MACGOWAN, KENNETH

(1888-1963)

One of the most influential producers and drama critics between the world wars, Kenneth Macgowan was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University and worked as a dramatic critic for theBoston Evening Transcriptand thePhiladelphia Evening Ledgerbefore becoming the drama critic for theNew York Globein 1919, a position he held until 1923. Macgowan also wrote criticism forVogueandTheatreArts. In 1924, he became a producer when he joined Robert Edmond Jones and Eugene O'Neill in managing theProvince-townPlayhouse in New York. Macgowan's friendship with O'Neill was particularly significant, not only because he produced several of O'Neill's early plays (All God's Chillun Got Wings, Desire Under the Elms,The Fountain, andThe Great God Brown) when they and Jones operated the Greenwich Village Theatre (1925-1927), but because he encouraged O'Neill's inclination to move beyond realism in his plays. Macgowan presented the first New York production of August Strindberg'sSpook Sonatain 1924, as well as a hit revival of Anna Cora Mowatt'sFashion(1924). He produced on Broadway and for motion pictures. His books on theatre, includingThe Theatre of Tomorrow(1921),Continental Stagecraft(1922, with Robert Edmond Jones),Masks and Demons(1923, with Herman Rosse), andFootlights Across America(1929), did much to encourage acceptance of modernist production practices emanating from Europe's stages and ushering in theNew Stagecraft.