African American Theatre

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African American Theatre
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Background Information

• African American Theatre consists of folk tales,
  songs, music, dance, mimicry performed in
  cabins, camp meetings, open parks.
• Ceremonies rituals are found in every society
  and have theatrical events.
• No structured theatre due to lack of population
  centers and nomadic lifestyle.

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Rituals and Ceremonies
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Definitions

• Ceremony-formal religious or social occasion led
  by an authority figure (graduation, marriage,
  inauguration)
• Ritual-an acting out of an established,
  prescribed procedure (family event-Thanksgiving,
  Christmas dinner)
• Methexis-group sharing, audience participation,
  group creativity, improv

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Ceremony-marriage altar
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Ceremony Ritual Traits

• African costumes and masks most beautiful in
  world.
• Participants enact something (bird, animal,
  spirit) and are believed to be inhabited by
  spirit or person becomes what is represented
• African tradition TO BE in theatre

• Leaders and participants have prescribed actions
  and words like script
• Saw world as intricate balance of harmony with
  man responsible for maintaining balance with
  nature.
• Rituals were to maintain balance (bad deeds can
  knock balance off)

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Debate in Theatre

• Was Terence the first black playwright?
• Roman comic playwright.
• Said he was dark complected.
• Born in Carthage brought to Rome as slave.
• Afer in his name reflects North Africa-a person
  from Libia
• He still could have been white.
• We do not know.

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Minstrels
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Minstrel Description

• White performers were made up as caricatured
  blacks with blackface, burnt cork with
  exaggerated eyes and lips-began in 1843 with the
  Virginia Minstrels
• Stereotypes created by whites
• Segregated theatres so made popular by white
  audiences

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Minstrel Characters
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Mr. Tambo Zip Coon

• A joyous musician

• A free black attempting to be better that his
  class and role in life

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Jim Crow

• Most popular minstrel character
• Daddy Rice-Thomas Rice in 1830 made up a
  grotesque jump dance that he called the Jim Crow,
  became character
• Carefree slave

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Minstrels

• Master Juba, William Henry Lane was greatest
  minstrel dancer of all time and was black-1845
• Black minstrel companies formed in 1870s after
  Civil War
• Black companies used blackface too.

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Tom Shows

• Competed with minstrels for popularity
• Based on dramatization of Harriet Beecher Stowes
  Uncle Toms Cabin
• Novels intent was to eradicate slavery, but stage
  versions seen for 80 years reinforced the image
  of blacks as ignorant, submissive, happy-go-lucky
  creatures
• Began to employ black actors for slave roles
• Denounced by black leaders

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Review

• Ritual and ceremony and differences
• Debate over Terence
• Minstrel description
• Minstrel characters and important actors
• Tom Shows