Selling the Bird

Richard Walton Tully's The Bird of Paradise and the Dynamics of Theatrical Commodification

Bibliographic Data

ID4553233
AuthorsChristopher Balme (0000-0002-8901-8818, corresponding author), Christopher B Balme
Year2005
Volume57
Issue1
Pages1-20
Publication date2005-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheatre Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0192-2882 • E-ISSN: 1086-332X
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/tj.2005.0002
OpenAlexW1963547440
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited13

This article examines Richard Walton Tully's forgotten play The Bird of Paradise (1912) that became a major box-office success for over twelve years before being forced to close due to alleged plagiarism. The play is set in 1890s Hawaii and was a major influence in popularizing Hawaiian performance culture throughout the US and beyond. The article argues that the play's disappearance from theatre historiography is largely due to the discipline's adoption of a modernist privileging of aesthetics, which has largely obscured theatre's impact on cultural history. To rectify such lacunae the article proposes a commodification paradigm that considers theatre and commercially successful plays as cultural commodities rather than as aesthetic objects

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Commodification · Dynamics (music · Historiography · Literature · Paradise · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Theater, Performance, and Music History

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