Steele MacKaye

James Morrison Steele MacKaye (mə-KY; June 6, 1842 – February 25, 1894) was an American playwright, actor, theater manager and inventor. Having acted, written, directed and produced numerous and popular plays and theatrical spectaculars of the day, he became one of the most famous actors and theater producers of his generation.

Biography

Steele MacKaye was born in Buffalo, New York. His father, Colonel James M. MacKaye, was a successful attorney and an ardent abolitionist; Steele's mother died when he was young. He had two sisters, Emily MacKaye von Hesse and Sarah MacKaye Warner, and two half-brothers, William Henry MacKaye and Henry Goodwin MacKaye. While young, Steele attended Roe's Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson and the William Leverett Boarding School in Newport. Under the influence from his father, who was also an art connoisseur, MacKaye initially planned to become an artist. During his teens he studied painting with William Morris Hunt, then continued his studies at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. He returned to the U.S. in order to serve for the Union Army during the American Civil War. A member of New York's Seventh Regiment, he eventually rose to the rank of Major before an illness forced his retirement. MacKaye would later model in full uniform for John Quincy Adams Ward's Seventh Regiment Memorial statue, which stands in Central Park.

In 1869, MacKaye traveled to Paris with his family, where he became the disciple of the renowned French acting teacher François Delsarte. Under Delsarte, MacKaye learned to enhance performance through pose and gesture. He would later teach and utilize this system during his career. On his return to the United States a year later, he lectured on the philosophy of ethics and "natural" acting in New York, Boston and elsewhere. In 1873 he became the first American actor to portray Hamlet in London.