“As a study of performances of oligarchy, this is an engaging book with beautifully written accounts of both Californios and Anglos publicly asserting their clout in surprisingly varied ways.”—Dana Elizabeth Weiner, Louisiana History
"Andrew Gibb offers an important revision of modern understandings of the U.S. West,particularly California. . . . This book draws heavily on theory, particularly the idea of performance, to demonstrate how public events both celebrate and proclaim the power of the oligarchy. This allows the author to focus on cooperation (theater, after all, is collaborative) and deemphasize a more traditional conflict paradigm. . . .[T]his thought-provoking piece of interdisciplinary scholarship should be read by specialists in theater history, western history, and Mexican history."—Evan C. Rothera, Civil War Book Review
“Limited neither by a narrow focus on gold rush California nor a view of California theatre as a mere extension of the theatre of Mexico City, Andrew Gibb meticulously and cogently argues the history of a cultural collaboration, mediated not by conflict but by performance. This is theatre culture at its most persuasive, revealing the social, political, and economic factors at play in a given moment of historical change.”—Rosemarie Bank, author, Theatre Culture in America, 1825–1860
“Gibb’s work deftly challenges the long held notion that californio culture simply gave way to Anglo ascendancy when the United States took possession of the geography in the mid-nineteenth century. The result is a crucial contribution to our understanding of U.S. history, Western historiography, and Latinx history in (what would become) the United States.”—Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, author of Traveler, There Is No Road: Theatre, the Spanish Civil War, and the Decolonial Imagination in the Americas