Theorizing Black Theatre

Theorizing Black Theatre PDF Author: Henry D. Miller
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786460148
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The rich history of African-American theatre has often been overlooked, both in theoretical discourse and in practice. This volume seeks a critical engagement with black theatre artists and theorists of the twentieth century. It reveals a comprehensive view of the Art or Propaganda debate that dominated twentieth century African-American dramatic theory. Among others, this text addresses the writings of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Kennedy, Sidney Poitier, and August Wilson. Of particular note is the manner in which black theory collides or intersects with canonical theorists, including Aristotle, Keats, Ibsen, Nietzsche, Shaw, and O'Neill.

Theorizing Black Theatre

Theorizing Black Theatre PDF Author: Henry D. Miller
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786460148
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
The rich history of African-American theatre has often been overlooked, both in theoretical discourse and in practice. This volume seeks a critical engagement with black theatre artists and theorists of the twentieth century. It reveals a comprehensive view of the Art or Propaganda debate that dominated twentieth century African-American dramatic theory. Among others, this text addresses the writings of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Kennedy, Sidney Poitier, and August Wilson. Of particular note is the manner in which black theory collides or intersects with canonical theorists, including Aristotle, Keats, Ibsen, Nietzsche, Shaw, and O'Neill.

Stages of Struggle and Celebration

Stages of Struggle and Celebration PDF Author: Sandra M. Mayo
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 147730780X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
From plantation performances to minstrel shows of the late nineteenth century, the roots of black theatre in Texas reflect the history of a state where black Texans have continually created powerful cultural emblems that defy the clichés of horses, cattle, and bravado. Drawing on troves of archival materials from numerous statewide sources, Stages of Struggle and Celebration captures the important legacies of the dramatic arts in a historical field that has paid most of its attention to black musicians. Setting the stage, the authors retrace the path of the cakewalk and African-inspired dance as forerunners to formalized productions at theaters in the major metropolitan areas. From Houston’s Ensemble and Encore Theaters to the Jubilee in Fort Worth, gospel stage plays of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in Dallas, as well as San Antonio’s Hornsby Entertainment Theater Company and Renaissance Guild, concluding with ProArts Collective in Austin, Stages of Struggle and Celebration features founding narratives, descriptions of key players and memorable productions, and enlightening discussions of community reception and the business challenges faced by each theatre. The role of drama departments in historically black colleges in training the companies’ founding members is also explored, as is the role the support of national figures such as Tyler Perry plays in ensuring viability. A canon of Texas playwrights completes the tour. The result is a diverse tribute to the artistic legacies that continue to inspire new generations of producers and audiences.

Theorising Performance

Theorising Performance PDF Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0715638262
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Constitutes the first analysis of the modern performance of ancient Greek drama from a theoretical perspective.

Staging Faith

Staging Faith PDF Author: Craig R. Prentiss
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814707955
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
- "Lively descriptions... compelling analysis... and careful attention to historical contexts." - Judith Weisenfeld, author of Hollywood Be Thy Name "Methodically and brilliantly probes the nuances... One of the most brilliant and engaging studies on African American theater." - David Krasner, author of A Beautiful Pageant

The Problem of the Color[blind]

