African American Theater History

Robert Townsend, writer, producer, director, and actor, was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 6, 1957, the second oldest of four children to Shirley and Robert Townsend. Growing up on the Westside of Chicago, Townsend was raised by his mother in a single parent home. As a child Townsend watched TV where he learned to do impersonations of his favorite actors such as Jimmy Stewart and Bill Cosby for his family and classmates. Eventually his abilities caught the attention of Chicago’s Experimental Black Actors Guild X-Bag Theatre in Chicago and then moved him out to The Improvisation, a premiere comedy club in New York City. Townsend also had a brief uncredited role in the 1975 movie, Cooley

The 19th century was a time period full of disagreements and wishful thinking. During this time, African Americans were trying to become free from slavery. This led to a Civil War. The 1800’s were a hard time for African Americans, after the Civil War many expressed their thoughts and feelings through plays like Minstrel Shows and other forms of theatre.

The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was a dark time in the history of Oklahoma. It all began with a simple misunderstanding, but had catastrophic consequences. Homes and businesses were destroyed, many African Americans and whites were killed, and Tulsa had lost its soul. In the beginning Oklahoma was just a young state, and Tulsa was just a young town, trying to find its place in the world. The discovery of Oil quickly turned Tulsa into one of

The Union enjoyed overall success in the Western Theater in 1862, but the year also brought defeat and setbacks between the times of Grant’s River War and the Battle at Stones River during the Civil War. These events contradicted the Unions success with strategic embarrassments that demonstrated the Union’s youth in military strategy in handling two separate theaters and management of men and goods.

The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale, racially motivated pogrom on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which a group of whites attacked the black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Greenwood District, the wealthiest black community in the United States, was burned to the ground. Over the course of 16 hours, more than 800 people were admitted to local white hospitals with injuries, the two black hospitals were burned down, and police arrested and detained more than 6,000 black Greenwood residents at three local facilities. An estimated 10,000 blacks were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire, resulting in over $26 million in damages. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics was 36, but other estimates of black fatalities vary from 55 to about 300.

It all started May 31, 1921 over Memorial Day weekend caused by an incident the day before. The incident took place in the Greenwood District in downtown Tulsa also known as Black wallstreet. At the time this area was one of the wealthiest African American communities in the nation because of segregation. May 30th a 19 year old African American

This pair seized upon the headlines generated from a case involving a woman named Mona Marshall, who alleged that she had been drugged, raped, and forced into prostitution by a pimp. There were elements of her story that were genuinely factual and terribly disturbing, but other parts seemed far-fetched. That included a tale in which the police reportedly received a note that she dropped from the window of the brothel where she worked stating, “I am a white slave.” In addition, Marshall’s recounting of events included several contradictions with dates and key details. Nonetheless, The Chicago Tribune and William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago American ran wild with the Mona Marshall story and it quickly gained a national audience.

Declared as “The Black Wall Street,” the Greenwood section of Tulsa was the center of African American life in Oklahoma.9 Since the white section of Tulsa did not possess stores catering to blacks, several entrepreneuring black males decided to construct a district that indulged the needs of the African Americans.10 Therefore, Greenwood was established on a street called Greenwood Avenue, which traveled from the Frisco Railroad yards and divided the black and white community of Tulsa.11 By 1921 Greenwood housed 11,000 residences with 108 black-owned businesses,11 which included 2 theaters, 2 schools, and 15 doctor

August Wilson was an African American playwright who had a heavily impacted American theatre. In his ten plays, Wilson consistently worked to accurately portray African American cultural throughout the 20th century. A prominent theme within Wilson’s work is the search for black identity within the 20th century. August Wilson portrayed his belief that in order to understand one’s identity, you must first look into their cultural past through the depiction of Troy in Fences and Herald in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. August Wilson’s belief is transparent by his depiction of their cultural past as African American men and the heavy influences it has on the way they each identify their selves in society. Troy in Fences and Herald in Joe Turner’s

Up to modern day, Aristotelian theatre has been commonly accepted as the way theatre works internally. Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theatre director, examines the extent to which Aristotle’s views apply to theatre in the modern context of severe governmental oppression. In his book Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal finds limitations in Aristotle’s thinking. He believes that Aristotle limited theatre to only pre-existing conditions, and calls for a theatre that allows for revolution against a pre-existing system. Similarly, Thomas Merton in his book The Black Revolution: Letters to a White Liberal calls for white American citizens to realize their comfort with pre-existing conditions, and to stop the oppression of black people. Merton examines the

Revolutionary Theatre opted for self-select segregation, violence, and community involment as tools for survival and teaching theatre during The Black Arts Movement. The founder of this undertaking was LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) a poet, political activist, playwright, author, and musician with a strong passion for the Black Aesthetic, a new art that gave life to the black experience in America at the pinnacle of the Civil Rights movement. Jones was the first person that followed the ideas of W. E. B. Du Bois to create theatre about us, by us, for us, and near us, which completely changed how black theatre was viewed and inspired many black playwrights.

“Black theatre, in the United States, dramatic movement encompassing plays written by, for, and about African Americans.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) The first black theatre originated in the early 19th century. However, all those plays were written by white people. Although the play may consist of black characters; only white persons would play the parts. Between the ending of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century is when the black people were really allowed to act in plays. Instead of the black characters being play by white people, the black people were finally able to participate. “African American Theatre is a vibrant and unique entity enriched by ancient Egyptian rituals, West African folklore, and European theatrical

[1] Since it opened in 1984 the theater has won worldwide acclaim for the quality and scope of its productions. [2] Those productions range from all-male casts (such as the one shown on the next page) performing works in the sixteenth-century Grand Kabuki tradition to U.S. premieres of contemporary works by leading Japanese choreographers. [3] The theater doesn't just book productions; it works closely with the artists, whom it presents. [4] In fact according to the managing director for programs between 60 and 70 percent of the theater's presentations 396 are developed in partnership with the artists. [5] In 1988, for example the theater staged the first, Broadway-style Japanese musical, Utamoro: The Musical which is Tako Izumi's story of the eighteenth-century woodcut artist Utamoro.

During the era of 19th Century drama, theatre gained an immense amount of popularity, while developing in the terms of technology used in theatres, but this will focus on the later part of the 19th century. In 1881 the first theatre is lighted by electricity, just 2 years after the light bulb is invented. Lighting is important to theatre because it allows for night time shows in enclosed theatres, and lights the stage as well. Along with the first revolving stage in 1896, Vaudeville became a popular form of entertainment in the United States. In politics during 1857 Czar Alexander II begins the emancipation of serfs in Russia, which allowed Russian peasants to have freedom. In another act of freeing oppressed peoples, the American Civil War began in 1861. After the North won in 1865,

Theater artist are known during their time and not when they die. Theater is both a business and an art because it brings income and has to bring the creative minds of artists to produce a play. Today many of the old plays are been played all over the world using the same dialogue as before but with some editing. In the past, there was a lot of violence from war and most of the arts produced were responses to social change allowing artist, artistic freedom to express themselves. In England, play license laws were established but not forced in the Americas were a lot of performances used profanity and nudity. Licensing claims made audience become spectators of the actor’s needy attention. The audience was assaulted and later the focus of the theater turned to social awareness. Technological advances and