Black Critics on Black Theatre in America

Extract

One of the highest priority items among those of us who are concerned with the history, theory, and criticism of Afro-American theatre is a redefinition of Afro-American theatre within the framework of Afro-American culture. We must not continue to accept a Euro-American concept of what constitutes a good play or a bad play, how an audience ought to behave, and so on. If we do, we will never even begin to discover the vast and beautiful and exciting history of our own theatre.

Carlton W. Molette, 1970

Until 1965, when Imamu Amiri Baraka and others founded The Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School, there was not a black theatre but an “American theatre of Negro participation” (the phrase is Clayton Riley’s, I think). The Negro Digest’s commemoration of black theatre in a 1968 issue was titled “Black Theatre: From Shakespeare to LeRoi Jones.” It contained a photographic galaxy of the “stars” of black theatre: actors, actresses, and other performers predominated over playwrights and directors. The point, of course, is that the major playwrights, producers, and directors in this black theatre were white. In practically all the histories of black theatre (except Loften Mitchell’s Black Drama), one finds that the black actors and performers played merely supporting roles to the true white heroes of this black theatre.