14. Interview by "The Theatre History Podcast"

Peter Schmitz
Hi everybody. For a number of years, one of my favorite podcasts has been The Theatre History Podcast with Mike Lueger, and I was very flattered when Mike got in touch with me the other day and asked me to be an interview subject on his show. He called me back in the middle of May and we talked for quite a while. He edited that down to about an hour-long conversation, which he put on his own podcast and shared the complete version on his own feed, and I highly recommend that you check out all of Mike's episodes. He has done a comprehensive account of theater history over the years.  
 
I've edited the original interview down to about 49-50 minutes. I hope you enjoyed this interview. Mike asked some great questions, and I had a fun time answering them. We'll be back by the end of the month with Part Two of "Forrest of Philadelphia." 

Mike Lueger
Hi and welcome to The Theater History Podcast. I'm Mike Lueger. 

In any history of theater in the United States, New York City looms large over everywhere else, but there's a rich history of live performance in every US city, and few other American metropolitan centers can claim one as long and as influential as Philadelphia's. Now there's a new podcast that's chronically in that city's theatrical history, and today we're joined by its creator.

Peter Schmitz is an actor, dialect coach, teacher and self-described “know-it-all busybody smarty-pants,” who's the host and producer of adventures in theater history. He's an Associate Adjunct Professor at Temple University and his extensive list of acting credits includes many, many shows at the historic Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. 

Peter, thank you for joining us. 

Peter Schmitz
Well, hello, Mike. I'm, I'm thrilled to be here and thanks for asking me onto your show. I've been listening to your podcast for a long time, so I often assign specific episodes of your show to my students when I teach Theater History courses. The one about Iranian ta’ziyeh. And of course, when you. 

Did the interview with Christian DuComb about the history of the Philadelphia Mummers? You know that was right up my alley, as it were. So I just want to fanboy you a little bit, and say like you're you are creating such a great resource. And podcasting is such an accessible format for so many people who want to learn more about Theater History, that I've really used it as a as one of the basic inspirations for my own work. So I'm happy to be here. Really happy. 

Mike Lueger
Well, thank you and I'm really excited to talk about your podcast. It's really wonderful, but let's maybe start with the premise. I mean, why Philadelphia? Yes, you live and you work there, but what's so great about? 

Peter Schmitz
Well, you you could do a similar podcast about any major urban area with with a large theater market, I'm sure. But as you said before, Philadelphia has been an influential theater town in America since the 18th century, and it has retained A robust theater culture ever since then. So, I guess only New York City, certainly. I mean has a similar impact on outsized impact and you could go to Boston as well or perhaps Charleston, Washington, DC, Baltimore, other cities . .  But at its beginning, Philadelphia was more influential and more important than any of those places. And because it got such an early start, unlike most American cities, Philadelphia theatre history has many different eras. It has a deep history. It has several middle periods and a more interesting and dynamic recent one, so in terms of an overall narrative it gives you a lot of transitions to, to track and comparisons to make. 

They track so closely with what's going on in American history, what's going on in world cultural history, what's going on in American urban history, and it covers the history of the entire country. But on the other hand, it's not too much. I mean, it's a sizable urban area, over 2 million people at its height. It's somewhat less than that now in the city proper, but in terms of the large urban area, it's still millions of people, but it's enough for one person like myself. It's graspable. If you were trying to do something similar about New York, right, you couldn't because there's so much history, that that there's too much! If you're going to do a podcast about history of New York, well, that would take the rest of your life. You  have to narrow down your topic in some way or just leave out a lot of details. But with Philadelphia, it's manageable. You can cover it comprehensively and yet you can still go into to all the fascinating details and the real specific cool stories that you find out. And as I mentioned in my very first episode of the podcast, I I'm not a native to the city, I'm not a Philadelphian, I I moved here in the middle of my life, so I'm discovering these stories. That's the other thing. I'm telling them to my audience as I find out about them. I'm learning more and more as I go along and Philadelphia is a place that reveals its deep stories a little grudgingly. Frankly, it doesn't come out and tell you them right away, except for the Revolutionary War period, which it's always wanted to talk about, and especially ever since the Bicentennial back in 1976, it's learned how to mark it explicitly in terms of tourism. But Philadelphia doesn't crow about the rest of its history, and therefore most people elsewhere in the country are less familiar with the rest of Philadelphia's history. They're just familiar with that. One specific historical period they always want to know about Benjamin Franklin, but they're not always aware how much else there is.  
 
And the other thing I've discovered as I've gotten more and more into formal research, there are such great institutional resources here in this city, there's the the Pennsylvania Historical Society, there's the the Free Library of Philadelphia. There's the Library Company of Philadelphia, which is a separate thing, and then really old institutions like the American Philosophical Society and the Philadelphia Athenaeum, there's the Art Museum. There's the Academy of Fine Arts. There's big academic libraries at Temple, and certainly the University of Pennsylvania. 

