Willis Richardson, Forgotten Pioneer of African-American Drama PDF Download
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Author: Christine R. Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313000921
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
During the 1920s and 1930s, Willis Richardson (1889-1977) was highly respected as a leading African-American playwright and drama anthologist. His plays were performed by numerous black high school, college, and university drama groups and by theater companies in Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Baltimore, and Atlanta. With the opening of The Chip Woman's Fortune (1923), he became the first African American to have a play produced on Broadway. Several of his 46 plays were published in assorted magazines, and in his essays, he urged black Americans to seek their dramatic material in their own lives and circumstances. In addition, he edited three anthologies of plays by African-Americans. But between 1940 and his death in 1977, Richardson came to realize that his plays were period pieces and that they no longer reflected the problems and situations of African-Americans. In the years before his death, he attempted vigorously yet unsuccessfully to preserve several of his plays through publication, if not production. But the man who has been called the father of African-American drama and who was considered the hope and promise of African-American drama died in obscurity. Richardson has even been neglected by the scholarly community. This critical biography, the first extensive consideration of his life and work, firmly reestablishes his pioneering role in American theater. The book begins with a detailed chronology, followed by a thoughtful biographical essay. The volume then examines the nature of African-American drama in the 1920s, the period during which Richardson was most productive, and it analyzes his approach to drama as a means of educating African-American audiences. It then explores the African-American community as the central theme in Richardson's plays, for Richardson typically looks at the consequences of refusals by blacks to help one another. The work additionally considers Richardson's history plays, his anthologies, his dramas intended for black children, and his essays. A concluding chapter summarizes his lasting influence; the book closes with a listing of his plays and an extensive bibliography.
Author: Christine R. Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313000921
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
During the 1920s and 1930s, Willis Richardson (1889-1977) was highly respected as a leading African-American playwright and drama anthologist. His plays were performed by numerous black high school, college, and university drama groups and by theater companies in Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Baltimore, and Atlanta. With the opening of The Chip Woman's Fortune (1923), he became the first African American to have a play produced on Broadway. Several of his 46 plays were published in assorted magazines, and in his essays, he urged black Americans to seek their dramatic material in their own lives and circumstances. In addition, he edited three anthologies of plays by African-Americans. But between 1940 and his death in 1977, Richardson came to realize that his plays were period pieces and that they no longer reflected the problems and situations of African-Americans. In the years before his death, he attempted vigorously yet unsuccessfully to preserve several of his plays through publication, if not production. But the man who has been called the father of African-American drama and who was considered the hope and promise of African-American drama died in obscurity. Richardson has even been neglected by the scholarly community. This critical biography, the first extensive consideration of his life and work, firmly reestablishes his pioneering role in American theater. The book begins with a detailed chronology, followed by a thoughtful biographical essay. The volume then examines the nature of African-American drama in the 1920s, the period during which Richardson was most productive, and it analyzes his approach to drama as a means of educating African-American audiences. It then explores the African-American community as the central theme in Richardson's plays, for Richardson typically looks at the consequences of refusals by blacks to help one another. The work additionally considers Richardson's history plays, his anthologies, his dramas intended for black children, and his essays. A concluding chapter summarizes his lasting influence; the book closes with a listing of his plays and an extensive bibliography.
Author: Willis Richardson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781934110553
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
Here in a facsimile of the 1930 edition is Willis Richardson's collection of twelve plays and pageants that playwrights of the era wrote expressly for black audiences, mainly students and other young black people who staged them. Not available in any other source, this is the important work of nine significant dramatists who helped to lay the foundations of African American drama. Included are Thelma Myrtle Duncan's Sacrifice, Maud Cuney-Hare's Antar of Araby, John Matheus's Ti Yette, May Miller's Graven Images and Riding the Goat, Willis Richardson's The Black Horseman, The King's Dilemma, and The House of Sham, Inez M. Burke's Two Races, Dorothy C. Guinn's Out of the Dark, Frances Gunner's The Light of the Women, and Edward J. McCoo's Ethiopia at the Bar of Justice. This edition also contains Richardson's introduction from the 1930 edition, not included in later versions.
