biography
| name: |
MacKaye, (James Morrison) Steele
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pronunciation:
[muhkiy]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1842–94)
|
| biography:
| Actor, playwright, designer, and inventor, born in Buffalo, New York, USA. Although 19 of his plays were produced in New York, he is best known as a dreamer and deviser of technical innovations, many of which never became reality. In pursuit of a more naturalistic mode of presentation, he reopened the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York (1879) as the Madison Square Theatre, introducing a double moving stage as well as overhead and indirect lighting. After opening the Lyceum (1885), he founded a school of acting there, which became the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He planned a ‘Spectatorium’ for the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, a vast, technically advanced auditorium, but it was never built. Most of his plays were commercially successful, but only Won at Last, Hazel Kirke and Paul Kauvar survived to be performed into the 20th-c. A biography, Epoch (1927), was written by his son Percy MacKaye. |
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