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I have come
here today to make a testimony, to talk about the ground on
which I stand and all the many grounds on which I and my
ancestors have toiled, and the ground of theatre on which my
fellow artists and I have labored to bring forth its fruits, its
daring and its sometimes lacerating, and often healing, truths.
I wish to
make it clear from the outset, however, that I do not have a
mandate to speak for anyone. There are many intelligent blacks
working in the American theatre who speak in loud and articulate
voices. It would be the greatest of presumptions to say I speak
for them. I speak only myself and those who may think as I do.
In one guise,
the ground I stand on has been pioneered by the Greek
dramatists—by Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles—by William
Shakespeare, by Shaw and Ibsen, and by the American dramatists
Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. In
another guise, the ground that I stand on has been pioneered by
my grandfather, by Nat Turner, by Denmark Vesey, by Martin
Delaney, Marcus Garvey and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. That
is the ground of the affirmation of the value of one being, an
affirmation of his worth in the face of society’s urgent and
sometimes profound denial. It was this ground as a young man
coming into manhood searching for something to which dedicate my
life that I discovered the Black Power movement of the ’60s. I
felt it a duty and an honor to participate in that historic
moment, as the people who had arrived in America chained and
malnourished in the hold of a 350-foot Portuguese, Dutch or
English sailing ship, were now seeking ways to alter their
relationship to the society in which they lived—and, perhaps
more important, searching for ways to alter the shared
expectations of themselves as a community of people.
The Black
Power movement of the ’60s: I find it curious but no small
accident that I seldom hear those words “Black Power”
spoken, and when mention is made of that part of black history
in America, whether in the press or in conversation, reference
is made to the Civil Rights Movement as though the Black Power
movement—an important social movement by America’s
ex-slaves—had in fact never happened. But the Black Power
movement of the ’60s was a reality; it was the kiln in which I
was fired, and has much to do with the person I am today and the
ideas and attitudes that I carry as part of my consciousness.
I mention
this because it is difficult to disassociate my concerns with
theatre from the concerns of my life as a black man, and it is
difficult to disassociate one part of my life from another. I
have strived to live it all seamless … art and life together,
inseparable and indistinguishable. The ideas I discovered and
embraced in my youth when my idealism was full blown I have not
abandoned in middle age when idealism is something less the
blooming, but wisdom is starting to bud. The ideas of
self-determination, self-respect and self-defense that governed
my life in the ’60s I find just as valid and self-urging in
1996. The need to alter our relationship to the society and to
alter the shared expectations of ourselves as a racial group, I
find of greater urgency now than it was then.
I am what is
known, at least among the followers and supporters of the ideas
of Marcus Garvey, as a “race man.” That is simply that I
believe that race matters—that is the largest, most
identifiable and the most important part of our personality. It
is the largest category of identification because it is the one
that most influences your perception of yourself, and it is the
one to which others in the world of men most respond. Race is
also an important part of the American landscape, as America is
made up of an amalgamation of races from all parts of the globe.
Race is also the product of a shared gene pool that allows for
group identification, and it is an organizing principle around
which cultures are formed. When I say culture I am speaking
about the behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions and all
other products of human work and thought as expressed in a
particular community of people.
There are
some people who will say that black Americans do not have a
culture—that cultures are reserved for other people, most
notably Europeans of various ethnic groupings, and that black
Americans made up a sub-group of American culture that is
derived from the European origins of its majority population.
But black Americans are Africans, and there are many histories
and many cultures on the African continent.
Those who
would deny black Americans their culture would also deny them
their history and the inherent values that are a part of all
human life.
Growing up in
my mother’s house at 1727 Bedford Ave. in Pittsburgh, Pa., I
learned the language, the eating habits, the religious beliefs,
the gestures, the notions of common sense, attitudes towards
sex, concepts of beauty and justice, and the response to
pleasure and pain, that my mother had learned from her mother,
and which could trace back to the first African who set foot on
the continent. It is this culture that stands solidly on these
shores today as a testament to the resiliency of the
African-American spirit.
The term
black or African-American not only denotes race, it denotes
condition, and carries with it the vestige of slavery and the
social segregation and abuse of opportunity so vivid in our
memory. That this abuse of opportunity and truncation of
possibility is continuing and is so pervasive in our society in
1996 says much about who we are and much about the work that is
necessary to alter our perceptions of each other and to effect
meaningful prosperity for all.
