams, Bluford. E Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman and the Making of U.S. Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
  Google Scholar

Adams, Rachel. Sideshow U.S.A: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
  Google Scholar

Archer, Stephen M. Junius Brutus Booth: Theatrical Prometheus. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010.
  Google Scholar

Augst, Thomas. The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226795737.001.0001   Google Scholar

Bandhu, Pun, and Julienne Hanzelka Kim. The Visibility Report: Racial Representation on NYC Stages, 2018–2019, Asian American Performers Action Coalition, June 2021, http://www.aapacnyc.org/uploads/1/3/5/7/135720209/aapac_report_2018-2019_final.pdf.
  Google Scholar

Baum, Bruce. “Donald Trump’s ‘Genius,’ White ‘Natural Aristocracy,’ and Democratic Equality in America.” Theory & Event 20, no. 1, Supplement (2017): 10–22.
  Google Scholar

Bode, Carl. The Anatomy of American Popular Culture, 1840–1861. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959.
  Google Scholar

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. 5th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018.
  Google Scholar

Bromley, Daniel W. Possessive Individualism: A Crisis of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190062842.001.0001   Google Scholar

Brown, T. Allston. History of the American Stage: Containing Biographical Sketches of Nearly Every Member of the Profession That Has Appeared on the American Stage, from 1733 to 1870. New York, 1870.
  Google Scholar

Caplan, Debra. Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9533320   Google Scholar

Cawelti, John. Apostles of the Self-Made Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
  Google Scholar

Clapp, John Bouvé, and Edwin Francis Edgett. Players of the Present. 3 vols. New York, 1899–1901.
  Google Scholar

Cullen, Jim. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  Google Scholar

Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
  Google Scholar

Dudden, Faye. Women in the American Theatre: Actresses and Audiences, 1790–1870. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
  Google Scholar

Dulles, Foster Rhea. A History of Recreation: America Learns to Play. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965.
  Google Scholar

Frick, John W. Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  Google Scholar

Gallegly, J. S. Footlights on the Border: The Galveston and Houston Stage Before 1900. The Hague: Mouton, 1962.
  Google Scholar

Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Translated by John A. Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
  Google Scholar

Gonzalez, Anita. “Maritime Migrations: Stewards of the African Grove.” Theatre Research International 44, no. 1 (2019): 64–70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883318000962.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883318000962   Google Scholar

Grossman, Barbara Wallace. A Spectacle of Suffering: Clara Morris on the American Stage. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009.
  Google Scholar

Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn283   Google Scholar

Harris, Neil. Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973.
  Google Scholar

Haynes, Sam W. Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World, 1815–1850. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
  Google Scholar

Herrera, Brian Eugenio. “The Many Middling Failures of Virginia Calhoun.” Theatre Topics 28, no. 1 (2018): 75–81. https://doi.org/10.1353/tt.2018.0010.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tt.2018.0010   Google Scholar

Hochschild, Jennifer L. Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400821730   Google Scholar

Hughes, Amy E., and Naomi J. Stubbs, eds. A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9290953   Google Scholar

Hughes, Amy E., and Naomi J. Stubbs, eds. The Harry Watkins Diary: Digital Edition. 2018. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9290953.cmp.1.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9290953.cmp.1   Google Scholar

Jillson, Calvin C. Pursuing the American Dream: Opportunity and Exclusion over Four Centuries. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.
  Google Scholar

Johnson, Claudia Durst. Church and Stage: The Theatre as Target of Religious Condemnation in Nineteenth-Century America. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.
  Google Scholar

Johnson, Claudia D., and Vernon E. Johnson. Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Memoirs. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982.
  Google Scholar

Jones, Gavin. Failure and the American Writer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  Google Scholar

Kanellos, Nicolás. A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States: Origins to 1940s. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7560/730496   Google Scholar

Klepper, Martin. “‘From Rags to Riches’ and the Self-Made Man.” In Approaches to American Cultural Studies, edited by Antje Dallmann, Eva Boesenberg, and Martin Klepper, 123–131. New York: Routledge, 2016.
  Google Scholar

Kurnick, David. Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400840090   Google Scholar

Lei, Daphne P. Operatic China: Staging Chinese Identity across the Pacific. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06163-8   Google Scholar

Leon, Mechele. “Corpsing Molière: History as Fiasco.” In Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions, edited by Henry Bial and Scott Magelssen, 177–185. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.
  Google Scholar

Lepore, Jill. “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography.” Journal of American History 88, no. 1 (2001): 129–144.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2674921   Google Scholar

Markovits, Daniel. The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite. New York: Penguin Press, 2019.
  Google Scholar

Marra, Kim. Strange Duets: Impresarios and Actresses in the American Theatre, 1865–1914. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006.
  Google Scholar

Mason, Jeffrey D. Melodrama and the Myth of America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
  Google Scholar

Matthews, Brander, and Laurence Hutton. Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the United States, 5 vols. Boston, 1886–1900.
  Google Scholar

McArthur, Benjamin. The Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle: Joseph Jefferson and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
  Google Scholar

