The Simple Stage: Its Origins in the Modern American Theater by Arthur Feinsod; Greenwood Press, 1992

Cheney contrasts Anglin's successful productions with one in the same theater by actress/manager Maude Adams, another important figure in the revivalist movement. Adams, argues Cheney, resorted to illusionistic thinking with As You Like It by transplanting a forest to create Arden and blocking out the theater's facade with thousands of yards of blue cheesecloth. Anglin's productions, in comparison, were highly simplified with few accessories and, rather than trying to block out the theater's skene, Anglin used it as the principal scenic element. Cheney identifies Anglin as one of the "first to revolt against the inartistic naturalism of the average American production."

And her approach was not just reviving old solutions; she knew about and became an early advocate of the new simple stages in Europe. She synthesized what she knew about the ancient Greek and Elizabethan production conventions with the new ideas and images from Edward Gordon Craig and Max Reinhardt in her effort to translate the spirit of the Greeks and Shakespeare classics for modern audiences. In 1911 she witnessed Max Reinhardt's production of Oedipus Rex in Europe and learned from him not only how to do that particular play, but also aspects of how to modernize the classics while maintaining their essential spirit.

From 1908 to 1920, two actress/managers were displaying simple stages in reviving Shakespeare's original performance conditions: Maude Adams, who, before becoming a director of Shakespeare, had already become a cult figure in the title role of J. M. Barrie Peter Pan, and Margaret Anglin who, as we have seen, had already become well known for her Greek revivals. Shakespearean studies, like classical studies, found a happy home in the American university, so it is not surprising that key productions of the Elizabethan revival would occur in a college setting.

In 1908, the Harvard English Department invited Maude Adams to campus to present a Shakespearean comedy in the Elizabethan manner. Originally they planned to perform As You Like It, but they later changed to Twelfth Night, with Adams as Viola. It was presented in Harvard's Sanders Theater on a facsimile Elizabethan stage. Writing in 1910, Eaton recalls the Adams Twelfth Night, criticizing it for being too bare and stark. Adams built a protruding thrust and placed boxes on stage for audience members. Other scenic accessories were kept to a bare minimum. Eaton contends that the production fell short, partly because the acting was as "barren" as the stage. Eaton also admits his preference for Corbin A Winter's Tale (which he reviews in the same article) because it captured, with its sumptuous costumes and tapestries, the Elizabethan love for "bright and beautiful things," whereas Adams's production (and Ben Greet's revivals) were altogether too drab.

Adams's stage was not so bare as to avoid illusionistic touches altogether. In order to recreate the outdoor Elizabethan theater inside Sanders Theater, an indoor theater, Adams and her Harvard counterparts painted a blue sky with clouds and hung it over the stage. The same illusionistic tendencies evident in her As You Like It production in the Hearst Greek Theatre reappeared in this one. Evidently she had not yet freed herself from the illusionistic and painterly traditions she inherited.

Eaton identifies three American non-Shakespearean production settings utilizing, albeit in primitive ways, greater suggestiveness and less literal detail: Charles Frohman's "illusive" Chantecler designed by John Alexander and J. Monroe Hewlett for the actress/manager Maude Adams; Hamilton Bell's depiction of a spare convent for Sister Beatrice for the New Theatre; and the New Theatre's The Blue Bird, also designed by Bell. In the case of the The Blue Bird ( 1910), the New Theatre stumbled upon stage simplification. The production began in a large theater, then moved to the smaller Majestic Theatre.

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