New Wave of African American Theater: Hip-hop Theater and the Urban Theater Circuit

This week we will discuss new developments in African American Theater. Recent debates in American Theatre Magazine (2004) about the state of Hip-hop Theater as part of what Paul Carter Harris calls the "African continuum" have sparked contorversy as many believe that Hip-hop cannot be limited to African American cultural production.
Likewise, Hip-hop Theater then has been defined by one if its pioneers, Danny Hoch as theater "by, about and for the Hip-hop generation" which borrows directly from W.E.B. Dubois'definition of Black Theater. In addition, building on earlier arguments by Alain Locke for black theater that addresses the "folk" tradition of everyday African American life, the Urban Theater Circut has been critiqued for presenting stories that often reify existing stereotypes of African Americans. .
In our discussions of Hip-hop Theater and the Urban Theater Circuit (formerly known as the Chitlin' Circuit),can peoplewho are not African American perform theater works inspired from African American life? Is Hip-hop Theater "black" theater even when other races and ethnicities perform its works? What are your thoughts?

Shange's For Colored Girls Wolfe's The Colored Musuem

Both Shange and Wolfe present issues that have shaped African American experiences in the United States such as slavery,racism, feminism,sexism,homosexuality, spousal abuse and quests for racial "authenticity." Both authors ask why and how African Americans and white mainstream theater audiences buy into various stereotypes of blackness as repesentative of the larger black American collective. Can you find current critiques of African American life presented in popular culture today?

Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro and Genet's The Blacks

Both Kennedy and Genet present complex ideas about racism, color politics and power in these works. How might these plays be reflective of personal and collective conflicts between blacks and whites throughout the African Diaspora? Do you find differences in the ways that blackness is represented by a white author (Genet) versus a black author(Kennedy) in presenting black experiences of racism? Where do the similarities lie in these plays if any....

Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun Baldwin's Amen Corner

Last week, one of our class colleagues asked when, if ever, the subjects we have discussed in relationship to African American Theater would change? I think this was a prolific inquiry and one that we must grapple with when examining the works of Hansberry and Baldwin. What is "new" in the discussions of African American life we see presented in these works? How to they present new perspectives or subversive characteristics which address issues of racism and insitutionalized inequality for African Americans? What stories and/or stereotypes persist?

Angelina Weld Grimke's Rachel Langston Hughes' Mulatto

Our reading of Angelina Grimke's Rachel and Langston Hughes' Mulatto engendered several discussions about the multiple ways that "blackness" can be written for the stage. Particularly, both playwrights use language as a way to indicate the level of "blackness" lived by their characters. For example, both Grimke and Hughes use speech that is presented as "educated"and "uneducated" to create chracterizations of light skinned and dark skinned blacks respectively.

Keeping this in mind, how do Both Grimke and Hughes use language and color to differentiate the ways in which black Americans of various skin tones are afforded or denied certain privleges according to their phenotypical relationship to whiteness? In what ways to Grimke and Hughes begin to solicit a conversation about black identity as a simultaneous racial, social and poltical identification? Conversley, is Hughes successful at writing "whiteness" in Mulatto?

In Dahomey, Minstresly and Stereotypes in Black Theater

I apologize for the late post. I had some publishing issues with Blogger which prevented me from posting.

Our discussions have focused broadly on the stereotypes used to portray blacks on the American Theater stage. We have learned that while whites mimicking "black life" on stage circulated essentialized representations of black men and women, that blacks also participated in circulating these unfavorbale images. In what ways, if at all, do any of the characters we have encountered in Aikens' Uncle Tom's Cabin, Browns' The Escape and Cook's In Dahomey present new representations of black subjects that disrupt these stereotypes of "Uncle Tom," "Coon," "Topsy, and "Tragic mulatto," etc. that we have seen thus far?

Introduction to African American Theater-Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harry Elam argues in the introduction of African American Theater and Performance History that "race reamins a device with very real meanings"(2001,6). Thinking about the ways the characters in Aikens' Uncle Tom's Cabin are represented, how do you understand race to operate as a device in this play? In what ways can you make sense of the idea of race as social construction that changes its meaning over time? What situations between characters can you isolate that repersentative of "race relations" in this particular historical context?