Book Description

African American Performance and Theater History is an anthology of critical writings that explores the intersections of race, theater, and performance in America.

Assembled by Harry J. Elam, Jr. and David Krasner, two respected scholars in black theater, and composed of essays from acknowledged authorities in the field, this anthology is organized into four sections representative of the ways black theater, drama, and performance interact and enact continuous social, cultural, and political dialogues.

Ranging from a discussion of dramatic performances of Uncle Tom's Cabin to the Black Art Movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, articles gathered in the first section, "Social Protest and the Politics of Representation," confront ways in which African American theater and performance have operated as social weapons and tools of protest. The second section of the volume, "Cultural Traditions, Cultural Memory and Performance," features Joseph Roach's chronicle of the slave performances at Congo Square in New Orleans and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s critique of August Wilson's cultural polemics outlined in his 1996 speech to the Theatre Communication Group. "Intersections of Race and Gender," the third section, includes analyses of the intersections of race and gender on the minstrel stage, the plight of black female choreographers at the inception of Modern Dance, and contemporary representations of black homosexuality by PomoAfro Homo. Using theories of performance and performativity, articles in the fourth section, "African American Performativity and the Performance of Race," probe into the ways blackness and racial identity have been constructed in and through performance. The final section is a roundtable assessment of the past and present state of African American Theater and Performance Studies by some of the leading senior scholars in the field--James Hatch, Sandra Richards, and Margaret Wilkerson.

Revealing the dynamic relationship between race and theater, this volume illustrates how the social and historical contexts of production critically affect theatrical performances of blackness and their meanings and, at the same time, how African-American cultural, social, and political struggles have been profoundly affected by theatrical representations and performances. This one-volume collection, African American Performance and Theater History is likely to become an important reference for those studying black theater and an engrossing survey for all readers of African American literature.

Harry J. Elam, Jr. is Christensen Professor for the Humanities, Director of the Introduction to the Humanities, Director of Graduate Studies for Drama, and Director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University. David Krasner is Director of Undergraduate Theater Studies at Yale University, where he teaches theater history, acting, and directing. His book, Resistance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African-American Theatre 1895-1910, won the Errol Hill award from the American Society of Theatre Research.