America’s First Regional Theatre: The Cleveland Play House and Its Search for a Home (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History)

In the fall of 2011, the Cleveland Play House abandoned its former home of eighty-four years to establish a new presence within a downtown performing arts complex, providing a feeling of renewal and rebirth that the theatre has not experienced in decades. With its new facility and its upcoming centenary anniversary, the history of the legendary theatre serves as a springboard to discuss how the Cleveland Play House mirrored the achievements and struggles of both the city of Cleveland and the American theatre over the past one hundred years. This book challenges the established history (often put forward by the theatre itself) and long-held assumptions concerning the creation of the institution and its legacy. Utilizing new research (including access to the once-restricted Cleveland Play House archives), Ullom tells the compelling story of how this celebrated institution was founded and how it, and American theatre at large, has managed to survive and even thrive.