Play Guide [356k PDF] - Arizona Theatre Company

The Great GatsbyNEW YORKNEW YORK IN THE 1920sBy 1918, half of the cars in the U.S. werethe Ford Model T. Sales skyrocketedin the early 1920s as a result of massmanufacturing and subsequent affordability.In the 1920s, New York City was the primeexample of the new, urban center of culture,creativity, industry, and wealth that the RoaringTwenties so cherished. Home to nearly 6 millionpeople, it was a center of commerce andmanufacturing. The 1920s saw New York’s firsttroubles with traffic, as the city’s infrastructurepanicked to keep up with the huge influx ofmotor vehicles brought about by the suddenaffordability provided by the mass manufacturingof automobiles.New York also represented the destination of200,000 African Americans leaving southernstates to find jobs and homes in the North,particularly in Harlem, where the HarlemRenaissance was in full swing developing into anexus of African American art, music, and culture. As a center of emerging music, namelyjazz and the blues, Harlem lured many great musicians of the day to New York includingLouis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Duke Ellington.“I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and thesatisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives tothe restless eye. I like to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women fromthe crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter their lives, andno one would ever know or disapprove…At the enchanted metropolitan twilightI felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor young clerkswho loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurantdinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night andlife.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great GatsbyIn addition to the already vibrant culture of NewYork massive immigrant population streamed intothe city. Though immigration began to meet seriousrestrictions in the 1920s, immigrants provided much ofthe labor force that enabled New England’s boomingindustry to thrive. New York City itself consisted ofmany neighborhoods split along ethnic lines as recentimmigrants tended to group together in communities offamiliar language and culture.Costume rendering for malecharacters by David K.Mickelsen, costume designerArizona Theatre Company Play Guidefor ATC’s The Great Gatsby28