Louisa May Alcott loved the theatre: she wrote and staged plays both at home and with amateur theatre groups; she attended plays and recorded her thoughts about them in her journals; she aspired to be an actress herself. And while there is much we can know about her personal world, it is more difficult to place her in the context of the 19th century theatre world from her primary source works alone.

Dr. Amy E. Hughes is a 19th century theatre scholar who joins Let Genius Burn to describe the culture of performing arts, the life of working actors as Alcott aspired to be, and how audiences experienced plays two centuries ago.

Amy E. Hughes (she/any) is Professor of Theatre & Drama (SMTD), a Faculty Associate of American Culture (LSA), and a Faculty Affiliate of Comparative Literature (LSA) at University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. She also serves as a Faculty Associate Director for U-M ADVANCE. Dr. Hughes is a theatre historian who researches US popular performance during the nineteenth century. BroadwayWorld.com included her latest book, An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States (University of Michigan Press, 2025), in its "25 Theater Books for Your Fall 2025 Reading List," and American Theatre magazine published an excerpt from the book’s introduction.

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