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In the 1910s the American theater, long dominated by melodramas, dictatorial producers (most of whom were artless magnates), and an audience more drawn by stars-preferably Britishthan good scripts, was finally ready to establish its own identity. The change had begun in the late nineteenth century with a generation of earnest though ultimately ineffective playwrights: James A. Herne, Bronson Howard, David Belasco, Augustus Thomas, Clyde Fitch, and William Vaughn Moody. Belasco's experiments with lighting, set construction, and special effects made the American theater equal and, in some ways, superior to the European theater. The American innovations of the nineteenth century and the dramas of Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and George Bernard Shaw brought more of the next generation's talent to the theater. George Jean Nathan, Barrett H. Clark, Joseph Wood Krutch, Alexander Woollcott, Kenneth Macgowan, Heywood Broun, and Burns Mantle formed a critical battery willing to demand and capable of appreciating good drama.
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