Hi All- I apologize for the late post--I had trouble with blogger last night.
Yesterday in class, we discussed Langston Hughes' 1930s play Mulatto. In the play, Hughes troubles the tragic mulatto stereotype. He also makes particular commentary about the Jim Crow south that stress the tensions and contradictions in relationships we have studied between Blacks and Whites in the United States. This week, take into consideration the ways in which which the Federal Theater Project attempted to change the way "Americans" were presented in the American Theater by creating opportunities for diverse racial and ethnic groups to create and perform in their own stories. How does Hughes' play fit into the goals of the Negro Units and the larger FTP project? Even though most of Hughes' plays were not not funded by the FTP --it was on Broadway at beginning of the Federal Theater Project and stars one of the key players in the Negro Units, Rose McClendon.
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I think that the FTP project meant well but you can't change the way the world thinks in one swoop. The idea that the Federal govt. wanted to create equal space and opportunity in the theater world is commendable but with plays like Mulatto I don't think it would have been accepted. If black people really got a theater all to themselves and showed the works that were important to them they would have probably disrupted the norm at that time. You had white people lynching young black boys for "reckless eyeballing", they weren't ready for blacks to feel any kind of position of power whether it was art or not.
I think Mulatto was right in line with the ideals of the FTP, and I think by running so long on Broadway it probably opened up a lot of peoples' eyes to the jaw-dropping extent of racial inequality in the South. But Saqqara has a good point; trying to perform such a play in Birmingham would have been disastrous. It seems like the people at the FTP were pretty naïve to think the racial climate in the US was uniform all over, and that the same kind of black artistic expression going on in Harlem could be replicated in the Deep South. You have to give it to them for trying, though.
Mulatto held the ideals of the FTP by bringing the troubles of race relations in the South to the attention of the nation. It addressed issues such as lynching head-on and brought them into focus under the nation's spotlight. With the long run it had, it succeeded in this. Mulatto is definitely the type of play that would spark discussion about the material covered in the play, and once you get a dialogue going, that starts the ball rolling towards social change.
I don't think that Mulatto would be a good candidate to represent black theatre during the time of the Federal Theatre Project. I think a more uplifting play, like Raisin in the Sun, would connect to the goals of the FTP and the black theatre movement of the time.
Having a play in which a man runs upstairs to shoot himself in the head seconds before the closing curtains might be interpreted the wrong way by the audience.
I think Mulatto ideally fit the format that the FTP project laid out for diversifying American theatre, but when applied in the reality of varying racial climates in the country I think it would have been hit or miss. Like others have said, Mulatto would have been perceived entirely different in the South than in the North but I don't think the pessimism about it showing in the South should have stopped them from producing it. I think the South needed the ideas of Mulatto most in their regional dialogue because you can't always wait for the collective mentality of people to catch up with the art and it just might be the art and the conversation it sparks that causes an awakening or a shift in mentality.
testing to see if this works...
I agree with Saqqara. Although the idea of the FTP did seem to try and bring equal representation, there is a limit to the way that people can be represented. What I mean in saying that is similar to what has been said above. A play like Mulatto would not have been accepted in a place like Birmingham at the time. In fact it had the possibility of even causing problems with the controversial nature of what is occuring in the context of the play. Whereas a place like New York and Broadway, presented a much more open forum for controversial subject matter regarding African Americans. Now I am in no way attempting to claim that racism was non-existant in places like New York. However the politics of racism then and even today continue to be much more covert than in southern cities like Birmingham.
i think the FTP was an effectual failure, at least in terms of the negro units. one cannot simply create a unit which will create black theatre for a black community where no such relationship previously existed. in Birmingham, for example. the theatre establsihment was inherintly white. when establishing an FTP negro unit there, the government was throwing money at a problem that reuired a lot more attneiton. sure, the budget existed but there was no crew to run a show, there was no creative talent to create a show. hughes work seeks to challenge typical racial constructions and create a dialogue. The FTP, on the other hand, does not care for dialogue, otherwise they would have seen the sheer idiocy of the negro unit in Birmingham. this isnt to say that Birmingham didnt need or warrant a unit. But as government bureaucracy worked its way down, we see the emergence of an encumbered system which allows for little movement, let alone dialgue, which was exactly what highes had set out to do.
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