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Odyssey Theatre, LA

1980

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Houghton Mifflin, 1973

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

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written by Elinor Fuchs and Joyce Antler. won the Los Angeles Drama-Logue playwriting award in 1980

Year One of the Empire presents in bracing, yet often hilarious detail the exact moment when America became an imperial powerthe little known Philippine-American War at the turn of the last century. Its rich brew of U.S. belligerence, election politics, and public outrage offers shocking parallels to American wars in Vietnam (which inspired the play) and Iraq (which made the play "contemporary" again). Few Americans know that, on the heels of the Spanish-American war (waged to free Cuba from Spain), the U.S. occupied Spain's most important Pacific colonial trophy, the Philippine Islands, and became embroiled in a prolonged, bloody insurrection. Straight from the historical record, the play shows avowed imperialists like Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the fast-rising Theodore Roosevelt, and President William McKinley, maneuvering the U.S. into empire and stumbling into war. The Army assured the public it would end Filipino resistance in a month, but it took more than three years. The US committed 125,000 American troops, suffered 4,000 combat deaths, and finally resorted to extreme methods, including the widespread use of water torture, or "waterboarding" as it is called today
- press release