We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
THE future of African American theatre, its history shows, swings by an intricately woven hanging rope, on which sway the classes, periods, and schools of drama, along with the theatre people, organizations and coalitions. So robust and dancing is this theatre that it invites forgetting. Hidden is James Hewlett, “de son of New York” who made handkerchief-waving women and ale-swigging men forget “de vinter of our discontent”: Manuel Noah plaited the murder and mayhem in and of Mr. Brown's Richard III and his African Grove Theatre. Noah knew that without strong cables to hold up the laughter loads, African American theatre organizations would so often be born and die that there would not be certificates enough to record them, nor graves enough to bury them. If only the publisher and editor Beth Turner had been there to warn Mr. Brown:
This extraordinary assemblage must not be allowed to disperse before it tackles the increasingly serious problem of Black theatre. … While we all gather to enjoy each other, renew friendships, catch up on the news, revel in each other's achievements and celebrate surviving, … let us also take time to hone serious plans, to forge the alliances imperative to the continuation of Black theatre, to make commitments for cooperative actions and to set into place means of continuing our dialogue.
Suppose that Mr. Brown had listened. He would have knitted tougher ropes, opening lines to the African American leadership in New York City.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
