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

My apologies for the late post.

This week, we discussed how both Genet and Kennedy challenge the social, cultural and political limitations of what it means to "be" Black in an international context. Both playwrights explode racial stereotypes in order to reveal the psychological and material injuries that Blacks of all nationalities have suffered in relationship to Whiteness over time. By using mirror images of stereotypes that both Whites and Blacks have of one another, Genet attempts to use the stage as a place for Whites to reflect on their personal and collective relationship to the oppression of Blacks. Kennedy challenges how Blackness is determined when one's skin color and world-view are indeed "White." Hopefully both playwrights help us understand the complex social relationships that must be considered when we think about race as a lived identity.

With these ideas and our class discussion in mind, how do you feel one lives a racial identity? What is it that determines "Blackness," "Whiteness" or "otherness"? How are we socialized to know when we are in the presence of something that is effectively "Black" or "White" and how does nationality shape this discussion. As usual, you can refer to your everyday lives and popular culture.

Leroi Jones' Dutchman

This week we discussed the significance of Jones' Dutchman as an exploration of many of the themes of the Black Arts Movement. Lee's Obie winning play presents a series of counter arguments to many passive and non-violent approaches to social change presented in art in the mid 1960s. The Black Arts Movement was often defined as a "sister" movement to the Black Power movement because of the ways that it stressed the political, cultural and economic components that consituted a"Black" identity as well as the "by any means necessary" approach preached by Malcolm X. Considering Jones' "militant" presentation of "blackness" in this play, in what ways do you feel the play resonates today if at all? In what way is the play "dated"? In what way do the characters of Clay and Lula operate as "composites" of race realtions between Blacks and Whites in the 1960s?

James Baldwin's The Amen Corner and Ossie Davis' Purlie Victorious

This week, we discussed how both The Amen Corner and Purlie Victorious as "civil rights" plays of the give us important information about the significance of the Black Church and the performance of a Black subjectivity. We also discussed various themes and ideas that reference theBlack Church which can help us understand how the relationship between the religious and the secular becomes a recurring theme in African American Theater. Keeping this in mind, how can you see alternative performances of Blackness, in our current moment, that disrupt the heteronormative behaviors of Blacks and Whites that we have read? Can you think of ways that you can challenge how Black men and women are written for the stage? Can you make any links to television, film or music that perpetuate a heteronormative performance of Blackness? What suggestions would you make to playwrights, actors and/or directors when creating seemingly "authentic" representations of Black Americans that exclusively address heterosexuality? You can answer any variation of these questions or respond to one another.

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun

Hi all- A Raisin in the Sun as a watershed play in American Theater history because of its representation of African American life. How do the roles, plots and themes resonate today? Does the play resonate as "modern" today? Why or why not?

Langston Hughes' Mulatto

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.

Angeleina Weld Grimke's Rachel

This week's discussion addressed Grimke's Rachel as a propaganda play about the emotional violence of lynching written in response to the D.W. Griffith film Birth of a Nation. We also discussed how the play embodies the similarities and contradictions between Alain Locke and W.E.B. Dubois' views of Black Theater. Thinking of Dubois' call for propaganda theater and Lockes call for art theater, what links can you make to Black cultural production today that address social, cultural and poltical issues in the African American community? Do these productions operate as propaganda and/or art?

In Dahomey, Minstresly and "Double Inversion"

It appears that this week's critical readings have most students confused versus enlightened. This is where our interpretation of theory, even my explanation of theory, can fail if we do not have a context to apply it to our everyday lives. I want you to think about Annemarie Bean's concept of "double inversion" as an act of "recycling". Think of In Dahomey as a play where Black actors "recycle" and then "reuse" images of Blacks as conceived by Whites. Actors such as Bert Williams an Aida Overton Walker refashioned, or "inverted" these images into attempts to subvert the negative images presented by White minstrels. In terms of gender, and the concept of "double inversion", Bean refers to the performance of "color" vs race--White minstrels taking on the gender and "color" identities of black women and men. Black women minstrels would take on the role of "double inversion" --through their performance of "male" characters. Their performances were an attempt was to invert ( thus inversion) the previous representations of Black men and women.

Keeping these ideas in mind--how might you relate these concepts to contemporary popular "race and gender" performances ? Examples includeMarlon and Shawn Wayans playing White women, Eddie Murphy's performanc eof African American women in Norbit and White men in Nutty Professor , Martin Lawrence's performance of Black Women in Big Mama's House, C Thomas Howel's performance of a Black man in Soul Man, Theyk White Rapper showetc? How theater come to influence these types of performances? Do you see traces of minstrelsy in these works at all? How do they differ from both White and Black minstrelsy? Are their any "inversions"?