The Problem of the Color[blind] PDF Author: Brandi Wilkins Catanese
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472051261
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
"Catanese's beautifully written and cogently argued book addresses one of the most persistent sociopolitical questions in contemporary culture. She suggests that it is performance and the difference it makes that complicates the terms by which we can even understand 'multicultural' and 'colorblind' concepts. A tremendously illuminating study that promises to break new ground in the fields of theatre and performance studies, African American studies, feminist theory, cultural studies, and film and television studies." ---Daphne Brooks, Princeton University "Adds immeasurably to the ways in which we can understand the contradictory aspects of racial discourse and performance as they have emerged during the last two decades. An ambitious, smart, and fascinating book." ---Jennifer DeVere Brody, Duke University Are we a multicultural nation, or a colorblind one? The Problem of the Color[blind] examines this vexed question in American culture by focusing on black performance in theater, film, and television. The practice of colorblind casting---choosing actors without regard to race---assumes a performing body that is somehow race neutral. But where, exactly, is race neutrality located---in the eyes of the spectator, in the body of the performer, in the medium of the performance? In analyzing and theorizing such questions, Brandi Wilkins Catanese explores a range of engaging and provocative subjects, including the infamous debate between playwright August Wilson and drama critic Robert Brustein, the film career of Denzel Washington, Suzan-Lori Parks's play Venus, the phenomenon of postblackness (as represented in the Studio Museum in Harlem's "Freestyle" exhibition), the performer Ice Cube's transformation from icon of gangsta rap to family movie star, and the controversial reality television series Black. White. Concluding that ideologies of transcendence are ahistorical and therefore unenforceable, Catanese advances the concept of racial transgression---a process of acknowledging rather than ignoring the racialized histories of performance---as her chapters move between readings of dramatic texts, films, popular culture, and debates in critical race theory and the culture wars.

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill PDF Author: Lanie Robertson
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573681844
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
"Deals with one of the last appearances of Billie Holiday." -- p.7 | May include musicians.

Black Madness :

Black Madness : PDF Author: Therí Alyce Pickens
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478005505
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
In Black Madness :: Mad Blackness Therí Alyce Pickens rethinks the relationship between Blackness and disability, unsettling the common theorization that they are mutually constitutive. Pickens shows how Black speculative and science fiction authors such as Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and Tananarive Due craft new worlds that reimagine the intersection of Blackness and madness. These creative writer-theorists formulate new parameters for thinking through Blackness and madness. Pickens considers Butler's Fledgling as an archive of Black madness that demonstrates how race and ability shape subjectivity while constructing the building blocks for antiracist and anti-ableist futures. She examines how Hopkinson's Midnight Robber theorizes mad Blackness and how Due's African Immortals series contests dominant definitions of the human. The theorizations of race and disability that emerge from these works, Pickens demonstrates, challenge the paradigms of subjectivity that white supremacy and ableism enforce, thereby pointing to the potential for new forms of radical politics.

The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre

The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre PDF Author: Harvey Young
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009359592
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This new edition provides an expanded, comprehensive history of African American theatre, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Including discussions of slave rebellions on the national stage, African Americans on Broadway, the Harlem Renaissance, African American women dramatists, and the New Negro and Black Arts movements, the Companion also features fresh chapters on significant contemporary developments, such as the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the mainstream successes of Black Queer Drama and the evolution of African American Dance Theatre. Leading scholars spotlight the producers, directors, playwrights, and actors who have fashioned a more accurate appearance of Black life on stage, revealing the impact of African American theatre both within the United States and around the world. Addressing recent theatre productions in the context of political and cultural change, it invites readers to reflect on where African American theatre is heading in the twenty-first century.

Understanding Blackness through Performance

Understanding Blackness through Performance PDF Author: Anne Cremieux
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137313803
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
How does the performance of blackness reframe issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality? Here, the contributors look into representational practices in film, literature, fashion, and theatre and explore how they have fleshed out political struggles, while recognizing that they have sometimes maintained the mechanisms of violence against blacks.

Harlem's Theaters

Harlem's Theaters PDF Author: Adrienne Macki Braconi
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810132265
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Honorable Mention, 2016 Errol Hill Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in African American Theater, Drama and/or Performance Based on a vast amount of archival research, Adrienne Macki Braconi’s illuminating study of three important community-based theaters in Harlem shows how their work was essential to the formation of a public identity for African Americans and the articulation of their goals, laying the groundwork for the emergence of the Civil Rights movement. Macki Braconi uses textual analysis, performance reconstruction, and audience reception to examine the complex dynamics of productions by the Krigwa Players, the Harlem Experimental Theatre, and the Negro Theatre of the Federal Theatre Project. Even as these theaters demonstrated the extraordinary power of activist art, they also revealed its limits. The stage was a site in which ideological and class differences played out, theater being both a force for change and a collision of contradictory agendas. Macki Braconi’s book alters our understanding of the Harlem Renaissance, the roots of the Civil Rights movement, and the history of community theater in America.