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Theater of the United States is based in the Western tradition. Regional or resident theatres in the United States are professional theatre companies outside of New York City that produce their own seasons. ==Early history== Before the first English colony was established in 1607, there were Spanish dramas and Native Americans tribes that performed theatrical events. The birth of professional theatre in America may have begun with the Lewis Hallam troupe that arrived in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1752. A theater was built in Williamsburg in 1716, and, in January 1736, the original Dock Street Theatre was opened in Charles Town, South Carolina. In any case, The Hallams were the first to organize a complete company of actors in Europe and bring them to the colonies. They brought a repertoire of plays popular in London at the time, including ''Hamlet'', ''Othello'', ''The Recruiting Officer'', and ''Richard III''. ''The Merchant of Venice'' was their first performance, shown initially on September 15, 1752.〔http://www.theatrehistory.com/american/hornblow01.html〕 Encountering opposition from religious organisations, Hallam and his company left for Jamaica in 1754 or 1755. Soon after, Lewis Hallam, Jr., founded the American Company, opened a theater in New York, and presented the first professionally mounted American play—''The Prince of Parthia'', by Thomas Godfrey—in 1767.〔''The Prince of Parthia: A Tragedy'' By Thomas Godfrey, reprinted 1917 by Little, Brown.〕 In the 18th century, laws forbidding the performance of plays were passed in Massachusetts in 1750, in Pennsylvania in 1759, and in Rhode Island in 1761, and plays were banned in most states during the American Revolutionary War at the urging of the Continental Congress.〔 In 1794, president of Yale College, Timothy Dwight IV, in his "Essay on the Stage", declared that "to indulge a taste for playgoing means nothing more or less than the loss of that most valuable treasure: the immortal soul." In spite of such laws, however, a few writers tried their hand at playwriting. Most likely, the first plays written in America were by European-born authors—we know of original plays being written by Spaniard, Frenchmen and Englishmen dating back as early as 1567—although no plays were printed in America until Robert Hunter's ''Androboros'' in 1714. Still, in the early years, most of the plays produced came from Europe; only with Godfrey's ''The Prince of Parthia'' in 1767 do we get a professionally produced play written by an American, although it was a last-minute substitute for Thomas Forrest's comic opera ''The Disappointment; or, The Force of Credulity'', and although the first play to treat American themes seriously, ''Ponteach; or, the Savages of America'' by Robert Rogers, had been published in London a year earlier.〔Meserve, Walter J. ''An Outline History of American Drama,'' New York: Feedback/Prospero, 1994.〕 'Cato', a play about revolution, was performed for George Washington and his troops at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778. The Revolutionary period was a boost for dramatists, for whom the political debates were fertile ground for both satire, as seen in the works of Mercy Otis Warren and Colonel Robert Munford, and for plays about heroism, as in the works of Hugh Henry Brackenridge. The post-war period saw the birth of American social comedy in Royall Tyler's ''The Contrast'', which established a much-imitated version of the "Yankee" character, here named "Jonathan". But there were no professional dramatists until William Dunlap, whose work as playwright, translator, manager and theatre historian has earned him the title of "Father of American Drama"; in addition to translating the plays of August von Kotzebue and French melodramas, Dunlap wrote plays in a variety of styles, of which ''André'' and ''The Father; or, American Shandyism'' are his best.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Theater of the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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