Mike Lueger
Right. 

Peter Schmitz
And all of them have amazing resources and archives, and the staff there are really open and eager to bring their archival material out. And there's a lot of untapped resources available about theater history. And you, if you ask, they say, “ohh yeah, we've got this pile of stuff over here. Nobody ever asked to see it.” So here's the deep secret: that Philadelphians love theater have always been intrigued by it, and so there's a lot of stuff here about it once you get past the early Quaker period, that's always been there. So it's just a topic that has things available to learn about things available to pass on and it's stuff that's not widely known, so I feel like I'm breaking new ground. 

Mike Lueger
Yeah. So you were just talking about how everyone always wants to talk about the 18th century and the Revolutionary Period and how there's so many more stories to be told about theater in Philadelphia. But I think I have to start with the 18th century, I think we have to go there. Can you tell us a little bit about how the story of early theater there, how the story goes ? But also maybe a little bit about what's similar to the early history of theater in the rest of America. 

Peter Schmitz
Right. Well, that's my whole Episode Number Two so I Refer you to that, but basically to to sum it up the Early European settlement along the East Coast of North America after they displaced the, you know, the Native American population was largely especially in the Middle Atlantic States and in the New England States, was deeply Protestant and often a strain of Protestants that were deeply resistant to theater. If you're up in the Boston area, perhaps you're familiar with how you know the Puritans of that area. Often deliberately, you know, stamped out theater or, or tried to keep it out of their area. But here in Philadelphia, of course, we have the interesting example of Quakerism that it was a city that was founded by William Penn as a haven for Quakers coming from England and other parts of America, Quakers were fleeing New England. A persecution in New England in the late 17th century, and it was set up as a place that was to be a Quaker paradise, and it was made explicit in its founding documents that theater was something that was not welcome. It was specifically forbidden. So, for many years, there really wasn't any theater here. And if it ever did show up, if anyone tried to set up a a booth outside the city limits to put on a show and do some rope dancing and tell some jokes the authorities would rush to stamp it out because this was taking people away from the sober and serious practices, and the Quakers were not just, you know, they were just bluenoses. They were just being mean. This was important to them because a theater was a place of social distinctions - theater was a place where you could buy more expensive boxes and sit in the nice seats, or you could sit in the common seats and the shows that it common British repertory at the time was often about aristocracy and people, you know, marrying into wealthy families and this was all things that the Quakers just were not interested in, and they regarded it as something that was distracting to the mind of a serious Christian. 

And that since they were trying to recreate the early Christian Church in their mind, they felt that they were refighting the battles of the early Christians against the the Roman and Greek theatre. So it was something that was actively discouraged. But by the middle of the 18th century, things began to change. The Quakers began to lose political power. 

As their numbers became significantly less in terms of the overall population and as the power structure began to be more run by people who were sympathetic to the Church of England and or were interested in Enlightenment ideas. The Benjamin Franklin type of people who are founding philosophical societies, and we're forming workingmen's libraries, and we're interested in joining the larger cultural conversation that was going on in the European and certainly in the English-speaking world. And people wanted to start to see plays and to have plays and to do plays, and we begin to see touring companies coming over from England to begin with, and setting up shop here in Philadelphia and building theaters and then putting on plays in those theaters and they wouldn't stay for long because they're just it wasn't that big enough of a city by that point. It's the largest city on the eastern seaboard, but there's not enough to be here all the time. So they would build a theater here, and then they would travel on to other places to New York or down into the West Indies. But during the Revolutionary  War, for instance, it’s famously the Continental Congress! One of the first things it does is to forbid the production of plays, you know, and the during the the war, the American Congress felt that putting on theater was something that was going to distract the troops distract the people  . . it would . . It was a unproductive economic activity, so it was explicitly forbidden. 

It wasn't until the 1790s, really. The late 1780s, early 1790s, that theatrical activity was once again legally allowed and began to flourish here and find a willing audience. And I always credit George Washington great deal. The fact that George Washington just loved going to the theater loved going to see plays. It gave it a lot of social distinction, it became part of the the social world here in Philadelphia, certainly during the 1790s, when Philadelphia was the capital and Congress was right there. But literally next door to the Chestnut St. Theater, the time. And it gave them something to do. In the evenings. It was part of the cultural experience of being in Philadelphia. 

At the beginning of the century of the 18th century, you wouldn't have said Philadelphia was going to be a place that was going to be a theatrical center by the end of the 18th century. It certainly was the leading Center for theater activity in the new United States. 

