Readers of Willa Cather's fiction are well aware that many of her most interesting and memorable characters are performing artists. Probably Thea Kronborg, of The Song of the Lark, comes most immediately to mind, but there are many others, some familiar and some not. Even well-informed readers of Cather's novels and stories may not realize, however, the extent of her own familiarity with the performing arts and how much her development of these performing-artist characters rests on direct experience. Cather was in fact intensely devoted to music and theatre throughout her life, and wrote numerous theatre reviews and critical columns about the performing arts during her twenty or more years as a journalist. After she became associated with the successful and influential magazine McClure's, she also wrote informative articles about performing artists, thereby adding to her expertise. The knowledge she accumulated, as well as her personal passion for the theatre and music, contributed importantly to the development of her artistic principles and goals, her conception of herself as an artist, and even her conception of gender - as well as to the success of her stories and novels that involve performers and performances.