The
problematic nature of the relationship between white and black
for too long led us astray the fulfillment of our possibilities
as a society. We stare at each other across a divide of
economics and privilege that has become an encumbrance on black
Americans’ ability to prosper and on the collective will and
spirit of our national purpose.
In terms of
economics and privilege, one significant fact affects us all in
the American theatre: Of the 66 LORT theatre, there is only one
that can be considered black. From this it could be falsely
assumed that there aren’t sufficient numbers of blacks working
in the American theatre to sustain and support more theatres.
If you do not
know, I will tell you that black theatre in America is alive …
it is vibrant … it is vital … it just isn’t funded. Black
theatre doesn’t share in the economics that would allow it to
support its artists and supply them with meaningful avenues to
develop their talent and broadcast and disseminate ideas crucial
to its growth. The economics are reserved as privilege to the
overwhelming abundance of institutions that preserve, promote
and perpetuate white culture.
That is not a
complaint. That is an advertisement. Since the funding sources,
both public and private, do not publicly carry avowed missions
of exclusion and segregated support, this is obviously either a
glaring case of oversight, or we the proponents of black theatre
have not made our presence or needs known. I hope here tonight
to correct that.
I do not have
the time in this short talk to reiterate the long and
distinguished history of black theatre—often accomplished amid
adverse and hostile conditions—but I would like to take the
time to mark a few high points.
There are and
have always been two distinct and parallel traditions in black
art: that is, art that is conceived and design to entertain
white society, and art that feeds the spirit and celebrates the
life of black American by designing its strategies for survival
and prosperity.
An important
part of black theatre that is often ignored but is seminal to
its tradition is its origins on the slave plantations of the
South. Summoned to the “big house” to entertain the slave
owner and his guests, the slave that reached its pinnacle for
whites consisted of whatever the slave imagined or knew that his
master wanted to see and hear. This tradition has its present
life counterpart in the crossover artists that slant their
material for white consumption.
This second
tradition occurred when the African in the confines of the slave
quarters sought to invest his spirit with the strength of his
ancestors by conceiving in his art, in his song and dance, a
world in which he was the spiritual center and his existence was
a manifest act of the creator from whom life flowed. He then
could create art that was functional and furnished him with a
spiritual temperament necessary for his survival as property and
the dehumanizing status that was attendant to that.
I stand
myself and my art squarely on the self-defining ground of the
slave quarters, and find the ground to be hallowed and made
fertile by the blood and bones of the men and woman who can be
described as warriors on the cultural battlefield that affirmed
their self-worth. As there is no idea that cannot be contained
by black life, these men and women found themselves to be
sufficient and secure in their art and their instruction.
It was this
high ground of self-definition that the black playwrights of the
’60s marked out for themselves. Ron Milner, Ed Bullins, Philip
Hayes Dean, Richard Wesley, Lonne Elder III, Sonia Sanchez,
Barbara Ann Teer and Amiri Baraka were among those playwrights
who were particularly vocal and where remain indebted to them
for their brave and courageous forays into an area that is
marked with land mines and the shadows of snipers—those who
would reserve the territory of arts and letters and the American
theatre as their own special province and point blacks toward
the ball fields and the bandstands.
That black
theatre today comes under such assaults should surprise no one,
as we are on the verge of reclaiming and reexamining the purpose
and pillars of our art and laying out new directions for its
expansion. As such we make a target for cultural imperialists
who seek to empower and propagate their ideas about the world as
the only valid ideas, and see blacks as woefully deficient not
only in arts and letters but in the abundant gifts of humanity.
In the 19th
century, the lack of education, the lack of contact with
different cultures, the expensive and slow methods of travel and
communication fostered such ideas, and the breeding ground of
ignorance and racial intolerance promoted them.
The King’s
English and the lexicon of a people given to such ignorance and
intolerance did not do much to dispel such obvious
misconceptions, but provided them with a home. I cite
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary:
“BLACK:
outrageously wicked, dishonorable, connected with the devil,
menacing, sullen, hostile, unqualified, illicit, illegal,
violators of public regulations, affected by some undesirable
condition, etc.
“WHITE:
free from blemish, moral stain or impurity; outstandingly
righteous, innocent, not marked by malignant influence, notably,
auspicious, fortunate, decent, a sterling man.”
