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Women of American Theater:

1910 - 1930. Performed by Gayle Stahlhuth

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Maurine Dallas Watkins’ (1896-1969) Chicago was a hit on Broadway in 1926, decades before Kander, Ebb, and Fosse created the musical based on her play. Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) co-founded The Provincetown Players, which not only produced her own plays, including Trifles, but those of Eugene O’Neill and other up-and-coming playwrights. Alice Gerstenberg (1885-1972) wrote the first successful adaptation for the stage of Alice in Wonderland. Ruth Draper (1884-1956) delighted New York audiences and European royalty with her monologues. Rachel Crothers (1878-1958), while a successful Broadway playwright, actor, director, and producer, found time, along with six other women in theater, to create the Stage Women’s War Relief in 1916, raising almost seven million dollars for the allies in World War I.  Black writer and teacher, Mary P. Burrill, dealt with treatment of Black soldiers in The First World War in her play Aftermath. Zona Gale (1874-1938), in 1921, was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Edna Ferber (1885-1968) saw Showboat open on Broadway, for which she wrote the book that the musical was based, and her own play, The Royal Family, that she co-wrote with George S. Kaufman open on Broadway with 24 hours of each other in 1927. And that’s just the beginning. . . . .     

Gayle Stahlhuth is an actor, director, playwright, producer, storyteller, and teacher. From 1999 through 2022 she was the producing artistic director of East Lynne Theater Company and currently is the founding artistic director of Classic American Tales. She has performed off-Broadway, in touring shows, regional theater, TV and film. She has given lectures on different aspects of American Theater at universities, as part of the Road Scholar experience, and on the Chautauqua circuit. The National League of Professional Women honored her in 2016 for her work as a theater professional and she is listed in the newest edition of THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO AMERICAN THEATRE (2008).  

Classic American Tales was founded to tell America’s stories “one tale at a time.” To learn more, visit https://www.ClassicAmericanTales.org. 

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