AFRICAN AMERICAN DRAMATIC THEATER INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
THE DRAMATIC THEATER FROM 1900 TO 1940
Black actors on the American dramatic stage, like the performers in all-Black musicals, struggled to shed the demeaning image of the African American projected by most White-produced minstrelsy and drama. The presentation of three plays—The Rider of Dreams, Granny Maumee, and Simon the Cyrenian—by white playwright Ridgely Torrence at the Garden Theatre in Madison Square Garden on April 5, 1917, was an exceptional and highly successful effort to objectively portray the African American on the dramatic stage.
During the Harlem Renaissance years, the African American dramatic actor remained less active than the Black performer in musicals, and the image of Blacks projected by White playwrights was generally inadequate. For example, although Charles Gilpin starred in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones at the Provincetown Theatre in 1920, critic Loften Mitchell noted that:
This play, while offering one of the most magnificent roles for a Negro in the American theater, is the first in a long line to deal with the Negro on this level. O’Neill obviously saw in the Negro rich subject matter, but he was either incapable or unwilling to deal directly with the matter. (Black Drama, the Story of the American Negro in the Theatre, 1967.)
Nonetheless, African American actors and actresses had to accept the roles in which they were cast by white playwrights. In 1924, the O’Neill play All God’s Chillun’ Got Wings opened at the Provincetown Theatre with Paul Robeson and Mary Blair to mixed reviews because of its interracial theme. Rose McClendon starred in Paul Green’s Pulitzer Prize-winning In Abraham’s Bosom in 1926 and was ably supported by Abbie Mitchell and Jules Bledsoe. Marc Connelly’s Green Pastures opened on Broadway on February 26, 1930, with Richard B. Harrison playing “De Lawd.” It ran for 557 performances and was taken on an extensive road tour.
In the 1930s, Langston Hughes brought the African American voice to the stage. Three of his plays were produced successfully on Broadway. Mulatto, which opened in 1935, starred Rose McClendon and Morris McKenney and had the longest Broadway run of any play written by an African American with 373 consecutive performances. The other two plays were Little Ham(1935) and Troubled Island (1936).
THE FEDERAL THEATER PROJECT
In the mid-1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored one of the greatest organized efforts to assist and encourage American actors, especially African American actors. The Federal Theater Project employed a total of 851 African American actors to work in 16 segregated units of the project in Chicago, New York, and other cities from 1935 until 1939 when Congress ended the project. While the project was in operation, African American actors appeared in 75 plays including classics, vaudeville routines, contemporary comedies, children’s shows, circuses, and “living newspaper” performances. Notable among the African American actors who worked in the project and later became stars on Broadway and in film were Butterfly McQueen, Canada Lee, Rex Ingram, Katherine Dunham, Edna Thomas, Thomas Anderson, and Arthur Dooley Wilson.
In the wake of the Federal Theater Project, The American Negro Theater was established in Harlem by Abram Hill, Austin Briggs-Hall, Frederick O’Neal, and Hattie King-Reeves. Its objective was to authentically portray African American life and to give African American actors and playwrights a forum for their talents. Some of their productions eventually made it to Broadway. In 1944, the theater produced Anna Lucasta in the basement of the 135th Street Library in Harlem. It was successful enough to move to Broadway and featured Hilda Simms, Frederick O’Neal, Alice Childress, Alvin Childress, Earle Hyman, and Herbert Henry. Abram Hill’s Walk Hard opened in Harlem in 1946 and became a Broadway production with Maxwell Glanville in the lead. The American Negro Theater provided a training ground for many African American actors who later became stars on Broadway and in Hollywood including Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier.
DRAMATIC THEATER IN THE 1950S
The rise of television in the 1950s generally had an adverse effect on the American theater. Employment for all actors fell sharply, especially for African American actors. Ethel Waters did, however, open on Broadway in 1950 as the lead in Member of the Wedding, which was well-received. Louis Peterson’s Take a Giant Step opened on Broadway in September of 1953 to critical praise; in the cast were Frederick O’Neal, Helen Martin, Maxwell Glanville, Pauline Myers, Estelle Evans, and Louis Gossett Jr.
