ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|4 pages
Seeing Ourselves Onstage
chapter 3|5 pages
“Hung Be the Heavens with Black” Bodies
chapter 6|5 pages
Freedom Forward
chapter 7|5 pages
Navigating Respectability in Turn-of-the-Century New York City
chapter 13|5 pages
The Wiz And The African Diaspora Musical
chapter 14|7 pages
Bob Cole’s “Colored Actor’s Declaration of Independence”
part II|5 pages
Institution building
chapter 20|5 pages
Being Black on Stage and Screen
chapter 21|5 pages
Three Visionary African American Women Theatre Artists
chapter 23|6 pages
The Howard University Players
chapter 25|4 pages
Interview with Karen Allen Baxter
chapter 29|5 pages
Weathering the Winds Of Change
chapter 35|5 pages
A Reflection on the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff’s The Hip Hop Project
part III|5 pages
Theatre and social change
chapter 39|6 pages
Oh, Ma Dear! What’s Going on?
chapter 42|3 pages
“When We Gonna Rise”
chapter 43|7 pages
From “Poemplays” to Ritualistic Revivals
chapter 48|5 pages
To Be Young, Performing, and Black
chapter 55|4 pages
A Hundredfold
part IV|6 pages
Expanding the traditional stage