Mike Lueger
You have this wonderful sequence of episodes too, that are focused on the circus, and I'm curious why expand your focus like that. What do you get from thinking more broadly about the history of performance? 

Peter Schmitz
Well, because circus at that time, as you know, was an extension of the theatrical world. It wasn't a separate Entertainment category - what has happened over the between then and now is that circus has become a different thing. It's become its own entertainment style and mostly heavily involved with, you know, exhibition of animals and with acrobatics and with huge travelling shows, that's its own distinct genre. But in the early years of the circus, as it developed in England and France and elsewhere in the late 18th century, it was part of the theater world. And part of that was because, of course, the theater world was restricted in England to just patent houses in London, and usually to one or two officially approved houses in other provincial cities. So, the circus was everything else. Everything else that people wanted to see and most particularly, and the word circus itself, comes from the fact that it was an equestrian circus. It was about horses traveling in a circle, and it soon began to incorporate theatrical elements. It brought in dramatic stories involving men on horseback, and it had elaborate pantomimes and almost every circus that was built in London and Paris in the late 18th and early 19th century had a big formal poscenium stage as well, there would be a riding ring in the middle, but there would be this stage and they would put on both equestrian shows and plays. And certainly in Philadelphia,  the New Theater - the Chestnut St. Theatre - always felt it whenever a circus came to town. You'll feel it if another circus come to town. Well, that means competition. They it was regarded as direct competition for the presentations of plays and plays. The theater itself was often more circus-like than we tend to think of it. We tend to think of everyone putting on Hamlet or Othello or Richard the 3rd all the time, but they weren’t!  

There were people coming on stage to do rope-walking and there were animal acts and sometimes horses were being pulled onto the stage as well - because the circus was so popular the theater world - both in America and England - often realized that they had to bring horses onto the stage. So, by the early 19th century you had you had a whole genre to, you know, called “Hippodrama.” Drama with horses, where they would have horses coming onto the stage, which is very exciting. 

As we know, animals on the stage as being part of the dramatic action could be really exciting, so they were not two separate worlds. Theater doesn't become a separate world really until the mid-19th century, but Philadelphia itself still became a circus center. There's the story of little-known story of Adam Forepaugh. Adam Forepaugh’s Circus - which ran out of Philadelphia in the 1860s, 70s and 80s - was a big competitor to the Barnum’s Circus and eventually was bought out by the Barnum and Bailey.  

Philadelphia has always been a circus town. The two are tied together. I really had to mention it. I would be neglectful of my duties if I didn't talk about it. 

Mike Lueger
The circus you're starting at the time of this recording to work your way in the podcast into the 19th century, and I wonder if you, you might tell us a little bit of what's ahead. I guess it's not a spoiler because it's already. History what goes on in the 1800s? I know that's a big period of time, but what are the sort of the general trends in the next cell? 

Peter Schmitz
Right. Well, there's a huge growth in industrialization. Mostly Philadelphia becomes a industrial town. It is no longer a it. It still is a shipping center. It had been, you know, the largest seaport, but as as New York and Baltimore take away a lot of that shipping traffic because they have better harbors. 

Philadelphia becomes an industrial center of enormous proportions for various other reasons. Because of that, Philadelphia was surging in population, though never as much as New York. And it consolidates. In 1854, the whole of Philadelphia County becomes Philadelphia City. Before that, the city of Philadelphia was just this strip of land in between the Delaware and the school rivers. But the population is already spread out - well to the North and South of that. So, they realize that they need to consolidate, which they do long before New York does its own consolidation. So you have by the middle of the 19th century a huge growing money to elites, people who own and run all these factories and industries. 

And you have a surging immigrant population and a huge growing working and middle class who are eager for entertainment and the theater industry builds up along with other industries. I'm always trying to stress to people that theater is an economic phenomenon as well as a cultural phenomenon. It doesn't exist in a cultural Petri dish all of its own. It's part of the society that it exists in, and of course, that's why I'm always trying to bring in the larger social, economic, political trends as as it influences the theater world. But in the 19th century right here. 

And in the middle of this you have three great theater houses. There's the older Chestnut St. Theatre. There's the Walnut Street Theatre and the Arch Street Theatre. Those three companies sort of vie with each other, and they rise and fall overtime.  
 
The other big thing, of course, that that happens directly out of Philadelphia is the Great Edwin Forrest, the.The son of Philadelphia, who forms himself into the first Great American actor, and he has his debut at what is now the Walnut St. Theatre. We have the theatre bill. He's just called a young gentleman of Philadelphia. And he shows himself up well and he starts his career as a major classical theater actor. He's always bringing his shows back to Philadelphia and always mining the popular Philadelphia theater market and putting on more and more elaborate shows. And he eventually builds his home on N Broad Street where he dies - eventually. 

