Congress Bans Theatre! - Journal of the American Revolution

On October 20, 1774, the American Continental Congress ordered the discouragement of entertainment. An excerpt from the article:

"As a near-life-long New York resident and “struggling actor,” it is always a pleasure to see the ever-present throngs of theatre-goers throughout the City. Theatre has for well over a century been recognized as an American art form, especially the musicals that so dominate Broadway. Yet while common today, the theatre had a far different, and darker, connotation in Revolutionary New York.

“Freedom” and “liberty” are words so often applied to American government, culture and society during the Revolutionary period that it is sometimes easy to forget that late-eighteenth-century folk and us twenty-first-century folk define those words very differently. The ubiquity of slavery, property limits on voting rights and the subservient position of women all give pause to modern ears when Revolutionary America is discussed as a beacon of liberty. But these common examples of liberty deferred are not the only ones.

While today the theatre is seen as a perfectly acceptable form of both art and commerce, as well as a patriotic expression of American freedoms, to many members of the Continental Congress it was an unpatriotic and unacceptable element of society, so much so that one of Congress’ first acts was the banning of theatre! Today such a drastic and heavy-handed move would be the complete opposite of “liberty;” to Congress then, it was seen as a national necessity.

In October 1774, the First Continental Congress passed the Articles of Association, which banned all trade with Britain until its grievances were met. While most of the articles dealt with trade specifically and the mechanics of the Articles’ enforcement, Article 8 stated,

We will, in our several stations, promote economy, frugality and industry, and promote agriculture, arts and the manufactures of this country, especially that of wool; and we will discountenance and discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shows , plays and other expensive diversions and entertainments.[1] [emphasis mine]

Through the Association, Congress had placed the theatre on the same low moral plane as gambling or animal fighting – to be discouraged through the Articles’ communal enforcement scheme. To a modern patron or practitioner of the stage, Congress’s act seems just as tyrannical as any taxation without representation!"