Introduction

In her essay "Spectacles of Insanity: The Delirium Tremens on the Antebellum Stage," Amy E. Hughes examines the familiar moral reform melodrama of the nineteenth-century American stage. Analyzing the period's medical writings on the delirium tremens, Hughes demonstrates the threat of insanity, the prescription for normalcy, and how these competing strains were played out in W H. Smith's The Drunkard. [...]Pamyla A. Stiehl's timely essay "Because She Said So ... : How Twyla Tharp and Movin' Out Legitimized the 'Dansical' as a Choreographic Domain/Diversion on Broadway" surveys the famed choreographer and her care er- s panning attempt to move the fully danced narrative from the concert stage to Broadway, culminating in the 2002 Broadway triumph Movin' Out, a stunning merger of balletic dance and Billy Joel's music.