“The Disagreeable Theatre Hat”: Fashion, Class, and Audiences in America’s Gilded Age

Watch video of a faculty seminar during Commencement 2014.

Throughout the late 19th century, the large hats that women wore to the theatre blocked the view of spectators sitting behind them prompting outraged newspaper editorials, debate in state legislatures, and on at least one occasion, a physical fight. This talk examines the controversies surrounding the ladies’ theatre hat in order to explore the social norms that governed different aspects of audience members’ experience at the theatre during the economically volatile Gilded Age.

Leah Lowe is an associate professor of theatre and current chair of the theatre department Her artistic interests include acting, directing, and devised performance. Since coming to Vanderbilt in the fall of 2011, she has directed productions of Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, Carlo Gozzi’s The Green Bird and Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. Her scholarly interests include popular American theatre of the nineteenth century, theories of comedy, and gender performance in theatre and drama. Her work has been published in Theatre Topics, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Symposium.