Talk:Kit, the Arkansas Traveler

4 acts or 5

   At Farewell of Mr. F.S. Chanfrau ... i found

Farewell of Mr. F.S. Chanfrau : This afternoon & evening will be presented the stirring and powerful drama, in 5 acts and 8 tableaux (expressly written for Mr. F.S. Chanfrau, by E. Spencer, Esq), entitled Kit, the Arkansas traveller! ...

Author: Boston Theatre (Washington Street, Boston, Mass.) Publisher: Boston : H.A. M'Glenen, 1875. Series: Ray, v. 5, no. 18.

Edition/Format: Book : English

which disagrees with Hall's "prologue and 4 acts". I thot initially that the 8 tableaux constituted Hall's prologue, but some of the tableaux clearly belong with some of the later acts, so my wording hinting that the substance of the prologue in the version Hall describes is an earlier act in a different version may be plain false, and is in any case inadequate to document the variations.
   BTW, IIRC a pamphlet is a book for cataloging purposes, and i suspect this entry is either the program you get at the door of the theater, or a handbill (which might as well be regarded as a one-page pamphlet....?)
--Jerzy•t 03:27, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

World premiere

    I haven't researched far enuf to know even the true month, and wrote

... it opened in Buffalo, N.Y. in the first third of 1869.

bcz Hall says on p. 20 that KtAt

first open[ed] with Francis S. Chanfrau as Kit in February 1869, in Buffalo

but on p. 44 Hall also writes

Chanfrau first performed Kit [per the context set by his preceding sentence, the persona of Kit Redding, not the play Kit...] on April 20, 1869, in Buffalo, New York.

I'd be prepared to assume you can "first perform" a role before its play opens, by performing it in rehearsal, but Hall's wording rules that case out. I've given up hope of twisting those 2 passages into two consistent statements!
   Still, i do note that Hall mentions, in the next 'graph, the success of the rewrite, a sentence before describing the Big Apple opening. I can't believe he meant what he wrote, but perhaps he meant each of its pieces but didn't mean what they mean when presented in the order he ended up presenting them in. Specifically, suppose they closed the show, rehearsed Trayleure's version, reopened (still in Buffalo) in April to test the effect of the revisions, and only then undertook the efforts to arrange taking it to New York 2 years later (in May 1871)? Hall writes

...[Besides Mose Humphreys] Chanfrau created yet another memorable American character in the person of Kit Redding.

then immediately what i quoted above:

Chanfrau first performed Kit on April 20, 1869, in Buffalo, New York.

I hope he would not intend us to infer from that that the memorable character Kit only existed after Trayleure's rewrite, or what is the same, that the eponymous Kit of the February Buffalo opening was not Kit Redding! But "even Homer nodded", and perhaps even Cambridge U. Press has some overworked editors who might tighten up p. 44 without keeping p. 20's details in mind.
--Jerzy•t 02:55, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

20 years

   Maude Adams - Kit, the Arkansas Traveler shows the 20-year lapse between start and finish. It was Hall who said 12, presumably based on similar evidence from another period of the performance history.
--Jerzy•t 03:49, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Box office haul

Is it true that (as claimed on one of Chanfrau's posters), this play obtained approximately a half million U.S. dollars in box office earnings? 98.123.38.211 (talk) 17:38, 3 December 2023 (UTC)