Such is the
linguistic environment that informs the distance that separates
blacks and whites in America and which the cultural imperialist,
who cannot imagine a life existing and flourishing outside his
benevolent control, embraces.
Robert
Brustein, writing in an article/review titled “Unity from
Diversity [The New Republic,
July 19–26, ’93] is apparently disturbed that “there is a
tremendous outpouring of work by minority artists,” which he
attributes to cultural diversity. He writes that the practice of
extending invitations to a national banquet from which a lot of
hungry people have long been excluded is a practice that can
lead to confused standards. He goes on to establish a
presumption of inferiority of the work of minority artists.
“Funding agencies have started substituting sociological
criteria for aesthetic criteria in their grant procedures,
indicating that ‘elitist’ notions like quality and
excellence are no longer functional.” He goes on to say,
“It’s disarming in all senses of the word to say that we
don’t share common experiences that are measurable by common
standards. But the growing number of truly talented artists with
more universal interests suggests that we may soon be in a
position to return to a single value system.”
Brustein’s
surprisingly sophomoric assumption that this tremendous
outpouring of work by minority artists have started substituting
sociological for aesthetic criteria, leaving aside notions like
quality and excellence, shows him to be a victim of 19th-century
thinking and the linguistic environment that posits blacks as
unqualified. Quite possibly this tremendous outpouring of works
by minority artists may lead to a raising
of standards and a raising
of the levels of excellence, but Mr. Brustein cannot allow that
possibility.
To suggest
that funding agencies are rewarding inferior work by pursuing
sociological criteria only serve to call into question the
tremendous outpouring of plays by white playwrights who benefit
from funding given to the 66 LORT theatres.
Are those
theatres funded on sociological or aesthetic criteria? Do we
have 66 excellent theatres? Or do those theatres benefit from
the sociological advantage that they are run by whites and cater
to largely white audiences?
The truth is
that often where there are aesthetic criteria of excellence,
there are also sociological criteria that have traditionally
excluded blacks. I say raise the standards and remove the
sociological consideration of race as privilege and we will meet
you at the crossroads, in equal numbers, prepared to do the work
of extending and developing the common ground of the American
theatre.
We are
capable of work of the highest order; we can answer to the high
standards of world-class art. Anyone who doubts our capabilities
at this late stage is being intellectually dishonest.
We can meet
on the common ground of theatre as a field of work and endeavor.
But we cannot meet on the common ground of experience.
Where is the
common ground n the horrifics of lynching? Where is the common
ground in the main of a policeman’s bullet? Where is the
common ground in the hull or the deck of a slave ship with its
refreshments of air and expanse?
We will not
be denied our history.
We have voice
and we have temper. We are too far along this road from the loss
of our political will, we are too far along the road of
reassembling ourselves, too far along the road to regaining
spiritual health to allow such transgression of our history to
go unchallenged.
The
commonalties we share are the commonalities of culture. We
decorate our houses. That is something we do in common. We do it
differently because we value different things. We have different
manners and different values of social intercourse. We have
different ideas of what a party is.
There are
some commonalities to our different ideas. We both offer food
and drink to our guests, but because we have different culinary
values, different culinary histories, we offer different food
and drink. In our culinary history, we have learned to make do
with the feet and ears and tails and intestines of the pig
rather than the loin and the ham and the bacon. Because of our
different histories with the same animal, we have different
culinary ideas. But we share a common experience with the pig as
opposed to say Muslims and Jews, who do not share that
experience.
We can meet
on the common ground of the American theatre.
We cannot
share a single value system if that value system consists of the
values of white Americans based on their European ancestors. We
reject that as Cultural Imperialism. We need a value system that
includes our contributions as Africans in America. Our agendas
are a valid as yours. We may disagree, we may forever be on
opposite sides of aesthetics, but we can only share a value
system that is inclusive of all Americans and recognizes their
unique and valuable contributions.
The ground
together. We must develop the ground together. We reject the
idea of equality among equals, but we say rather the equality of
all men.
The common
values of the American theatre that we can share are plot …
dialogue … characterization … design. How we both make use
of them will be determined by who we are—what ground we are
standing on and what our cultural values are.
