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.
Author: Judy Tyrus
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1496733606
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
2021 NAACP Image Award Nominee This definitive history is a celebration of the first African-American ballet company, from its 1960s origins in a Harlem basement, to the performances, community engagement, and education message of empowerment through the arts for all which the Company continues to carry forward today. Illustrated with hundreds of never before seen photos from the founding during the Civil Rights Movement by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook through to today, this visual history tells the story that fueled Dance Theatre of Harlem’s growth into one of the most influential and revolutionary American ballet companies of the last five decades. With exclusive backstage stories from its legendary dancers and staff, and unprecedented access to its archives, Dance Theatre of Harlem is a striking chronicle of the company's amazing history, its fascinating daily workings, and the visionaries who made its legacy. Here you’ll discover how the company’s founders—African-American maestro Arthur Mitchell of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, and Nordic-American Karel Shook of The Dutch National Ballet--created timeless works that challenged Eurocentric mainstream ballet head-on—and used new techniques to examine ongoing issues of power, beauty, myth, and the ever-changing definition of art itself. Gaining prominence in the 1970s and 80s with a succession of triumphs—including its spectacular season at the Metropolitan Opera House—the company also gained fans and supporters that included Nelson Mandela, Stevie Wonder, Cicely Tyson, Misty Copeland, Jessye Norman, and six American presidents. Dance Theatre of Harlem details this momentous era as well as the company's difficult years, its impressive recovery as it partnered with new media's most brilliant creators—and, in the wake of its 50th anniversary, amid a global pandemic, its evolution into a worldwide virtual performance space. Alive with stunning photographs, including many from the legendary Marbeth, this incomparable book is a must-have for any lover of dance, art, culture, or history.
Author: Jack Schiffman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
"In the gilded age of vaudeville, one theater stood out as the fountainhead of black entertainment in America--and it's still going strong. Almost every important black performer in the past four decades has appeared at the Apollo Theatre, and always with the knowledge that the acid test of his act will be the rowdy, hip crowd in the theater's 1,700 seats. The son of the Apollo's founder reveals, in this colorful and exciting narrative, the special magic and charisma that have kept this theatrical institution alive. He recalls soaring successes, crushing disasters, and hilarious snafus. ... Uptown is the story of the Apollo Theatre, from its beginnings in the 1930s ... through the jazz revolution ... into today's turned-on generation ...."--Dust jacket.
Author: Ted Fox
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1683353838
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
This graphic novel adaptation of the definitive history of the Apollo brings the legendary Harlem theater to life. Since its inception as an African-American theater in 1934, the Apollo, and the thousands of entertainers who performed there, have led the way in the presentation of swing, bebop, rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel, soul, funk and hip-hop—along with the latest in dance and comedy. The Apollo has nurtured and featured thousands of artists, many of whom have become legends. The beauty they have given the world—their art—transcends the hatred, ignorance, and intolerance that often made their lives difficult. Today, the Apollo enjoys an almost mythical status. With its breathtaking art, this graphic novel adaptation of Showtime at the Apollo brings to life the theater’s legendary significance in music history, African American history, and to the culture of New York City.
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
Author: Clifford Mason
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978810008
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
2020 George Freedley Memorial Award Special Jury Prize from the Theatre Library Association 2021 PROSE Awards Finalist, Music & the Performing Arts In 1936 Orson Welles directed a celebrated all-black production of Macbeth that was hailed as a breakthrough for African Americans in the theater. For over a century, black performers had fought for the right to perform on the American stage, going all the way back to an 1820s Shakespearean troupe that performed Richard III, Othello, and Macbeth, without relying on white patronage. "Macbeth" in Harlem tells the story of these actors and their fellow black theatrical artists, from the early nineteenth century to the dawn of the civil rights era. For the first time we see how African American performers fought to carve out a space for authentic black voices onstage, at a time when blockbuster plays like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Octoroon trafficked in cheap stereotypes. Though the Harlem Renaissance brought an influx of talented black writers and directors to the forefront of the American stage, they still struggled to gain recognition from an indifferent critical press. Above all, "Macbeth" in Harlem is a testament to black artistry thriving in the face of adversity. It chronicles how even as the endemic racism in American society and its theatrical establishment forced black performers to abase themselves for white audiences’ amusement, African Americans overcame those obstacles to enrich the nation’s theater in countless ways.
