IN: Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 - July 28, 1948) was an American playwright, novelist, journalist and actress. With her husband George Cram Cook she founded the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre company. During the Great Depression, she served in the Works Progress Administration as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project. Glaspell is known to have composed nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories, and one biography.

Glaspell was highly regarded in her time, and was well known as a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. Her short stories were regularly printed in the era's top periodicals, and her New York Times obituary states that she was "one of the nation's most widely-read novelists." However, Glaspell's idealistic tales of strong and independent female protagonists were less popular in the post-war era that stressed female domesticity, and her novels fell out of print after her death.  In 1940 a new generation of influential Broadway-based critics began publishing derogatory reviews of her plays, having a sizable effect on her long-term standing. Exacerbating the issue was Glaspell's reluctance to seek publicity and her tendency to downplay her own accomplishments, perhaps a result of her modest Midwestern upbringing. Accordingly, in the United States her work was seriously neglected for many years. Internationally, she received some attention by scholars who were primarily interested in her more experimental work from the Provincetown years.  In the late 1970s feminist critics began to reevaluate Glaspell's career, and interest in her work has grown steadily ever since. Today, Glaspell scholarship is a "burgeoning" field, with several book-length biographies and analyses of her writing being published by university presses in recent years. After a century of being out of print, a large portion of her work has been republished. With major achievements in drama, novel, and short fiction, Glaspell is often cited as a "prime example" of an overlooked female writer deserving canonization. Perhaps the originator of modern American theater, Glaspell has been called "the First Lady of American Drama" and "the Mother of American Drama."  In 2003 the International Susan Glaspell Society was founded, with the aim of promoting "the recognition of Susan Glaspell as a major American dramatist and fiction writer." Her plays are frequently performed by college and university theater departments, but she has become more widely known for her often-anthologized works: the one-act play Trifles, and its short-story adaptation, "A Jury of Her Peers". Since the late 20th century, these two pieces have become staples of theatre and Women's Studies curricula across the United States and the world.

Why didn't she like publicity?

OUT: Glaspell's reluctance to seek publicity and her tendency to downplay her own accomplishments, perhaps a result of her modest Midwestern upbringing.


IN: Brooks & Dunn is an American country music duo consisting of Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn, both vocalists and songwriters. The duo was founded in 1990 through the suggestion of Tim DuBois. Before the foundation, both members were solo recording artists. Brooks wrote number one singles for John Conlee, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Highway 101; both he and Dunn also charted two solo singles apiece in the 1980s, with Brooks also releasing an album for Capitol Records in 1989.

Arista Nashville released Brooks & Dunn's second Greatest Hits package, The Greatest Hits Collection II, in October 2004. The album included singles from If You See Her, Steers & Stripes and Red Dirt Road, and the previously unreleased "That's What It's All About" and "It's Getting Better All the Time". Respectively, these cuts peaked at numbers two and one on the country music charts, as well as 38 and 56 on the Hot 100.  In August 2005, the duo released the single "Play Something Country". According to Dunn and co-writer Terry McBride, it was inspired by Gretchen Wilson, who was touring with Brooks & Dunn and Big & Rich on the Deuces Wild tour at the time. "Play Something Country" was the lead-off to their ninth studio album, Hillbilly Deluxe. Brooks & Dunn co-produced with Tony Brown, with further production from Mark Wright on "My Heart's Not a Hotel". A month after the album's release, "Play Something Country" became the duo's twentieth and final number one on Hot Country Songs, and went to number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album's second single, "Believe", peaked at number eight, also winning the next year's Single of the Year and Song of the Year awards from the Country Music Association. After it was "Building Bridges", with guest vocals from Vince Gill and Sheryl Crow, which peaked at number four. Before the duo released this song, it had been released by co-writer Larry Willoughby, a cousin of country singer Rodney Crowell, and later by Nicolette Larson. The final release from Hillbilly Deluxe was the title track, which peaked at number sixteen on Hot Country Songs. Erlewine gave this album a positive review, saying that it was not "quite as ambitious" as the previous two albums, but "just as satisfying".  Brooks & Dunn began the Long Haul tour in mid-2006, which featured Sugarland and Jack Ingram as opening acts. Of this tour, Brooks said, "They've got a lot of shows under their belt, they're really good at what they do, and they are great performers[...]We want everything about this show from opening act 'til the lights go down to be first class."

Did Brooks and Dunn do anything else in their career?

OUT:
Brooks & Dunn began the Long Haul tour in mid-2006, which featured Sugarland and Jack Ingram as opening acts.