McAllister, Marvin E. “‘Hung Be the Heavens with Black’ Bodies: An Analysis of the August 1822 Riot at William Brown’s Greenwich Village Theatre.” In The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance, edited by Kathy A. Perkins, Sandra L. Richards, Renée Alexander Craft, and Thomas F. DeFrantz, 34–38. New York: Routledge, 2019.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315191225-7   Google Scholar

McAllister, Marvin E. White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies & Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown’s African & American Theater. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
  Google Scholar

McAllister, Marvin E. Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels and Stage Europeans in African American Performance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807869062_mcallister   Google Scholar

McConachie, Bruce A. Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820–1870. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20h6v34   Google Scholar

McNamee, Stephen J., and Robert K. Miller Jr. The Meritocracy Myth, 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.
  Google Scholar

Mitchell, Koritha. “Identifying White Mediocrity and Know-Your-Place Aggression: A Form of Self-Care.” African American Review 51, no. 4 (2018): 253–262. https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2018.0045.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2018.0045   Google Scholar

Merrill, Lisa. When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.15011   Google Scholar

Miller, Derek. “Average Broadway.” Theatre Journal 68, no. 4 (2016): 529–553. https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2016.0105.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2016.0105   Google Scholar

Mullenix, Elizabeth Reitz. Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the Antebellum Stage. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
  Google Scholar

Paul, Heike. The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2014. http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/31456.
  Google Scholar

Proehl, Geoffrey S. Coming Home Again: American Family Drama and the Figure of the Prodigal. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.
  Google Scholar

Ramírez, Elizabeth C. Chicanas/Latinas in American Theatre: A History of Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
  Google Scholar

Ramírez, Elizabeth C. Footlights across the Border: A History of Spanish-Language Professional Theatre on the Texas Stage. New York: Peter Lang, 1990.
  Google Scholar

Reignolds-Winslow, Catherine Mary. Yesterdays with Actors. Boston, 1887.
  Google Scholar

Rinear, David L. Stage, Page, Scandals, & Vandals: William E. Burton and NineteenthCentury American Theatre. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.
  Google Scholar

Senelick, Laurence. The Age and Stage of George L. Fox, 1825–1877. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Tufts University, 1988.
  Google Scholar

Sandage, Scott. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674043053   Google Scholar

Savran, David. Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.338819   Google Scholar

Sharpe, Jim. “History from Below.” In New Perspectives on Historical Writing, edited by Peter Burke, 2nd ed., 25–42. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
  Google Scholar

Skinner, Maud, and Otis Skinner. One Man in His Time: The Adventures of H. Watkins, Strolling Player. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512806861   Google Scholar

Stein, Tobie S. Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce. London: Routledge, 2019.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315642314   Google Scholar

Stubbs, Naomi J. Cultivating National Identity through Performance: American Pleasure Gardens and Entertainment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137326874   Google Scholar

Thompson, E. P. “History from Below” [1966]. In The Essential E. P. Thompson, edited by Dorothy Thompson, 481–489. New York: New Press, 2001.
  Google Scholar

Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class [1963]. New York: Vintage Books, 1966.
  Google Scholar

Trumble, Alfred. Great Artists of the American Stage. New York, 1882.
  Google Scholar

Turner, Bryan S., Nicholas Abercrombie, and Stephen Hill, Sovereign Individuals of Capitalism [1986]. London: Routledge, 2015.
  Google Scholar

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
  Google Scholar

Vey, Shauna. Childhood and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre: The Work of the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Actors. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015.
  Google Scholar

Winter, William. Shadows of the Stage. New York, 1893.
  Google Scholar

Zboray, Ronald J., and Mary Saracino Zboray. “Journals and Diaries.” In American History Through Literature: 1820–1870, edited by Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert Sattelmeyer, 2: 602–607. Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006.
  Google Scholar

Download


Published
2022-10-03

Cited by

Hughes, A. E. (2022) “Embracing the Lackluster: Investigating the Life (and Afterlives) of a Nineteenth-Century Workaday Actor”, Pamiętnik Teatralny, 71(3), pp. 15–36. doi: 10.36744/pt.1038.

Authors

Amy E. Hughes 
aehugh@umich.edu
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor United States
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7710-2062

Amy E. Hughes - Professor of Theatre and Drama at University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. Her research focuses on theater and performance in the United States during the nineteenth century. Her interests and expertise include material and visual culture, disability studies, animal studies, digital humanities, documentary editing, and culturally responsive pedagogy (h/t Dr. Geneva Gay). Her first book, Spectacles of Reform: Theater and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Michigan Press, 2012), received the 2013 Barnard Hewitt Award from the American Society for Theatre Research. With Naomi J. Stubbs, she edited A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor (University of Michigan Press, 2018).



Statistics

Abstract views: 183
PDF downloads: 140


License

Copyright (c) 2022 Amy E. Hughes

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The author grants a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Pamiętnik Teatralny should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). By submitting an article the author agrees to make it available under CC BY 4.0 license.

From issue 1/2018 to 3/2022 all articles were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.