John Durang: Man of the American Stage By Lynn Matluck Brooks

Prologue

(Othello, act 5, scene 2)

With these words, John Durang prefaced his Memoir, a document that does indeed strike me, nearly two centuries later, as straightforward and good-spirited. Durang painted a vivid and informative portrait of himself, his times, and his profession. Although he played roles in many Shakespearean plays, I have found no record of his performing Othello. However, Durang must have known the play well from watching in the wings. Such practices—watching from the wings, keeping all his senses alert to the goings-on around him, absorbing the atmosphere of the theater—were ones that Durang had mastered. It was part of his fascinating story as the first American-born theater professional.

Durang is, for several reasons, both a remarkable and exemplary figure in early American theater.¹ Among the first native-born Americans to appear on the stage, he was the first to make the theater his life. Beginning