Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements 7 -- INTRODUCTION. Codifying the National Self. Spectator, Actor and the American Dramatic Text 11 -- Making Middlebrow Theater in America 21 -- Reading Drama. Plays in American Periodicals 1890-1918 39 -- Anna Cora Mowatt. Player and Playwright 55 -- The Woman Artist as Portrayed by Rachel Crothers and Heather McDonald 69 -- Feminist Revisions of Classic Texts on the American Stage 87 -- Charles Mee's Intertextual and Intercultural Inscriptions. The Suppliants vs Big Love 105 -- Sophie Treadwell, Jung, and the Mandala. Acting a Gendered Identity 123 -- Artistic Expression, Intimacy and Primal Holon in Sam Shepard 137 -- Theo/teleological Narrative and the Narratee's Rebellion in Tony Kushner's Angels in America 153 -- "Captured Images." Performing the First Nations' "Other" 169 -- E Pluribus, Plurum. From a Unifying National Identity to Plural Identities in Susan Glaspell's Inheritors 185 -- Politics in Paratextual and Textual Elements in Fences 201 -- Food, Cultural Identity, and the Body. New Recipes for Latinas' Emerging Selves 215 -- Authenticity and the "Divinely Amateur." The Romantic in Richard Maxwell 233 -- Mamet's Actors. A Life in the Theatre and Other Writings on the Art of Acting 251 -- The Contemporary Ethics of Violence. Cruz, Solis and Homeland Security 265 -- The Solace of Chocolate Squares. Thinking about Wallace Shawn 281 -- Notes on Contributors 295.