But - so, you could talk about many other stories in the 19th century. You talk about the great Louisa Lane drew, the founder of the whole Barrymore family, the theatrical family that comes out of Philadelphia. You talk about the Booths, the, the Booth family has a long involved in Philadelphia. Edwin Booth owns the Walnut Street theater with his brother-in-law, who's married to his sister Asia - runs it for a long amount of time.  
 
The Minstrel shows are very big element of Philadelphia theatrical culture in the 19th century and the other thing I'm finding the other thing as I look more into the 19th century - and this is looking ahead to what I'm, as a preview, as to what I'm gonna be working on -  is that a lot of theaters burned down. There are a lot of fires. I've got so much material on theater fires in Philadelphia in the 19th century. 

Just dozens of them burned down, some of them multiple times, and they're just astounding stories about how these fires start, how the local fire companies respond to them, how they are immediately rebuilt or not rebuilt. You know, often when I'm doing walking tours, which I sometimes do if I do for my theater classes or for other reasons, I'll give a walking tour of Philadelphia theater history, and I'll find myself walking by a corner and sort of waving my hands like, yeah, there was a huge theater here was by it burned down. Huge fire. Lots of people died. And I started to ask myself “why? Why do I have to keep waving my hand at places where something used to be?” 

And it turns out there's a story there. So, then I start to look at the theaters, which are still there from the 19th century, like the Academy of Music or the Walnut St. Theatre. And I go, why is this still here? Well, basically because it didn't burn down. So why didn't it burn down the fire seems like an almost inevitable fate of every major theatre structure. So why didn't this one burn down and finding out why that is - is just another interesting story. 

Mike Lueger
It's so interesting to hear you talk about these theater buildings sort of almost building up the geography of the city. Some of the buildings in that geography are still there. Some of them are you know, as you're saying, long gone. And I'm wondering, as you give these walking tours or share some of this stuff, I know on the Twitter account that you've got affiliated with this show. Are there any particular favorite buildings of yours? Just places that whether they're still here today, or long gone, or really stick out for you and what makes them so special? 

Peter Schmitz
Well, let's talk about the ones that are still there. The the Walnut Street Theater, which I'm just starting to get into the history of is still there. Of course, the Americas, the oldest theater, and it's been remade and reconfigured many times. But it's in the same spot. And if you go inside the Walnut St. Theatre, there's there's history everywhere, all over the walls. The management of the current Walnut St. Theatre is really interested in maintaining it not only as a living and working theater company in a theater venue, but is so aware of the longer narrative in Philadelphia theater history. If you go inside the lobby, of course, you'll see immediately the whole lobby space is dominated by this huge marble statue of Edwin Forrest, which they've set up by one of the stairways. It it used to be. I think it was in the lobby of. 

Of the the home for old actors that he he set up in his will after he died, but it's in addition to the statue. There's if you look on the walls there's photographs and playbills and mementos from 200 years of Philadelphia theater history. So that's certainly one of my very favorites. And if you can go around backstage, you can see in the walls of the theater itself you can see how it was. 

Changed and revised over the years. There's some very old brickwork back there. Yeah, in terms of other places, certainly. The other thing which I've already mentioned is the the Academy of Music, which is on Locust and Broad Street. Now. This is an astounding building. This is an icon of theatrical architecture and it looks very much like it always did. Unlike the Walnut, it hasn't been revised so much, it's still looks pretty much as it always did. The interior, the ornate interior of this place is an amazing example of a mid 19th century Opera House, which is what it was designed to be. 

The the name of the building is a little bit deceptive because it sounds like a place where they only do concerts (and of course the Philadelphia Orchestra for years did give their concerts from the stage of the Academy of Music). But it's has always been always been a theatrical space as well. In fact, one of the reasons that it was. constructed in the mid 19th century by the burgeoning mercantile wealthy class of Philadelphia was as a home for grand opera performances that the old Chestnut St. Theater are on 6th and Chestnut was no longer adequate for that, and that a proper city had a grand opera space. So if you want to see, you'll throw a tour. If you want to see "Norma," if you want to see Wagnerian opera, we need a space that allows that. But it's always been the home for for plays and Big Shakespeare presentations and touring companies coming through. I was just posting on Twitter today about the great Eleonora Duse coming through town in the 1920s. Late in her life and career, and doing a production of Ibsen's "Ghosts" in Italian on the on the stage of the Academy of Music. 

More recently, of course, it's become the place where touring Broadway productions, when they come through town, will play the Academy of Music because it's the biggest space and the one that producers can make the most money from. Frankly. But it's it's such a. 

