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Today, there are more than 1,500 professional theaters across the 50 states providing live performances, education, and professional training for different audiences. The regional and local institutions show that development of new theatrical productions does not take place only within the large established theaters in major cities. New works are supported through initiatives such as the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Theater Residency program for Playwrights, which helps playwrights produce new plays in small and mid-sized theaters. For example, playwright Nilo Cruz crafted a new play, Anna in the Tropics, at New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida. His play about cigar makers in 1929 Tampa whose lives were transformed by literature was recognized with a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Minneapolis, Minnesota - Nearly a half-century ago, in September, 1951, Theatre Arts magazine noted that "the American theater" was, of course, the New York theater. "It is an unfortunate fact that very little of genuine worth or national interest originates outside Manhattan Island," the article observed.

It wasn't quite true, even then. An intrepid impresario named Margo Jones had been launching new plays in her little theater in Dallas, Texas, since 1947, notably Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. Playwright Eugene O'Neill had unveiled Lazarus Laughed at the Pasadena Playhouse in southern California as far back as 1928.

But there was some lingering truth to the magazine's point of view. In effect, what existed was Broadway and off-Broadway. Everywhere else - Boston, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago - was "out of town." And "out-of-town" agreed with this perspective. When a touring production of a Broadway-launched play or musical came to the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis in the postwar era, prospective playgoers needed reassurance that it was "direct from New York." In other words, the real thing.

Even then the audience might be slim. The Orpheum had grown scruffy; road show standards were slipping; television was keeping people at home. Indeed, someone might have wondered, would there be any professional theater at all in Minneapolis fifty or sixty years from then?

Now it is April, 1998. Driving down Hennepin Avenue, in the heart of Minneapolis, I pass the Orpheum Theater, restored to its former glory. The Lion King, an adaptation of the Walt Disney animated film, now the talk of Broadway - had its pre-New York engagement here in mid-1997. Bring In 'Da Noise, Bring In 'Da Funk, a history of African-Americans told through the medium of percussive dance, spent the winter holidays in Minneapolis. One of Broadway's most acclaimed revivals, Chicago, toured here in the spring. The national touring company of the new musical Ragtime, a colorful evocation of early 20th-century America, is enroute to this city. There is no stinting. "The road," the touring circuit is back.

• Portrait of America: Distinctively American Arts
• "All America's A Stage: Growth and Challenges in Nonprofit Theater" National Endowment for the Arts, December 2008

• American Alliance for Theatre & Education
• American Society for Theatre Research
• American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment 1870-1920 US Library of Congress, the American Memory Project
• Broadway: The American Musical
• Directory of Outdoor Drama in America
• Dramatists Play Service, Inc. (DPS)
• Oregon Shakespeare Festival
• Playbill
• playdatabase.com A database of over 12,000 plays, 5,000 writers, and 300 monologues
• TheaterMania.com
• Theatre Bay Area
• Theatre History on the Web
• Tony Awards