9 - Spectacles of whiteness from Adrienne Kennedy to Suzan-Lori Parks

Summary

Transracial performances, on and off the formal stage, can be undoubtedly traced to the early 1600s when blacks, whites, and Native Americans first began to observe and visibly transcribe their critical impressions of each other. To date, many of the scholarly treatments that address transracial performance have focused on white-bodied impersonations of minoritized people, theatrical forms that are generally recognized in relation to blackface minstrelsy. While there has been significant attention paid to representations of blackface in the past two decades (and, subsequently, theatrical portrayals of redface, yellowface, brownface, etc.), far less attention has been paid to dramatic iterations of whiteness in African American performance. There are, of course, some notable exceptions to this observation.

Scholars such as Dale Cockrell and Peter Reed have documented how whiteface performance in North America can be traced to the early nineteenth century in the Jonkonnu (or John Canoe) rituals of enslaved African Americans. These performances, with roots in West African and Caribbean traditions, were spectacular communal expressions in which elaborately costumed performers often wore “European clothing” and donned whiteface masks that were “clearly intended to represent Caucasian skin tones.” Likewise, theatre historians such as David Krasner, Errol G. Hill, James V. Hatch, and Nadine George-Graves have offered revelatory descriptions of black-authored, embodied whiteface performances on American stages. In addition, Joseph Roach and Marvin McAllister have furthered the examination of whiteface by theorizing on “whiteface minstrelsy,” thereby considering the ways in which embodied enactments of white-identified privileges and behaviors expand our understanding of African American performance and cultural expression.