Huge and exciting theatrical space to be part of, although I must say as a tall person I find the the seating space very constricting. I'm I my there's no room for my legs, but in addition to that there's other great theater building which still survive. There's the Metropolitan Opera, which is on N Broad Street. So the north of of City Hall. 

Which was built by Oscar Hammerstein (the First) as a rival to the Academy of Music, although it soon went bust, it's still there. It's recently been renovated as a concert space. There's the Plays and Players theater which is in the Rittenhouse Square area, which is this jewel box of an early 20th century little theater. It was built by wealthy people as a non commercial space where theater could be small and intimate, and they could do plays like Ibsen and Strindberg and O'Neill. 

And it it still exists and it still is a working theatrical space. There's other big houses which were built when Philadelphia was a a tryout town for Broadway shows in the early and mid 20th century, like the what is now called the Merriam Theater. But it was originally the Sam S Shubert Theater, just next to the Academy of Music, there's the Forrest Theater, which is on Walnut St.. Still there - not used as often for Broadway shows, unfortunately, because apparently it's backstage space is a little restricted, but it's gorgeous, gorgeous. Well preserved example of early 20th century Broadway house. So there are amazing spaces, huge spaces like that and smaller spaces. You might if you went out to the suburbs, you could look at the Hedgerow Theatre where Jasper Deeter began a theater company in the in the 1920s, and they converted this old grist mill building, and it's still a working a theater company. Or you could look at the Theater of the Living Arts, which is still there on South Street.

But there's there's other places which of course are are gone. And I'm going to have a whole section about that about why this these amazing theaters that were built in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, and I'll just name a few, they will. The names won't mean anything to people who don't know something about Philadelphia history. But there was not only the Arch Street Theatre but the Garrick, the Adelphi. The Broad Street Theater across from the Academy of Music. The Keith. The Erlanger - this enormous, beautiful building on the Market Street. All of these elaborate palaces with marble colonnades and huge auditoriums and gracious lounges for everyone and most of them are just torn down just . . just discarded in the middle of 20th century. They're turned into parking lots, as people lose confidence in America's urban spaces in the middle of the 20th century. It's part of the the Post World War II change in America's relationship towards the cities, and Philadelphia begins to lose population. 

It begins to deindustrialized in the mid 20th century and the theater industry begins to deindustrialize, too. So if you look at these former huge palaces of American theater and think, well, why? Why didn't someone preserve them? And why are they gone? Why do people not care about them? Why do people, the real estate moguls, just look on them as wasted an empty space? Well, it's because we have to remember that the theater industry is an industry. It's just like a great factory building. If it's not producing goods well, then it's not economically viable and unless you come up with an economic reason, the real estate can't survive well. People will be looking for excuses to let them degrade and then tear them down. 

So that is part of the the story I want to tell too. Why do we lose confidence in what we already had this heritage that we already had within the city? And why do we need to reimagine it and recreate it in late 20th and early 21st century. 

Mike Lueger
You're talking about these buildings, some of which have seen multiple centuries. They've been around for for a very long time. I'm curious if you've gotten any sense of how theater going as a thing that people do socially or for artistic fulfillment or whatever, how has that experience changed over the centuries from the early days of of, like the chestnut St. theater through into the 20th century? What is? What has it been like over the centuries to go see a show in Philly? 

Peter Schmitz
Well, in the early days of the Chestnut St. Theater, as many theater historians have remarked, theater is a a place where a social class is intermix, and where where the upper classes and the middle classes and the working classes all go into the same place together. And all need to be appeased and all need to have their interests met or is waged or acknowledged in some way. And it isn't until the the mid 19th century when all the the social uproars that tend to take place in public spaces like that begin to shift where the the more moneyed classes, or the the middle classes we're looking for, respectable places, are starting to build theaters and create theater spaces where .    which don't have so much chance for social unrest. So you'll see that in the late 19th century, theaters begin to market themselves as either places where they're meant for mainly male entertainment gents only, or whether they say this is a family resort. Whether we will discourage the the the sale of liquors will discourage prostitution,

