Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity

The Provincetown Players was a major cultural institution in Greenwich Village from 1916 to 1922, when American Modernism was conceived and developed. This study considers the group's vital role, and its wider significance in twentieth century American culture. Describing the varied and often contentious response to modernity among the Players, Brenda Murphy reveals the central contribution of the group of poets around Alfred Kreymborg's Others magazine, including William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy and Djuna Barnes, and such modernist artists as Marguerite and William Zorach, Charles Demuth and Bror Nordfeldt, to the Players' developing modernist aesthetics.