Theatre is
part of art history in terms of its craft and dramaturgy, but it
is part of social history in terms of how it is financed and
governed. By making money available to theatres willing to
support colorblind casting, the financiers and governors have
signaled not only their unwillingness to support black theatre
but their willingness to fund dangerous and divisive assaults
against it. Colorblind casting is an aberrant idea that has
never had any validity other than as a tool of the Cultural
Imperialists who view American culture, rooted in the icons of
European culture, as beyond reproach in its perfection. It is
inconceivable to them that life could be lived and enriched
without knowing Shakespeare or Mozart. Their gods, their
manners, their being, are the only true and correct
representations of humankind. They refuse to recognize black
conduct and manners as part of a system that is fueled by its
own philosophy, mythology, history, creative motif, social
organization and ethos. The ideas that blacks have their own way
of responding to the world, their own values, style,
linguistics, religion and aesthetics, is unacceptable to them.
For a black
actor to stand on the stage as part of a social milieu that has
denied him his gods, his culture, his humanity, his mores, his
ideas of himself and the world he lives in, is to be in league
with a thousand nay-sayers who wish to corrupt the vigor and
spirit of his heart.
To cast us in
the role of mimics is to deny us our own competence.
Our manners,
our style, our approach to language, our gestures, and our
bodies are not for rent. The history of our bodies—the
maimings … the lashings … the lynchings …the body that is
capable of inspiring profound rage and pungent cruelty—is not
for rent.
To mount an
all-black production of a Death of a Salesman
or any other play conceived for white actors as an investigation
of the human condition through the specifics of white culture is
to deny us our humanity our own history, and the need to make
our own investigations from the culture ground on which we stand
as black Americans. It is an assault on our presence, our
difficult but honorable history in America; it is an insult to
our intelligence, our playwrights, and our many and varied
contributions to the society and the world at large.
The idea of
colorblind casting is the same idea of assimilation that black
Americans have been rejecting for the past 380 years. For the
record, we reject it again. We reject any attempt to blot us
out, to reinvent history and ignore our presence or to maim our
spiritual product. We must not continue to meet on t his path.
We will not deny our history, and we will not allow it to be
made to be of little consequence, to be ignored or
misinterpreted.
In an effort
to spare us the burden of being “affected by an undesirable
condition” and as a gesture of benevolence, many whites (like
the proponents of colorblind casting) say, “Oh, I don’t see
color.” We want you to see us. We are black and beautiful. We
are not patrons of the linguistic environment that had us as
“unqualified, and violators of public regulations.” We are
not a menace to society. We are not ashamed. We have an
honorable history in the world of men. We come from a long line
of honorable people with complex codes of ethnics and social
discourse, people who devised myths and systems of cosmology and
systems of economics. We are not ashamed, and do not need you to
be ashamed for us. Nor do we need the recognition of our
blackness to be couched in abstract phases like “artist of
color.” Who are you talking about? A Japanese artist? An
Eskimo? A Filipino? A Mexican? A Cambodian? A Nigerian? An
African American? Are we to suppose that if you put a white
person on one side of the scale and the rest of humanity lumped
together as nondescript “people of color” on the other side,
that it would balance out? That whites carry that much spiritual
weight? We reject that. We are unique, and we are specific.
We do not
need colorblind casting; we need some theatres to develop our
playwrights. We need those misguided financial resources to be
put to better use. We cannot develop our playwrights with the
meager resources at our disposal. Why is it difficult to imagine
9 black theatres but not 66 white ones? Without theatres we
cannot develop our talents. If we cannot develop our talents,
then everyone suffers: our writers; the theatre; the audience.
Actors are deprived of the jobs in support of the art—the
company manager, the press concessionaires, the people that work
in wardrobe, the box-office staff, the ushers and the janitors.
We need some theatres. We cannot continue like this. We have
only one life to develop our talent, to fulfill our potential as
artists. One life, and it is short, and the lack of the means to
develop our talent is an encumbrance on that life.
We did not
sit on the sidelines while the immigrants of Europe, through
hard work, skill, cunning, guile and opportunity, built America
into an industrial giant of the 20th century. It was
our labor that provided the capital. It was our labor in the
shipyards and the stockyards and the coal mines and the steel
mills. Our labor built the roads and the railroads. And when
America was challenged, we strode on the battlefield, our boots
strapped on and our blood left to soak into the soil of places
whose names we could not pronounce, against an enemy whose only
crime was ideology. We left our blood in France and Korea and
the Philippines and Vietnam, and our only reward has been the
deprivation of possibility and the denial of our moral
personality.