Author: D. Krasner
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137066253
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
The Harlem Renaissance was an unprecedented period of vitality in the American Arts. Defined as the years between 1910 and 1927, it was the time when Harlem came alive with theater, drama, sports, dance and politics. Looking at events as diverse as the prizefight between Jack Johnson and Jim 'White Hope' Jeffries, the choreography of Aida Walker and Ethel Waters, the writing of Zora Neale Hurston and the musicals of the period, Krasner paints a vibrant portrait of those years. This was the time when the residents of northern Manhattan were leading their downtown counterparts at the vanguard of artistic ferment while at the same time playing a pivotal role in the evolution of Black nationalism. This is a thrilling piece of work by an author who has been working towards this major opus for years now. It will become a classic that will stay on the American history and theater shelves for years to come.
Author:
Publisher: Post Editions
ISBN: 9780991092604
Category : Harlem (New York, N.Y.)
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
A book of photographs that examines Harlem's paradox of place:the tension between the everyday reality of its streets - often contentious, always complex- and the cultural brand it has established in our collective imagination. While exploring one of America's great "main streets" during a time of profound transition, the project raises questions about urban flux, gentrification, and the loss of cultural memory. The coffee-table book measures 10.5 x 12 inches / 26.7 x 30.5 cm, features 68 color plates in a linen-clad hardcover with deboss, typeset in Helvetica Neue Light. Offset printing is on Galerie Art Silk 176/gsm paper. Book design is by Patricia Childers with contributions from historian Jonathan Gill and an insightful text by noted author and photography critic Vicki Goldberg.
Author: Richard Wesley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493050729
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Richard Wesley was witness to a revolution. As both a celebrated participant and eager student of the Black Theater Movement in the late 1960s, he became part of a seismic force in American culture, breaking down barriers and helping to disrupt the cultural landscape. It’s Always Loud in the Balcony: A Life in Black Theater, from Harlem to Hollywood and Back is both history and memoir, tracing Wesley’s roots from riot-torn Newark, New Jersey, across the rocky terrain of Harlem, and finally to Hollywood, where he became partners with Sidney Poitier, writing several successful films before returning to New York and the theater world—a trip that Wesley has wryly characterized as "black power to black establishment." Wesley unfolds the history of black theater with love and precision, from the emergence of Amiri Baraka, and his own debut, the fiercely militant Black Terror—which landed him a deal with the legendary producer Joseph Papp—through his moviemaking experience in Los Angeles, working with Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor, among others. Wesley lands on solid ground in the twenty-first century as an elder statesman, a happy witness to the great success of a new breed of black theater that includes the widespread success of Tyler Perry and Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, which brought hip-hop to Broadway. It’s Always Loud in the Balcony is the passionate, firsthand account of a crucial American art movement whose effects will be felt for generations to come.
Author: Cherene Sherrard-Johnson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118494148
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance presents acomprehensive collection of original essays that address theliterature and culture of the Harlem Renaissance from the end ofWorld War I to the middle of the 1930s. Represents the most comprehensive coverage of themes and uniquenew perspectives on the Harlem Renaissance available Features original contributions from both emerging scholars ofthe Harlem Renaissance and established academic “stars”in the field Offers a variety of interdisciplinary features, such as thesection on visual and expressive arts, that emphasize thecollaborative nature of the era Includes “Spotlight Readings” featuring lesserknown figures of the Harlem Renaissance and newly discovered orundervalued writings by canonicalfigures
