1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance
The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance is an outstanding collection of specially written essays that charts the emergence, development, and diversity of African American Theatre and Performance—from the nineteenth-century African Grove Theatre to Afrofuturism. Alongside chapters from scholars are contributions from theatre makers, including producers, theatre managers, choreographers, directors, designers, and critics. This ambitious Companion includes:
- A "Timeline of African American theatre and performance."
- Part I "Seeing ourselves onstage" explores the important experience of Black theatrical self-representation. Analyses of diverse topics including historical dramas, Broadway musicals, and experimental theatre allow readers to discover expansive articulations of Blackness.
- Part II "Institution building" highlights institutions that have nurtured Black people both on stage and behind the scenes. Topics include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), festivals, and black actor training.
- Part III "Theatre and social change" surveys key moments when Black people harnessed the power of theatre to affirm community realities and posit new representations for themselves and the nation as a whole. Topics include Du Bois and African Muslims, women of the Black Arts Movement, Afro-Latinx theatre, youth theatre, and operatic sustenance for an Afro future.
- Part IV "Expanding the traditional stage" examines Black performance traditions that privilege Black worldviews, sense-making, rituals, and innovation in everyday life. This section explores performances that prefer the space of the kitchen, classroom, club, or field.
This book engages a wide audience of scholars, students, and theatre practitioners with its unprecedented breadth. More than anything, these invaluable insights not only offer a window onto the processes of producing work, but also the labour and economic issues that have shaped and enabled African American theatre.
List of Figures
Editor/Contributor Biographies
Black Art Now by Nambi E. Kelley
Introduction: Renee Alexander Craft, Thomas F. DeFrantz. Kathy A. Perkins, and Sandra L. Richards.
Part I: Highlights of African American Theatre and Performance
Part II: Seeing Ourselves Onstage
Edited and Introduced by Thomas F. DeFrantz
Chapter 1
Dudley, The Smart Set, and the Beginning of the Black Entertainment Industry
Nadine George-Graves
Chapter 2
Black Theatre History Plays: Remembering, Recovering, Re-envisioning
Sandra Mayo
Chapter 3
"Hung Be the Heavens with Black" Bodies: An Analysis of the August 1822 Riot at William Brown's Greenwich Village Theater
Marvin McAllister
Chapter 4
Mulattoes, Mistresses, and Mammies: The Phantom Family in Langston Hughes's Mulatto
Alison Walls
Chapter 5
Interview with Woodie King, Jr. - Producer and Director
JaMeeka Holloway-Burrell
Chapter 6
Freedom Forward: Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry Circling Broadway in the 1950s
Barbara Lewis
Chapter 7
Navigating Respectability in Turn of the Century New York City: Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage
Marta Effinger-Crichlow
Chapter 8
Earle Hyman: Scandinavian Successes
Baron Kelly
Chapter 9
Pittsburgh Piety: A Century of Symbolism
Pedro E. Alvarado
Chapter 10
Interview with Ron Simons - Broadway Producer
Lisa B. Thompson
Chapter 11
Interview with Paul Tazewell - Costume Designer
Niiamar Felder
Chapter 12
Race on the Opera Stage
Twila L. Perry
Chapter 13
The Wiz and the African Diaspora Musical: Rethinking the Research Questions in Black Musical Historiography
Sam O’Connell
Chapter 14
Bob Cole's "Colored Man's Declaration of Independence": The Case of Shoo Fly Regiment and George C. Wolfe's Shuffle Along
Paula Marie Seniors
Chapter 15
Shuffle Along and Ethnic Humor: A Family Story
Sandra Seaton
Chapter 16
Interview with Eva Yaa Asantewaa - Dance Critic
Thomas F. DeFrantz
Chapter 17
Black Female Sexuality in the Drama of Pearl Cleage
Beth Turner
Chapter 18
Coming-of-Age and Rituals of Gender Nonconformity in Leslie Lee's The First Breeze of Summer
Rhone Fraser
Chapter 19
Pomo Afro Homos: A Revolutionary Act
Tabitha Jamie Mary Chester
PART III: Institution Building: Making a Space of OUR Own
Edited and Introduced by Kathy A. Perkins
Chapter 20
Being Black on Stage and Screen: Black Actor Training Before Black Power and the Rise of Stanislavski’s System
Monica White Ndounou
Chapter 21
Three Visionary African American Women Theatre Artists: Anita Bush, Barbara Ann Teer and Ellen Stewart
Sandra Adell
Chapter 22
The Birth of Queen Anne: Re-Discovering Anne Cooke at Spelman College
Leslye Joy Allen
Chapter 23
The Howard University Players: From Respectability Politics to Black Representation
Denise J. Hart and Kathy A. Perkins
Chapter 24
An African American Theatre Program for the 21st Century
Nefertiti Burton
Chapter 25
Interview with Karen Allen Baxter – Managing Director of Rites and Reason Theatre
Jasmine Johnson
Chapter 26
The Negro Ensemble Company, Inc.: One Moment in Time?
