Percy MacKaye

[1] After graduating from Harvard in 1897,[2] he traveled in Europe for three years, residing in Rome, Switzerland and London, studying at the University of Leipzig in 1899–1900.

He returned to New York City to teach at a private school until 1904, when he joined a colony of artists and writers in Cornish, New Hampshire, and devoted himself entirely to dramatic work.

[3] He wrote the plays The Canterbury Pilgrims in 1903, Sappho and Phaon in 1907, Jeanne D'Arc in 1907, The Scarecrow in 1908, Anti-Matrimony in 1910, and the poetry collection The Far Familiar in 1937.

Here he presented a concept of Civic Theatre as "the conscious awakening of the people to self-government in its leisure".

This concept was influential on Platon Kerzhentsev and the Soviet Proletcult Theatre movement.