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Act Well Your Part, There All The Honor Lies: Histories of Hull-House Theatre

A black and white photo of an empty theater with rows of seats and a closed curtain. Overlaid text reads Act Well Your Part, There All The Honor Lies and a pink box lists information about the Honours of Hall Exhibition.

 

Edited by Ross Stanton Jordan, Liesl Olson, and Matthew Randle-Bent

For over a century, Hull-House played a vital role in the development of theatre in Chicago. From immigrant-led productions in the 1890s to the rise of community-based performance, improvisation, and Chicago’s celebrated nonprofit scene, Hull-House helped build the cultural infrastructure of one of the world’s great theatre cities.

Act Well Your Part, There All the Honor Lies: Histories of Hull-House Theatre is the first book to comprehensively survey this extraordinary legacy. Published in conjunction with the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum’s exhibition and performance festival of the same name, the volume brings together newly commissioned scholarship, historic texts, oral histories, and contemporary conversations to explore how theatre functioned as a tool for civic engagement, community building, artistic experimentation, and social change.

Spanning the settlement era (1889–1957), the Hull-House Association years (1963–2012), and the continuing influence of Hull-House on contemporary Chicago theatre, this richly illustrated volume restores Hull-House to its place at the center of American theatre history.

Published by Hull-House Books and distributed by University of Illinois Press.

Table of Contents

Liesl Olson
It’s Summer Today: The Spirit of Hull-House Theatre

Matthew Randle-Bent
Act Well Your Part: On Hull-House, Chicago’s Civic Theatre

Laura Dainty Pelham
The Story of the Hull-House Players (1916)

Fiona Maxwell
“House of Dreams”: Theater at Hull-House During the Progressive Era, 1889–1935

Maria De Simone
Making Identity Through Theatre: Immigrant Plays and Racialized Performance at Hull-House

Nadia Maragha
“The Good We Secure for Ourselves”: Jane Addams and Theatre for Civic Engagement

Edith de Nancrede
Dramatic Work at Hull-House (1928)

Liliana Macias
A Chicago Stage: The 1937 Hull-House Festival of Mexican Culture and the Making of a Mexican Metropolis

Aretha Sills
Viola Spolin’s Laboratory for Recreational Theatre Techniques at Hull-House

Helen Tieken Geraghty
The Development and Organization of a People’s Theatre at Hull-House (1939)

Ross Stanton Jordan
Side Coach to the Hull-House Theatre Legacy: A Conversation with Aretha Sills

Stuart J. Hecht
Hull-House Theatre in the 1960s

Mark Larson and Matthew Randle-Bent
Making Their Own History: The Influence of Hull-House on Chicago Theatre, 1970–2012

Robert Sickinger
On the State of Theater in Chicago (1963)

Panel Conversation
On the Past, Present, and Futures of Chicago Theatre, featuring, Mikhail Fiksel, Marti Lyons, Wendy Mateo, Gabrielle Randle-Bent, Malkia Stampley, Matthew Randle-Bent

 

Book Information

Act Well Your Part, There All the Honor Lies: Histories of Hull-House Theatre
Edited by Ross Stanton Jordan, Liesl Olson, and Matthew Randle-Bent

ISBN: 979-8-234-03028-3

Design by HOUR Studio
Published by Hull-House Books, November 2026
Distributed by University of Illinois Press