It cannot
continue. The ground together: The American ground on which I
stand and which my ancestors purchased with their perseverance,
with their survival, with their manners and with their faith.
It cannot
continue, as other assaults upon our presence and our history
cannot continue: When the New York Times
publishes an article on pop singer Michael Bolton and lists as
his influences four white singers, then as an afterthought
tosses in the phase “and the great black rhythm and blues
singers, “it cannot be anything but purposeful with intent to
maim. These great black rhythm and blues singers are reduced to
an afterthought on the edge of oblivion—one stroke of the
editor’s pen and the history of American music is revised, and
Otis Redding, Jerry Butler and Rufus Thomas are consigned to the
dustbin of history while Joe Cocker, Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart
are elevated to the status of the originators and creators of a
vital art that is a product of our spiritual travails; the
history of music becomes a fabrication, a blatant forgery which
under the hallowed auspices of the New York Times is presented as the genuine article.
We cannot
accept these assaults. We must defend and protect our spiritual
fruits. To ignore these assaults would be to be derelict our
duties. We cannot accept them. Our political capital will not
permit them.
So much of
what makes this country rich in art and all manners of spiritual
life is the contributions that we as African Americans have
made. We cannot allow others to have authority over our cultural
and spiritual products. We reject, without reservation, any
attempts by anyone to rewrite our history so to deny us the
rewards of our spiritual labors, and to become the culture
custodians of our art, our literature and our lives. To give
expression to the spirit that has been shaped and fashioned by
our history is of necessity to give voice and vent to the
history itself.
It must
remain for us a history of triumph.
The time has
come for black playwrights to confer with one another, to come
together to meet each other face to face, to address question of
aesthetics and ways to defend ourselves from the nay-sayers who
would trumpet our talents as insufficient to warrant the same
manner of investigation and exploration as the majority. We need
to develop guidelines for the protection of our cultural
property, our contributions and the influence they accrue. It is
time we took responsibility for our talents in our own hands. We
cannot depend on others. We cannot depend on the directors, the
managers or the actors to do the work we should be doing for
ourselves. It is our lives and the pursuit of our fulfillment
that are being encumbered by false ideas and perceptions.
It is time to
embrace the political dictates of our history and answer the
challenge to our duties. I further think we should confer in a
city in our ancestral homeland in the southern part of the
United States in 1998, so that we may enter the millennium
united and prepared for a long future of prosperity.
From the hull
of a ship to self-determining, self-respecting people. That is
the journey we are making.
We are robust
in spirit, we are bright with laughter, and we are bold in
imagination. Our blood is soaked into the soil and our bones lie
scattered the whole way across the Atlantic Ocean, as Hansel’s
crumbs, to mark the way back home.
We are no
longer in the House of Bondage, and soon we will no longer be
victims of the counting houses who hold from us ways to develop
and support our talents and our expressions of life and its
varied meanings. Assaults upon the body politic that demean and
ridicule and depress the value and worth of our existence that
seek to render it immobile and to extinguish the flame of
freedom lit eons ago by our ancestors upon another
continent—these must be met with a fierce and uncompromising
defense.
If you are
willing to accept it, it is your duty to affirm and urge that
defense, that respect and that determination.
I must
mention here, with all due respect to W. E. B. DuBois, that the
concept of a “talented tenth” creates an artificial
superiority. It is a fallacy and a dangerous idea that only
serves to divide us further. I am not willing to throw away the
sons and daughters of those people who gave more than lip
service to the will to live and made it a duty to prosper in
spirit, if not in provision. All God’s children got talent. It
is a dangerous idea to set one part of the populace above and
aside from the other. We do a grave disservice to ourselves not
to seek out and embrace and enable all of our human resources as
a people. All blacks in America, with very few exceptions—no
matter what our status, no matter the size of our bank accounts,
no matter how many and what kind of academic degrees we can
place beside our names, no matter the furnishings and square
footage of our homes, the length of our closets and the quality
of the wool and cotton that hangs there—we all in America
originated from the same place: the slave plantations of the
South. We all share a common past, and despite how some us might
think and how it might look, we all share a common present and
will share a common future.
