Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame, but merely skirted the edges of it. He performed alongside the brightest stars, wrote scores of plays, and toured the United States and England, but he never became a household name. Inspired by this average performer’s life and labor, An Actor’s Tale offers an alternative history of nineteenth-century theater, focusing on the daily rhythms and routines of theatrical life rather than the celebrated people, plays, and exceptional events that tend to dominate histories of US theater and performance. In the process, Hughes asks uncomfortable questions about the existence, predominance, and erasure of White male mediocrity in American culture, both in the past and present. When historians focus only on performers and plays with artistic “merit,” what communities, perspectives, and cultural trends remain invisible? How did men like Watkins advance themselves professionally, despite their mediocrity? Why did they embrace and perpetuate myths like the American Dream, the “self-made man,” and meritocracy, and how have these ideals shaped casting, producing, and celebrity worship in today’s US entertainment industry? 

Ultimately, Hughes reveals how this actor’s tale illuminates the widespread tendency to ignore, deny, and forgive White male mediocrity in American culture, and how a deeper understanding of people like Watkins can transform our understanding of the past—and our understanding of ourselves.
 

Amy E. Hughes is Professor of Theatre & Drama at the University of Michigan.