New York Theater: For every well-known showcase of Black Broadway – “Porgy and Bess,” 1935; “A Raisin in the Sun” 1959; last year’s “Purpose,” winner of both the Tony and Pulitzer — there are little-remembered milestones ranging over the past two centuries. The gallery below, in honor of Black History Month (which several federal agencies now have banned employees from celebrating), samples the history of theater by, for and with Black Americans, taken from collections at the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the Museum of the City of New York
1 comment:
This article does a really good job of covering the expansive history of Black playwrights and actors in the US. Of course the article is celebrating black art so maybe this is the wrong place for it but to me it felt like we kind of breezed past the really harmful impact of minstrel shows. The stereotypes which cause actual harm to black people from minstrel shows are real and this article definitely only really briefly mentioned that. The article talks about how some of the black actors in minstrel shows were able to gain further career success because of those shows. This is definitely something that would have been challenging for those folks then and is still challenging to talk about because on the one hand that could have been the only form of economic success that they could access and also that simultaneously that was causing harm to themselves and their communities. I think that this article was not intended to really spend time on that, they didn't and the article is more about all the successes of black actors and playwrights on and off Broadway which is definitely worth focusing on as well.
Post a Comment