Author:
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781617034565
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
Here in a facsimile of the 1930 edition is Willis Richardson's collection of twelve plays and pageants that playwrights of the era wrote expressly for black audiences, mainly students and other young black people who staged them. Not available in any other source, this is the important work of nine significant dramatists who helped to lay the foundations of African American drama. Included are Thelma Myrtle Duncan's Sacrifice, Maud Cuney-Hare's Antar of Araby, John Matheus's Ti Yette, May Miller's Graven Images and Riding the Goat, Willis Richardson's The Black Horseman, The King's Dilemma, and The House of Sham, Inez M. Burke's Two Races, Dorothy C. Guinn's Out of the Dark, Frances Gunner's The Light of the Women, and Edward J. McCoo's Ethiopia at the Bar of Justice. This edition also contains Richardson's introduction from the 1930 edition, not included in later versions.
Author: James Vernon Hatch
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814325803
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 472
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Book Description
The topics of the plays cover the realm of the human experience in styles as wide-ranging as poetry, farce, comedy, tragedy, social realism, and romance. Individual introductions to each play provide essential biographical background on the playwrights.
Author: Philip Bader
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438107838
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
African-American authors have consistently explored the political dimensions of literature and its ability to affect social change. African-American literature has also provided an essential framework for shaping cultural identity and solidarity. From the early slave narratives to the folklore and dialect verse of the Harlem Renaissance to the modern novels of today
Author: Jackson R. Bryer
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438129661
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 657
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Book Description
Features a comprehensive guide to American dramatic literature, from its origins in the early days of the nation to the groundbreaking works of today's best writers.
Author: Willis Richardson
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781795287630
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 33
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Book Description
In 1922, Willis Richardson wrote The Chip Woman's Fortune. On January 29, 1923, the play was performed by the Ethiopian Art Players in Chicago. In April 1923, the play moved to New York. On May 7, 1923, The Chip Woman's Fortune had a short run at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem. Eight days later, it became the first play by an African American to reach Broadway. The chip woman, in The Chip Woman's Fortune, is named Aunt Nancy. She contributes to the household where she resides by picking up chips of wood and lumps of coal from the streets. We find her living with Silas and caring for his ill wife, Liza, whom we learn is making a steady recovery under Aunt Nancy's care. Silas learns that the family's greatest treasure, a Victrola record player, is about to be repossessed because of financial strain that has left him unable to make payments on the outstanding debt owed on the machine. After learning that, Aunt Nancy has managed to save some money from street donations she receives, Silas decides that it is time for her to contribute more than the nursing care provided to his wife, and the wood chips and coal lumps she collects for use by the family.
Author: Harry J. Elam
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190284463
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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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 two esteemed scholars in black theater, Harry J. Elam, Jr. and David Krasner, 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 continual 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," discuss the 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, among other essays, 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. "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 round-table 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 V. Hatch, Sandra L. Richards, and Margaret B. 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 is sure to become an important reference for those studying black theater and an engrossing survey for all readers of African American literature.
Author: Hans Ostrom
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 571
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Book Description
This essential volume provides an overview of and introduction to African American writers and literary periods from their beginnings through the 21st century. This compact encyclopedia, aimed at students, selects the most important authors, literary movements, and key topics for them to know. Entries cover the most influential and highly regarded African American writers, including novelists, playwrights, poets, and nonfiction writers. The book covers key periods of African American literature—such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the Civil Rights Era—and touches on the influence of the vernacular, including blues and hip hop. The volume provides historical context for critical viewpoints including feminism, social class, and racial politics. Entries are organized A to Z and provide biographies that focus on the contributions of key literary figures as well as overviews, background information, and definitions for key subjects.
Author: Bernard L. Peterson Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313065039
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
This directory includes over 500 African American performers and theater people who have made a significant contribution to the American stage from the early 19th century to the beginning of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Entries provide succinct biographical and theatrical information gathered from a variety of sources including library theater and drama collections, dissertations and theses, newspaper and magazine reviews and criticism, theater programs, theatrical memoirs, and earlier performing arts directories. Among the professional artists included in this volume are performers, librettists, lyricists, directors, producers, choreographers, stage managers, and musicians. The individuals profiled represent almost every major category and genre of the professional, semiprofessional, regional, and academic stage including minstrelsy, vaudeville, musical theater, and drama. Persons of historical significance are included as well as those stars and theatrical personalities that were well known during their time but who are relatively forgotten today. This comprehensive volume will appeal to theater and musical theater, Black studies, and American studies scholars. Cross-referenced throughout, this reference also includes an extensive bibliography and appendices of other theater personalities excluded from the main text. Separate indexes list the personalities, teams and partnerships, and performing groups, organizations, and companies.