We can make a
difference. Artists, playwrights, actors—we can be the
spearhead of a movement to reignite and reunite our people’s
positive energy for a political and social change that is
reflective of our spiritual truths rather than economic
fallacies. Our talents, our truth, our belief in ourselves in
all our hands. What we make of it will emerge as a baptismal
spray that names and defines. What we do now becomes history by
which our grandchildren will judge us.
We are not
off on a tangent. The foundation of the American theatre is the
foundation of European theatre that begins with the great Greek
dramatists; it is based on the proscenium stage and the poetics
of Aristotle. This is the theatre that we have chosen to work
in. We embrace the values of that theatre but reserve the right
to amend, to explore, to add our African consciousness and our
African aesthetic to the art we produce.
To pursue our
cultural expression does not separate us. We are not separatists
as Mr. Brustein asserts. We are American trying to fulfill
our talents. We are not the servants at the party. We are not
apprentices in the kitchens. We are not the stableboys to the
King’s huntsmen. We are Africans. We are Americans. The
irreversible sweep of history has decreed that. We are artists
who seek to develop our talents and give expression to our
personalities. We bring advantage to the common ground that is
the American theatre.
All theatres
depend on an audience for its dialogue. To the American theatre,
subscription audiences are its life blood. But the subscription
audiences are its life blood. But the subscription audience
holds the seats of our theatres hostage to the mediocrity of its
tastes, and serves to impede the further development of an
audience for the work that we do. While intentional or not, it
serves to keep blacks out of the theatre where they suffer no
illusion of welcome anyway. A subscription thus becomes not a
support system but makes the patrons members of a club to which
the theatre serves as a clubhouse. It is an irony that the
people who can most afford a full-price ticket get discounts for
subscribing, while the single-ticket buyer who cannot afford a
subscription is charged the additional burden of support to
offset the subscription-buyer’s discount. It is a system that
is in need of overhaul to provide not only a more equitable
access to tickets but access to influence as well.
I look for
and challenge students of arts management to be bold in their
exploration of new systems of funding theatres, including
profit-making institutions and ventures, and I challenge black
artists and audiences to scale the walls erected by theatre
subscriptions to gain access to this vital area of spiritual
enlightenment and enrichment that is the theatre.
All
theatergoers have opinions about the work they witness. Critics
have an informed opinion. Sometimes it may be necessary for them
to gather more information to become more informed. As
playwrights grow and develop, as the theatre changes, the critic
has an important responsibility to guide and encourage that
growth. However, in the discharge of their duties, it may be
necessary for them to also grow and develop. A stagnant body of
critics, operating from the critical criteria of 40 years ago,
makes for a stagnant theatre without the fresh and abiding
influence of contemporary ideas. It is the critics who should be
in the forefront of developing new tools for analysis necessary
to understand new influences.
The critic
who can recognize a German neo-romantic influence should also be
able to recognize an American influence from blues or black
church rituals, or any other contemporary American influence.
The true
critic does not sit in judgment. Rather he seeks to inform his
reader, instead of adopting a posture of self-conscious
importance in which he sees himself a judge and final arbiter of
a work’s importance or value.
We stand on
the verge of an explosion of playwriting talent that will
challenge our critics. As American playwrights absorb the
influence of television and use new avenues of approach to the
practice of their craft, they will prove to be wildly inventive
and imaginative in creating dramas that will guide and influence
contemporary life for years to come.
Theatre can
do that. It can disseminate ideas, it can educate even the
miseducated, because it is art—and all art reaches across that
divide that makes order out of chaos, and embraces the truth
that overwhelms with its presence, and connects man to something
larger than himself and his imagination.
Theatre
asserts that all human life is universal. Love, Honor, Duty,
Betrayal belong and pertain to every culture or race. The way
they are acted on the playing field may be different, but
betrayal whether you are a South Sea Islander, a Mississippi
farmer or an English baron. All of human life is universal, and
it is theatre that illuminates and confers upon the universal
the ability to speak for all men.
The ground
together: We have to do it together. We cannot permit our lives
waste away, our talents unchallenged. We cannot permit a failure
to our duty. We are brave and we are boisterous, our mettle is
proven, and we are dedicated.
The ground
together: the ground of the American theatre on which I am proud
to stand … the ground which our artistic ancestors purchase
with their endeavors … with their pursuit of the American
spirit and its ideals.