One of the most successful all-black plays to appear on Broadway opened in March of 1959—Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun, which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. It was directed by the legendary African American director Lloyd Richards. Its cast included Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Claudia McNeil, Louis Gossett Jr., Ivan Dixon, Lonnie Elder III, and Douglas Turner Ward. Lorraine Hansberry was hailed a pioneer that paved the way for African American political and social playwrights.
THE DRAMATIC THEATER SINCE 1960
As the Civil Rights movement challenged the national conscience in the 1960s, every facet of African American life changed including Black performing arts. More plays about African Americans by both Black and White playwrights were produced, providing increased employment for Black actors. A particularly significant year was 1961.
On May 4, 1961, The Blacks, by French playwright/author Jean Genet, opened Off-Broadway at the St. Mark’s Theater. A play about black Americans written for white audiences, The Blacks provided employment for a host of African American actors including Roscoe Lee Browne, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett Jr., Helen Martin, Cicely Tyson, Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Maya Angelou, Charles Gordone and many others who appeared in its road tours. Subsequently, African American dramatic actors appeared on and Off-Broadway in several major plays by white playwrights. Notable among them were: In White America by Judith Rutherford Marechal (1968), with Gloria Foster and Moses Gunn; The Great White Hope by William Sackler (1968), starring James Earl Jones; and So Nice, They Named It Twice by Neil Harris (1975), featuring Bill Jay and Veronica Redd.
Also in 1961, African American fashion designer, Ellen Stewart, founded La MaMa E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club)—the oldest remaining avant-garde theatre in the United States. Known as the mother of Off-Off-Broadway Theatre, Stewart gave young American and international playwrights an incubator in which to develop their original work without the pressures or constraints of commercial theatre. A venerated institution with more than 50 Obie awards, La MaMa was the birthplace for plays such as Hair, Godspell, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Stewart is also credited with launching the careers of notable actors, directors, and playwrights such as Tom Eyen (Dreamgirls) and Adrienne Kennedy (Funnyhouse of the Negro).
On May 23, 1961, when the LeRoi Jones’ play, The Dutchman, opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre, the black revolutionary play was introduced to theater audiences. African American actors were provided with the opportunity to perform in roles that not only affirmed Blackness but portrayed Black political militancy. Several black revolutionary plays followed that afforded opportunities for African American actors including James Baldwin’s Blues for Mr. Charlie(1964), with Al Freeman Jr. and Diana Sands; and The Toilet/The Slave, (1964) by LeRoi Jones, starring James Spruill, Walter Jones, Nan Martin, and Al Freeman Jr.
That same year, Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka) founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School to make theater more accessible by “taking it to the streets.” The objective was to promote interaction between the artists and the audience. Baraka and many other playwrights, poets, and essayists believed that their primary responsibility was to create work for and about African American people. This philosophy evolved into the Black Arts Movement (BAM). Artists of the BAM raged against theatrical convention and mandated that the only art of worth reflected the cultural, social, and political concerns of their communities. In addition to Baraka, some of the award-winning playwrights of the BAM were Ed Bullins, The Taking of Miss Janie(1975); Richard Wesley, The Black Terror (1972); Sonia Sanchez, Next Stop the Bronx (1968); and Adrienne Kennedy, The Funnyhouse of the Negro (1964).
The dissident voices of the Black Arts Movement gave rise to a wave of black regional theater companies such as the Crossroads Theatre in New Jersey, Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia, the Penumbra Theatre in Minnesota, The New Federal Theatre in New York, the Inner City Cultural Center in Los Angeles, Jomandi Productions in Atlanta and the St. Louis Repertory Theatre to name a few. Their focus was to foster the development of playwrights, actors, managers, and technicians and to provide the African American community with plays steeped in a cultural context.
