MacKaye, (James Morrison) Steele (1842–1894)

US actor, playwright, designer, and inventor. Although 19 of his plays were produced in New York, he is best known as a dreamer and devisor of technical innovations, many of which were never realized. In pursuit of a more naturalistic mode of theatrical presentation, he reopened the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York in 1879 as the Madison Square Theater, introducing a double moving stage as well as overhead and indirect lighting. After opening the Lyceum in 1885, he founded a school of acting there, which became the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He planned a ‘Spectatorium’ for the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, a vast, technically advanced auditorium, but it was never built.

MacKaye was born in Buffalo, New York. Most of his plays were commercially successful, but only Won at Last, Hazel Kirke and Paul Kauvar survived to be performed into the 20th century. A biography, Epoch (1927), was written by his son, Percy MacKaye.