INTRODUCTION

ATDS has enjoyed a long and productive relationship with The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and we are excited to see that collaboration enter its nineteenth year.1 For this spring's issue, we asked our authors to consider histories that have been "hidden in plain sight," whether that might mean radical interpretations of texts that had been deliberately concealed from audiences, biographies obscured by political or social agendas, or undiscovered tales buried in the archives.2 The result is a collection of articles that explores not only a series of dynamic and engaging moments in American theatre history, but that challenges scholars to re-think the ways in which they frame contemporary interpretations of familiar stories. By 1944 it had become a musical vehicle for Frank Sinatra called Step Uvely and in 1953 it was revived as both a showcase for the young Jack Lemmon and a final effort to rescue the sagging fortunes of its blacklisted author. HEATHER S. NATHANS is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Maryland, where she is also the Associate Director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora.