Abstract
In the fall of 1996, following the June 1996 delivery of playwright August Wilson’s now famous speech “The Ground on Which I Stand” at the eleventh biennial Theatre Communications Group (TCG) National Conference at Princeton University, the news publication of the Black Theatre Network organization, BTNews, began a series of reports and arti-cles designed to investigate and stir discussion on the issues presented in Wilson’s speech and the resulting effects of his message.1 The question presented or posed in the title of the initial BTNews article asked: “Thirty Years After the ‘Revolutionary’ 60s, Is There Still a Need to Justify Black Theatre?” The introduction to this article went on to state: “It is still neces-sary to educate the general public about black art’s unique spiritual nature. How do we hope to achieve this?”2 One of the aims of this present essay is to address the question by illustrating a history of theoretical development that predates the 1960s revolutionary era.
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Notes
August Wilson, “The Ground On Which I Stand,” American Theatre, Vol. 13, No. 7 (September 1996): 14–16, 71–74.
See Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer, Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the African-American in the Performing Arts (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967; rpt. New York: Dacapo Press, 1990 ), 2–5.
See Eleanor W. Traylor, “Two Afro-American Contributions to Dramatic Form,” The Theater of Black Americans: Vol. I, ed. Errol Hill ( Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980 ), 47.
See John Fiske, “British Cultural Studies and Television,” Channels of Discourse: Television and Contemporary Criticism, ed. R. C. Allen ( Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1987 ).
Alain Locke, The New Negro: An Interpretation (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1925; rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1992 ).
Montgomery Gregory, “The Drama of Negro Life,” The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke ( New York: Atheneum, 1992 ).
Jessie Fauset, “The Gift of Laughter,” The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke ( New York: Atheneum, 1992 ).
William E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, in Three Negro Classics (New York: Avon, 1965; original pub. 1903 ).
For concepts of “Black-figure on a White-ground,” see Leslie Catherine Sanders, The Development of Black Theater in America: From Shadows to Selves (Baton Rouge and London: Lousiana State University Press, 1988).
William E. B. DuBois, “Criteria of Negro Art: Address to the Annual Meeting of the NAACP, June 1926, Chicago,” Crisis, Vol. 32, No.2 (October 1926): 290–297. Reprinted in W. E. B. DuBois: A Reader, ed. Meyer Weinberg, (New York: Harper & Row, 1970 ), 251–260; also in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, ed. Erica J Sundquist ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 ).
William E. B. DuBois, “Kwigwa Players Little Negro Theatre: The Story of a Little Theatre Movement,” The Crisis, 32, No. 2 (February 1926): 134.
See Ethel Pitts Walker, “The American Negro Theatre,” The Theater of Black Americans, ed. Errol Hill (New York: Applause, 1980 and 1987), 247–260.
See Lofton Mitchell, Black Drama: The Story of the American Negro in the Theatre ( New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967 ), 181–182.
LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), “In Search of the Revolutionary Theatre,” Negro Digest, Vol. 16, No. 6 (1966): 21–24. This essay was originally commissioned by the New York Times in December of 1964, but was refused, with the statement that the editors could not understand it. The Village Voice also refused to run this essay. It was first published in Black Dialogue and later printed in The Liberator, Vol. 7 (1965).
Darwin Turner, Introduction to Black Drama in America ( Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1971 ), 18.
Ed Bullins, “Theatre of Reality,” Negro Digest, Vol. 16, No. 6 (1966): 60–66.
Ed Bullins, Introduction to The New Lafayette Theatre Presents ( Garden City, NY: Anchor-Doubleday, 1974 ), 4.
Larry Neal, “The Black Arts Movement,” The Drama Review (T40), Vol. 12, No. 4 (1968): 29–39.
Ronald Milner, “Black Theater—Go Home!” The Black Aesthetic, ed. Addison Gayle, Jr. ( Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971 ), 306–312.
Hoyt W. Fuller, “Toward a Black Aesthetic,” The Black Aesthetic, ed. Addison Gayle, Jr. ( Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971 ), 3–12.
Addison Gayle, Jr., The Black Aesthetic ( Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971 ).
Paul Carter Harrison, Kuntu Drama: Plays of the African Continuum ( New York: Grove Press, 1974 ).
Oliver Jackson, Preface to Kuntu Drama: Plays of the African Continuum (New York: Grove Press, 1974), ix.
Paul Carter Harrison, Totem Vices: Plays from the Black World Repertory ( New York: Grove Press, 1989 ).
Harrison, “Black Theater in the African Continuum: Word/Song as Method.” Introduction to Totem Vices, xvi. Harrison quotes Amiri Baraka from an inter-view in The Drum, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1987): 16–17.
See Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Macon, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). Also Cornel West and bell hooks, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life ( Boston: South End Press, 1991 ).
Cornel West, “Decentering Europe: The Contemporary Crisis in Culture,” Critical Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring 1991): 1–19.
Ntozake Shange, “unrecovered loses/black theater traditions,” Introduction in Three Pieces: Spell #7, a Photograph: Lovers in Motion, Boogie Woogie Landscapes (New York: St. Martin’s, 1981).
John Heilpern, quoting Parks in “Voices from the Edge,” Vogue, Vol. 183, No. 11 (November 1993): 174.
Elinor Fuchs, “The Politics of Form,” Village Voice, Vol. 37, No. 15 (April 14, 1992): 10. Fuchs refers to reviews in Variety and the Hartford Courant respec-tively, concerning the Yale Rep production of Parks’s play, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World.
Cathy Madison, “Writing Home: Interviews with Suzan-Lori Parks, Christopher Durang, Eduardo Machado, Ping Chong and Migdalia Cruz,” American Theatre, Vol. 8, No. 7 (October 1991): 36.
Suzan-Lori Parks, The America Play and Other Works ( New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995 ).
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© 2004 Sandra Shannon and Dana Williams
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Pinkney, M. (2004). The Development of African American Dramatic Theory: W.E.B. DuBois to August Wilson—Hand to Hand!. In: Williams, D.A., Shannon, S.G. (eds) August Wilson and Black Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-8118-9_2
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