But by the early 20th century theater going is still a pastime for a huge percentage of the American public. When the Spanish influenza hits here in the 1918 and it hits Philadelphia particularly hard. Famously, everyone's going to theaters - and shutting down theaters is just a mind-blowing experience. Why would you close down theaters? Everyone has the right to go to a theater, so it's similar to the debates we see now about masking and social distancing, because theater is such a widespread activity for everyone, but as the American entertainment market changes and movies gain first place within theaters and then in purpose-built theaters for movies. And then of course, the fact that everyone has a screen in their home, a television, so you don't need to go out, you don't need to be among other people in order to be entertained. And the social aspect of entertainment begins to shift. So, there was recently a sort of a meme going around online about Philadelphia, where someone had done research about the things that you, you know about, Philadelphia, sort of a big word cloud and things that were big, you know, “hoagies” and “cheesesteaks” and “The Flyers” and “The Phillies” and “The Eagles” – Huge! But I saw that even when they were getting down to things that were more obscure, very few of them were about Philadelphia cultural events. You know, if you mentioned the Art Museum, you're talking about the steps because it's the “Rocky steps”. But it doesn't mention the art inside. It didn't mention the Academy of Music. It didn't mention the Philadelphia Orchestra. It didn't mention the walnut Street Theatere. Certainly not other companies that are in existence now that, like the Arden Theater, the Wilma Theater. But you’d think they would. How could you mention the “Philadelphia Theater Company”? So, it's going to be a challenge for all of us now in the early 21st Century to have people begin to continue to see theater as a necessary and a required part of their cultural and social lives is something that makes the difference for about living where you are.  
 
Because here's the thing about my podcast, I think. All theater is local, in a sense, right? People say “all politics is local,” but all theater is local. You have to experience it locally. You can nowadays go online and watch performances coming in from Berlin and London and other places in the country. But to really be in the presence of other people, you have to go somewhere nearby. You have to be able to travel to it, and the experience of seeing something locally becomes part of the texture of your own life and the texture of your own social experience. The texture of your social relationships and the becomes part of  your own personal narrative: “Well, I remember that day when I went to that place and saw that show with these people.” So, because that happens locally, you know the context of theater in your local community in your particular urban area matters, and you can't just throw it in with a larger cultural conversation about what's being created elsewhere in the world. It has to be what's happening quite close to you. So I want to be able to continue to reinforce the importance of that in my podcast. 

Mike Lueger
You talk about the social nature of theater-going - the importance of it - as kind of this community endeavor. I'm also curious - because Philadelphia is this city with this wide range, diverse groups of people, and of course unfortunately also it sees much of the same racial division, racial injustice that characterizes. 

Peter Schmitz
Oh yes. Oh yeah. 

Mike Lueger
So much in history, I am very interested in hearing a little bit about how some of these particular communities have expressed themselves in a theater, what they have brought to the Philadelphia theater scene beyond some of the, maybe the usual historical suspects, the dead white guys like Edwin Forrest. 

Peter Schmitz
Edwin Forrest is a is a great example for many things, so I don't . . .  I don't want to underplay him, but “that is a great question!” (as they say), because in the 19th century, at the same time that Philadelphia is one of the origin points for the practice of minstrelsy and minstrel shows, it's also  . . . in the 19th century, Philadelphia has the largest urban population of African Americans in the country and both high and more popular forms of entertainment flourishes here that that cater to that community that come from that community, especially as the 19th century progresses, if there was an African American theater artist or musical artist who wanted to find the largest audience he or she possibly could? They would have to come to Philadelphia.  . .  There weren't as many black people in New York as there were in Philadelphia, so you had to come here. And the Academy of Music, interestingly, especially in the 1870s and 80s, becomes the place where that audience can meet that level of performers. One of my planned episodes coming up, I'm going to talk about an actor named John Arnaud, who comes from New York to do a one night only all black production of Richard the Third in 1887 at the Academy of Music. And he specifically is targeting the African American audience In Philadelphia, which mostly was centered at that time, not far from the Academy of Music, in what was called the 7th Ward along South Street, just a few blocks to the South. So it was it was a very convenient venue for that community to find that that type of audience. But eventually, of course, more popular forms of entertainment spring up to serve that community and in the early 20th century we find things like the Standard theatre and the Royale Theater along South St. which catered to African American vaudeville, and African American touring artists. 

The Nicholas Brothers, famously Harold and Fayard Nicholas, grow up across the street from the Standard Theater on South St. and begin to study dancing routines from all the artists that come through there. Their parents were in the house band at the Standard Theater and the Lincoln Theater. This huge, beautiful building, which was built by an African American businessman in about 1920, which eventually becomes the venue for the Lafayette Players out of New York. A lot of that, of course, then diminishes again with the general crash and deindustrialization of the mid 20th century. But in the late 20th century, the Freedom Theater, which is housed in Edwin Forrest's old mansion on N Broad St. becomes a formidable Center for black cultural expression as it begins to develop in the 1960s and its theater school becomes a really essential community resource where African American youth who are interested in learning more about how to become performers, they meet with teachers and dance and theater and art in that space, and it is for a long time it had its own theater company led by Walter Dallas in the 90s and early 2000s, and it becomes the home for many artists who are presently well-known names like Leslie Odom or Coleman Domingo come out of Philadelphia and go through that school there at the Freedom Theatre.  
 