I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its
power to inform about the human condition, its power to heal,
its power to hold the mirror as ’twere up to nature, its power
to uncover the truths we wrestle from uncertain and sometimes
unyielding realities. All of art is a search for ways of being,
of living life more fully. We who are capable of those noble
pursuits should challenge the melancholy and barbaric, to bring
the light of angelic grace, peace, prosperity and the
unencumbered pursuit of happiness to the ground on which we all
stand. posted 15 November 2005 * *
* * * Update (23
April 2009)
Race an Issue in Wilson
Play, and in Its Production—In
life, the playwright
August Wilson had an all-but-official rule: No white
directors for major productions of his work, which was one
reason that a film was never made from his 10 plays about
African-American life in the 20th century. “Fences,” one of the
two awarded the
Pulitzer Prize, foundered in Hollywood because of his
insistence on a black director.
Yet in the years since
Wilson died in 2005, an increasing number of white directors
have staged his plays, and last week came a milestone: “Joe
Turner’s Come and Gone,” which opened on April 16, is the first
Broadway revival of a Wilson play since his death and the first
ever on Broadway with a white director, the
Tony Award-winning
Bartlett Sher.
The selection of Mr. Sher
by the producer,
Lincoln Center Theater, has prompted concern and even
outrage among some black directors, who say this production
represents a lost opportunity for a black director, for whom few
opportunities exist on Broadway or at major regional theaters.
Wilson himself felt that black directors best understood his
characters, and he saw his plays as chances to give them
high-profile work. Wilson’s widow, Constanza Romero, however,
approved Mr. Sher as director.
NYTimes
* * * * *
|
Gem of the World
By August
Wilson
Set in 1904, 285
year-old Aunt Esther welcomes two
strangers into her home. Solly Two
Kings, a former Union Army-man who
was born into slavery; and Citizen
Barlow, a young man in search for
redemption. Aunt Esther guides
Citizen through a spiritual journey
to the mythical City of Bones aboard
the legendary slave ship, Gem of the
Ocean. Meanwhile, chaos ensues in
the real world where Solly is
wrongfully accused of a crime and
gets shot as a result. Come to our
performance to find out how this
magnificent story unravels.
No one except
perhaps Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee
Williams has aimed so high and
achieved so much in the American
theater.—John
Lahr, The New Yorker
A swelling battle hymn of
transporting beauty. Theatergoers
who have followed August Wilson’s
career will find in Gem a touchstone
for everything else he has written.”—Ben
Brantley, The New York Times |
 |
Wilson’s
juiciest material. The play holds the stage and
its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion
of newfound freedom.—Michael
Phillips, Chicago Tribune
* * *
* *
* * * *
*
 |
The Last Holiday: A Memoir
By Gil Scott Heron
Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. |
Gil uses Lennon's violent end as
a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a
biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead
to newspapers getting things wrong.
— Jamie Byng, Guardian
Gil_reads_"Deadline" (audio) / Gil Scott-Heron
& His Music Gil Scott
Heron Blue Collar
Remember Gil Scott- Heron
* * * * *
|
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's
wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in
1937, after her cousin was falsely accused
of stealing a white man's turkeys and was
almost beaten to death. In 1945, George
Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled
Florida for Harlem after learning of the
grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie
party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing
Foster made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for the
United States Army and couldn't operate in
his own home town." Anchored to these three
stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively
researched study of the "great migration,"
the exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. |
 |
Wilkerson deftly incorporates sociological
and historical studies into the novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling,
and Pershing settling in new lands, building
anew, and often finding that they have not
left racism behind. The drama, poignancy,
and romance of a classic immigrant saga
pervade this book, hold the reader in its
grasp, and resonate long after the reading
is done.
* *
* * *
 |
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” |
We learn how the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar cane have
disrupted and convulsed the planet and will continue
to do so until we are finally living on one
integrated or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of all this
remarkable change will survive the process they
helped to initiate more than five hundred years ago
remains, Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question.
* *
* * *
|
Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). |
 |
Ripostes from proponents, the Federalists, animate
the great detail Maier provides, as does her recounting how one
state convention’s verdict affected another’s. Displaying the
grudging grassroots blessing the Constitution originally
received, Maier eruditely yet accessibly revives a neglected but
critical passage in American history.—Booklist
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
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Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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