Theatre Journal

In her introduction to this compelling book, Amy Koritz contends that consumerism was the vehicle that drove the decade of the 1920s. The material goods that flooded a previously frugal and socially responsible citizenry allowed for shifts in social status. Technological expertise and advertising skills became more important, as they enticed the dwellers of a vertically rising—both architecturally and economically—urban population. Consumerism allowed for the assimilation of immigrant and minority populations and encouraged self-expression for many whose lives had previously been proscribed by limited roles, with women emerging as a specific target of advertising. In six persuasive chapters, Koritz moves adroitly between sociological developments and their underlying causes to examine the role of the arts in these developments.

Chapter 1 introduces Koritz’s guiding metaphor: “Drama and the Rhythm of Work in the 1920s.” Rhythm, contends Koritz, defines the 1920s in collective memory, but it is neither singular nor simplistic. She discusses the effects of both “good” and “bad” rhythms: the synchronicity between man and machine, the toll of the adjustment to the “mismatch of self and work” (29) engendered by industrialization, and the different expectations for (presumably) emotionally directed women, whose rhythms were understood as more organic than mechanized. While the dramatists examined in this chapter (the team of Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman, Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, and Sophie Treadwell) all treated the rhythms of work, they also highlighted “the incompatibility of modern work with narratives of [End Page 320] the self that sustain commitments to family and community” (38).

Chapter 2 is devoted to Rachel Crothers, creator of “flapper plays” that focused on the effects of consumerism and new expressions of individuality and morality in the decade. Koritz examines the balance in these plays between contrived happy endings and poignant portrayals of young women’s actual identity choices. As style became available to all women, with advertising promoting choice in order to create demand, Crothers exposed the conflicts young women faced in finding their place in the new decade; her flappers represented a new model of marriage, echoing the choices offered by consumer culture. Koritz’s highly innovative explication of style here makes an important contribution to modernist studies, complementing Judith Brown’s recent Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form.

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on dance. In “More than Rhythm: The Charleston,” Koritz contrasts the structured rhythm of mechanization to the liberating rhythm of the Charleston, with its African American jazz undertones. The anxiety produced by the dance craze, she argues, was representative of increased class and race awareness, since the Charleston was one of the most obvious examples of the “mounting opportunities for urban cultural miscegenation” (65). Radically different from previous norms of dance, the Charleston was suspect as a link to youthful rebellion, and especially to female physicality, read as sexuality. Jazz dancing became a target of virulent attacks that warned of the dissipating effects of its rhythm on physical, spiritual, and mental faculties. The dancing female body needed protection: women “like buildings . . . are not constructed to endure such strain” as the Charleston subjects them to, pronounced American Weekly in 1926 (81–82). Koritz skillfully explores these critiques of the Charleston, including a comparison to classical dance and the contrasting of “primitive” African American jazz and the symphonic jazz of white musicians like orchestra leader Paul Whiteman.

Chapter 4 discusses Martha Graham, who epitomized the contrast between modern people dancing the Charleston and modern dance. Graham, from an affluent middle-class background, seized the elitist role of the artiste previously found only in ballet. Her techniques of breathing and pelvic contraction are examined in detail. Most importantly, however, Koritz asserts that, in direct contrast to the Charleston, the rhythm, motivation, and “duty” of Graham’s dance is internal, “arising organically from an inner compulsion or ideal rather than as responses to external factors such as music or narrative” (91). Graham set out to create a modernist dance genre...