HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Finding Some Hope…

Thus it is the bounden duty of black America to begin this great work of the creation of Beauty, of the preservation of Beauty, of the realization of Beauty, … ~WEB Dubois, 

Criteria of Negro Art

Dubois was speaking to an audience of scholars and citizens striving to find ways to better the lot of African-Americans during the early part of the 20th century.  He observes that African-Americans contributed in many ways to the fabric of this great nation, but they had yet to be recognized as full-fledged Americans.  Dubois and others at the time believed there was one area that needed to be boosted in order to improve the futures of African Americans.  That area was the arts.  Art has always been away from human beings to express their feelings and ideas about the world in which they live.  Art has always been a reflective surface that allows the artist to speak about his or her society.

For much of the 20th century, African-American artists, especially performing artists, have had to deal with the uncertainty of their profession because they had to face racism and bigotry.  To counteract some of what they faced in Hollywood and on Broadway, African American performers became producers and directors who promulgated the idea of black consciousness by illustrating the trials and tribulations, the joys and the celebrations of African American life but always with the best interest of the community at heart.

 to the current production of African American theatre, the question of “best interest” is vital because much of what is being produced it not in the “best interest” of the community.  Independent African American repertory theatre companies, many founded during the revolutionary times of the 1960s and 70s, have gone by the wayside because they no longer had anything to “protest” and are floundering trying to find their course on the new theatre scene.  Those that have not gone of business teach classes to would be professional performers, who must struggle to find work because the African American theatres in the area (if they exist) do not produce a continuous season of plays/musicals.  Completing the scenario, the many legit (read white) downtown theatres only produce one African American play a year so that they can receive diversity funding.  Then, of course, there is Tyler Perry, a brilliant businessperson and promoter, who has made it seem that anybody and everybody can do Black (read as coon) theater if they are willing to throw the “best interest” of the community under the bus to make a buck.  It must be pointed out that there has always been two trajectories of cultural forms—high and low culture—or as called in African American theatre history the legitimate stages and the “Chitterling Circuit.”  We all know what chitterlings are and what they contain. 

For the young African American artists there are some rays of hope and those are the ongoing promotion of color-blind casting and the African American dollar.  Theatres and producers are wising up to the notion that African Americans like to see themselves and their worlds depicted on stage and screen and are willing to pay to do so.  This has lead to more trained African American artists working in theatres across the country at every level.  The task of the artists is to promote the African American story in American through the beauty of the theatre.  They must have the best interest of the community at heart as they tell the tales and that love will shine through.  It is the only way for the work to have an universality to it.  The work becomes a human—not just an African American—story.