Susan Watson Turner
Chapter 27
Interview with Shirley Prendergast - Lighting Designer
Kathy A. Perkins
Chapter 28
Interview with Femi Sarah Heggie – Stage Manager
Kathy A. Perkins
Chapter 29
Weathering the Winds of Change: The Sustainability of the St. Louis Black Repertory Company
Gregory S. Carr
Chapter 30
The National Black Theatre Festival and the "Marvtastic" Legacy of Larry Leon Hamlin
J. K. Curry
Chapter 31
The Black Feminist Theatre of Glenda Dickerson
Khalid Yaya Long
Chapter 32
Ernie McClintock’s Jazz Acting: A Theatre of Common Sense
Elizabeth M. Cizmar
Chapter 33
Black Acting Methods®: Mapping the Movement
Sharrell D. Luckett
Chapter 34
Financial Fitness of Black Theatres: Roundtable of Artistic Directors
K. Zaheerah Sultan
Chapter 35
A Reflection on The University of Arkansas Pine Bluff’s The Hip Hop Project: Insight into the Hip Hop Generation
Johnny Jones
Chapter 36
Interview with Ekundayo Bandele – Founder and CEO of Hattiloo Theatre
Shondrika Moss-Bouldin
PART IV: THEATRE AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Edited and Introduced by Sandra L. Richards
Chapter 37
W.E.B. DuBois, Dramatist
FREDA SCOTT GILES
Chaper 38
The Third Gift of the Negro: Muslim Identity and DuBois’ Star of Ethiopia
CRISTAL CHANELLE TRUSCOTT
Chapter 39
Oh, Ma Dear! What's Going On?: Staging Angelina W. Grimke's Rachel in the Wake of Black Lives Matter
NICOLE HODGES PERSLEY
Chapter 40
Leaning Left: Why Theater Artists in the 1930s Were Attracted to the Red Movement
KIMMIKA L. H. WILLIAMS-WITHERSPOON
Chapter 41
Fighting Fire with Fire: Violence and the Black Liberation Movement
PORTIA OWUSU
Chapter 42
"When We Gonna Rise": Free Southern Theater Performances of Slave Ship and Black Power in Mississippi
Susan Stone-Lawrence
Chapter 43
From "Poemplays" to Ritualistic Revivals: The Experimental Works of Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement
LA DONNA L. FORSGREN
Chapter 44
Interview with Micki Grant
KATHY A. PERKINS
Chapter 45
Keeping His Gloves Up: August Wilson and His Critics
Sandra G. Shannon
Chapter 46
Interview with Edward Everett Haynes, Jr.
KATHY A. PERKINS
Chapter 47
Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today
Daphnie Sicre
Chapter 48
To be Young, Performing, and Black: Situating Youth in African American Theatre and Performance History
Asantewa Fulani Sunni-Ali
Chapter 49
Interview with Mama Kariamu Welsh
Amoaba Gooden
Chapter 50
Robert O'Hara's Defamiliarizing Dramaturgy
Isaiah MATTHEW Wooden
Chapter 51
Black Plight in Flight
Tezeru Teshome
Chapter 52
Creatively Censoring African American Drama While Teaching in the Arab Gulf Region
PhyLlisa smith Deroze
Chapter 53
Mike Wiley: A Multi-Faceted Artist on a Mission for Social Change
Sonny Kelly
Chapter 54
"Locked Away But Not Defeated": African American Women Performing Resilience
Lori D. Barcliff Baptista
Chapter 55
A Hundredfold: An Experiential Archive of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, the Opera.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
PART V: Expanding the Traditional Stage
Edited and Introduced by Renée Alexander Craft
Chapter 56
Many Stories/One Body: Black Solo Performance from Vaudeville to Spoken Word
E. Patrick Johnson
Chapter 57
Standing Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Katelyn Hale Wood
Chapter 58
My Name Mudbone: What I learned about playwriting from Richard Pryor
Howard L. Craft
Chapter 59
Ntozake Shange and the Choreopoem
Nicole M. Morris Johnson
Chapter 60
Interview with Donna Walker-Kuhne – Audience Development
Kathy A. Perkins
Chapter 61
Performed Ethnography
D. Soyini Madison
Chapter 62
The United States of Lucia: Three Generations of Haitian-Americans Reconfigure Ancestry, Home and Host Lands through Storytelling
Mario LaMothe
Chapter 63
We Were What No One Else Had
Rikki Byrd
Chapter 64
Interview with Pam Green – Artist Management and Consulting
Melanie Greene
Chapter 65
Sidelong Glances: Black Divas in Transit, 1945-1955
Katherine Zien
Chapter 66
Black Indians of New Orleans: Performing Resistance and Remembrance
Sascha Just
Chapter 67
Interview with Darryl Montana- Black Indian Chief and Master Artisan
Loyce L. Arthur
Chapter 68
African Performance in the Feast of St. Francis Xavier in 17th century Luanda, Angola
Margit Edwards
Chapter 69
Afro-Futurism and the 2018 Wakanda Diaspora Carnival
Renée Alexander Craft
Chapter 70
A Beginner’s Guide to Implementing Hip Hop Theatre in the Classroom
Kashi Johnson
Chapter 71
Interview with Shirley Basfield Dunlap – Educator and Director
Eric Ruffin
Index
Biography
Kathy A. Perkins is Professor Emerita of the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a professional lighting designer who has designed throughout the U.S. and internationally, and as an author has edited six anthologies focusing on African/African Diaspora women.
Sandra L. Richards is Professor Emerita in African American Studies and Theatre at Northwestern University. Specializing in African American, African, and African Diaspora drama, she has published articles on a range of playwrights and on tourism to slave sites in the Black Atlantic.
Renée Alexander Craft is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a joint appointment in the Department of Communication and Curriculum in Global Studies. She is a performance studies trained Black feminist writer, scholar, and educator.
Thomas F. DeFrantz is Professor of African and African American Studies and Theater Studies at Duke University. He directs SLIPPAGE:Performance | Culture | Technology, a research group that explores live processing in theatrical contexts.