And as Philadelphia has continued to change, it's now a got a hugely diverse population. And theater companies are increasingly trying to acknowledge that engage with that present material and find artists who are representing that change in Philadelphia's population. There are new Latino theatre groups, there are Asian theater groups. And one, by the way  . . .  one aspect of non-Western theater history that I've really been very honored to be included in is the Philadelphia Chinese Opera Society. I like to get it a plug for them because they're run in order to preserve this important Chinese cultural tradition channeled through centuries of Chinese history is essentially become sort of canonical in the early 20th century as it's performed in Shanghai and elsewhere in China, and now it's an important cultural element for a lot of the Chinese immigrants or the Chinese expatriate community here in Philadelphia. And they put on fully-produced shows of Beijing Opera on stages. Usually on suburban stages, but sometimes also in central Philadelphia. And I've always been honored to be asked to be included and to try and promote them and learn more about them. So, there's more going on in, in many different areas of cultural expression here. 

Mike Lueger
What about the last century or so? We've mentioned New York City a couple times in this episode about Philadelphia, and I have to imagine that has some influence on the development of theater in Philadelphia, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries. What does it mean to be so close, relatively speaking to Broadway? 

Peter Schmitz
Well, that's been both an asset and a curse, right? And it this goes right back to the beginning. Even in the late 18th century, when the Chestnut St. Theater, the New Theater was the leading theater company in America, famously the great tragic actor Thomas Cooper, who was a big draw, used to try to perform in Philadelphia and New York on sequential nights, so he would do his show in Philadelphia and then, you know, ride hell for leather for New York, 95 miles away to the northeast. 

He'd have a series of horses set up so that he could do the stunt essentially of playing in Philadelphia one night and then New York the next night. And as the transportation has improved over the years between these two huge urban centers. 

Of course, it becomes easy to go from Philadelphia to New York, see a show, and vice versa. That's why New York theater companies often would have a, you know, tryout in Philadelphia if they wanted to knock a few kinks out of the show. If you've ever seen the movie 42nd Street, there's that moment where they go “Kids, the show’s not quite ready - we're going to the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia.!” Everyone in the cast goes “Awww, Philadelphia!” But they go. It was an accepted place. You could go, you know, quickly to get your show into shape because there were big houses there and there was an eager audience here to see it. But it also means that young Philadelphia performers could get to the Big Apple to go to an audition to try and boost their career was easy to do. You could do it for a morning's train ride, and today there's still actors and playwrights and other theater artists, are moving between New York and Philadelphia all the time, because now with the New York real estate market being so insane as it is, I mean, Philadelphia's has its own problems, but it's certainly more still more affordable than New York. So you have theatre artists moving from New York to the Philadelphia area because of just the basic quality of life issues and some people who work regularly in New York have their main home here in Philadelphia and even will commute to New York to do shows if necessary. You can do that. So, it's being close to New York means that you're close to what has traditionally been the theater center. So, you can be so aware of what is going on and you can go and see international artists if they're coming only to New York. But often those artists are making the easy trip to come to Philadelphia as well. 

Mike Lueger
We've been talking about all this history and kind of one of the running themes of this podcast over the years has been kind of what do we do with the history of theater. It's you can't watch it the way that you can do with most film history, unless somebody records it. It's gone. That's it. What does it mean for you as somebody who is both a teacher and a working artist, just to be engaging with this history, to know something about it, to share some of it with other people. Why? Why does that matter?  

Peter Schmitz
Well, I've always personally worked from a historical perspective - perhaps because I've always been interested in History. I was a History Major in college rather than a Theater Major. It just was part of my method because it was part of who I was. It was acknowledging my own particular personal strength, as a way to ground my own performance in a deep immersion in the historical period, if a play was set in a historical period, or if I was working on the work of a particular playwright, that I'd want a wide exposure to the life and works of that playwright. And as I began to become a teacher, I began to use those methods and strengths in how I would if I was teaching a theater history class, of course. But even if I'm teaching an acting class, I often would want to make my students aware that this comes out of a tradition, this comes out of a larger body of work, and you can build that into your own performance. You can make that part of the immediate moment that you can use theater as a place to make historical awareness more alive, more present for people than any documentary ever will. It is a really exciting aspect of it.  
 
What's great for me is that a podcast really allows me to integrate all these different aspects of myself. 

