Friday, March 30, 2007
George Wolfe's The Colored Museum Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls
Both Wolfe and Shange challenged the existing representations of African American life at the time of their productions. How does their work suggest new possibilties for agency in African American Theater? What limitations do you see in their critiques? How do the reify or subvert exisiting stereotypes? What examples can you give of contemporary critiques presented by artists ( various media--art, film, television, theater, etc) that mirror the issues explored by Wolfe and Shange?
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7 comments:
Oddly enough, I think that shows like Dave Chappelle’s show challenge stereotypes of how black people view themselves. I do think that these plays give blacks license to do as they please especially artistically. Shange’s question of black male/female relationships is a heated conversation because many women still feel like that now. It’s always the question of why can I not find a decent black man. Shows like “Girlfriends” are filled with this kind of rhetoric. Its like Shange’s work except it comes on weekly and its funny.
When reading "The Colored Museum" all I could think about was "In Living Color" and the similar manner in which comedy was used to address serious issues, and to put them to the forefront without necessarily pounding the audience over the head and pointing fingers of blame. The tool of comedy has always been used in entertainment, especially African-American entertainment, as a subversive manner of addressing issues and allowing them to come in under the radar. Without knowledge of a history of the problematic issues addressed in Wolfe, Shange, "In Living Color," and in the stand-up comedy of Bernie Mac, Jamie Foxx, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, and Richard Pryor, these performances would still come off as entertaining and funny, devoid of real meaning. And in some ways this is where it can be critiqued. While this entertainment may not necessarily alienate an audience, making it all encompassing, its passive nature of presenting a "message" can be overlooked and the deeper significance and meaning of the art can be lost on the unknowing spectator.
The Chappelle show is a perfect modern example of something like the colored museum. He takes modern Black stereotypes, such as the Crack-addicted dice player and turns them on their head, removing the weight they hold by letting us laugh at them. He also takes a lot of the sting out of controversial words, like "nigger" with his sketch involving a white family whose last name is Nigger.
Yeah I have to cosign Simone on this one. I don't know if I can really say anything she didn't, but I was really struck by how The Colored Museum took shots at so many revered aspects of African American theatre history. It seems to mark a really interesting moment in AA theatre as a whole because it's the first example I've read of Black theatre mocking itself. I'm sure some people were really offended by the way Wolfe did this, but I thought it was really crafty because he still managed to address the issues but he created an atmosphere where audiences of other races could be more comfortable, since not only whites were being critiqued. Like Simone said, you can definitely see the same thing in In Living Color. Of course I know a lot of people see it as a trade-off, because they think In Living Color was pandering to white viewers by cooning, or whatever. But Wolfe's play was better at avoiding this because throughout the play he challenges stereotypes (good and bad) rather than ever upholding them.
Hope I made sense.
As several people have already mentioned, in The Colored Musuem Wolfe uses a rainbow of comic devices as a a means to get through the diffculites of discussing the history and pain of the African American commmunity. I believe that Wolfe's goal with his play was to show that it's ok to talk about the pain and that the only way to get through the pain is to own it. He gets people to do this by showing the not only the good but the bad of the African American community. He challenges the ideas and notions that we have about what makes up the Africa American experience. I agree with all the examples mentioned so far. Especially comedians such as Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock use alot of the same devices that Wolfe does to challenge difficult subjects and create a space where people feel comfortable discussing them.
Both Wolfe and Shange express their agency for African America forms of expression by not abiding by any of the rules common in black dramas. they throw all the conventions out the window and in effect broaden our concepts of what black artist can do with their representations. i think there use of stereotypes is a very common place to start if one wishes to shatter preconceived notions of the dominant dramatic narratives of blacks in the US. These playwrights use familiar images but turn them on their heads in an effort to get the reader and audience to challenge the representations they have in their minds. So ultimately they are shifting our perceptions and finding power in stretching the limits of black characterization.
i feel that in this unit the posession and torubling of stereotypes has come full circle where in the beginning stages of black theatre there were black steretypes as set forth by white writers, then a complete disassociation from those sterotypes by black writers, and finally an examination of those stereotypes by black writers. in returning to the white devised stereotypes, we are not regreessing back to that place. rather, we have reached where the point where the examiniation of those stereotypes is in and of itself an exercise of the greater amount of agency a black person is allowed over their own personal history. this extends to many shows like Cahpelle's show, the stand=up comedy of Stee Harvey, even the films of Tyler Perry. If they had no control over the sterotypes placed upon them, I am willing they would not adress them in their work. To the contrary, since they can examine them, since they can deconstruct their nature are they in fact present in the woork we now see today.
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