Really, I must say, for the first time in my life! So, I've been a historian. I've been an actor, I've been a teacher, I've I've been a dialect coach and I've always been fascinated by learning more about my local history, my local environment . . .  and I've been interested for some years now in podcasting so this all comes together. I'm doing them all at once, so I'm doing history of the theater. I'm reenacting moments from plays as I can. I'm using different dialects as I'm able to bring them into the story, and I'm doing them all at once. So, nothing I've ever done in my life has ever had the same sense of complete integration. Therefore, the same sense of complete satisfaction that I have with this particular podcast and I hope that comes through in in the work that I'm putting out and at this point,  
 
By the way, I have to mention that I am not alone in this podcast I have a partner and that is my dear friend Christopher Mark Colucci, who is a sound designer and a musician and a photographer. He's a Renaissance man of Philadelphia theater and he's been involved with the Philadelphia Theatre world for a lot longer than I have. And when I thought about making this podcast, the first person I thought of was Chris. 

Because one of the things that I was most aware of that I didn't have experiences in was in producing sound to share with others in the technical aspects of recording and sound editing and integrating sound design elements into what I wanted to do because I wanted to be more than just my own voice talking. And I called up Chris and he was so excited about it and immediately said yes. And o what I do is I record my portion . . . I do all the writing, I do the research. And I send the voice files to Chris and then he adds music, he adds transitions, he adds treatments to it in terms of the sound, and then he sends it back to me and I'm able to post it online. But he's an important collaborator.  
 
And I I wanted to involve members of the current Philadelphia theater, seeing folks like Chris in the work that I'm doing. And I'm hoping in the future to use other members of the local acting community, I certainly can't do all the voices all the time! There are times when just my own voice characterizations are going to get a bit stale, so I'm sort of bringing in people who are currently working in the Philadelphia theater scene to provide some of the work in it, and I'm hoping to make sure that it's not just about the Past, but it's also about the Present and the Future of what's going on in Philadelphia. 

Mike Lueger
Speaking of the Future, I am very curious how you want people to engage with the podcast. Maybe where you see it going in the future and maybe just as a sort of final thought how you want to see your fellow artists, scholars, students engaging with the theatrical past, whether it's through podcasts or other things. I mean, how can we keep bringing it to life in a similar way? 

Peter Schmitz
OK, right. As I discovered when I started teaching at a college level: students don't necessarily want books anymore. They don't. It was a bit of a shock to me - because I most of my education was in the mid to late 20th century and I still have many of the books that were an important part of my education. Certainly from college and grad school.  

But I've I began to notice that  . .  I would begin to see the annoyed looks or exasperated looks or despairing looks from my students - perhaps you've noticed the same thing - partly because books are so expensive. If their textbooks are such an investment, and students' lives are already so stressed economically and their time is already so stressed, so the amount of expense and time out there to put into a book is not necessarily something that they're looking forward to doing, nor do they really want to own books. They're not looking to develop their own physical library. So students today and other actors, they are thrilled when I can point them to resources like your podcast or other podcasts or YouTube stories. You know, they they like audio visual resources, right? Do you find this in your own work? 
 
Mike Lueger
 Oh, absolutely, yeah. 

Peter Schmitz
Right. So, I think [we need] things like that are easily accessible, that are portable, they're inexpensive - and yet they engage the mind! It's not that the students aren't curious. It's not that they don't want to know more, but they prefer this method of intellectual inquiry. So, I'm trying to create the kind of resource that I often felt that I needed as a teacher, and sometimes I could point them to things like I point them to your podcast. I could point them to other historical podcasts that I was aware of. 

And perhaps I can create a higher profile and respect for theater artists that are working in Philadelphia today, and make everyone realize what a deep historical theatre tradition we're coming out of. 

Yeah, I suppose in the in the future I could franchise it. You know, I set, I set it up with this colon in the middle. So this, the podcast is: “Adventures in Theater History, Colon, Philadelphia.” So that seems so limited. And I notice, of course, that the people who - for the moment - the people who download the podcasts are mostly from the Philadelphia area or areas of New Jersey and Delaware that feed into this market. Maybe in the future, I could franchise it! “Adventures in Theater History: Boston,” or “Adventures in theater history: Mexico City,”  “Adventures in Theater History: Montreal”! 

Because in the end, all theater is local and that's true of at every urban center. You have to be there to experience the art form, and to really feel a sense of connection with the history that binds the community together. So, a podcast becomes both a method of exploration and narrative, and also a a repository for the stories of the community. 

But theater historians will continue to break out more from narrating, you know, who did what, what actor was doing what show when - and what playwright was writing what play when - and really advocate for theater being an essential part of the broader historical context of our time that what people are doing in theaters is influenced by what's going on elsewhere in the city that it exists in, and influences the city. Once people leave that theater, it influences how they are involved with the space around them and theater because it is specific to a specific place it has to be a part of people's interior, social and emotional lives in a way that almost no other art form can be. 

Mike Lueger
Peter, thank you so much for joining us. 

Peter Schmitz
Thank you. Thank you. It's been a great honor and a real pleasure for me.