Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Note on Terminology
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Beyond the Wall
- 1 Reimagining a Black Art Infused Criminology
- 2 The People Speak: The Importance of Black Arts Movements
- 3 Shadow People: Black Crime Fiction as Counter-Narrative
- 4 Staging the Truth: Black Theatre and the Politics of Black Criminality
- 5 Beyond The Wire: The Racialization of Crime in Film and TV
- 6 Strange Fruit: Black Music (Re)presenting the Race and Crime
- 7 Of Mules and Men: Oral Storytelling and the Racialization of Crime
- 8 Seeing the Story: Visual Art and the Racialization of Crime
- 9 Speaking Data and Telling Stories
- 10 Locating the Researcher: (Auto)-Ethnography, Race, and the Researcher
- 11 Towards a Black Arts Infused Criminology
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Staging the Truth: Black Theatre and the Politics of Black Criminality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Note on Terminology
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Beyond the Wall
- 1 Reimagining a Black Art Infused Criminology
- 2 The People Speak: The Importance of Black Arts Movements
- 3 Shadow People: Black Crime Fiction as Counter-Narrative
- 4 Staging the Truth: Black Theatre and the Politics of Black Criminality
- 5 Beyond The Wire: The Racialization of Crime in Film and TV
- 6 Strange Fruit: Black Music (Re)presenting the Race and Crime
- 7 Of Mules and Men: Oral Storytelling and the Racialization of Crime
- 8 Seeing the Story: Visual Art and the Racialization of Crime
- 9 Speaking Data and Telling Stories
- 10 Locating the Researcher: (Auto)-Ethnography, Race, and the Researcher
- 11 Towards a Black Arts Infused Criminology
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter summary
This chapter aims to explore my use of applied theatre when working with black offenders. DeFranz and Gonzalez (2014) argue that notions of black performativity should assist black people in deciphering the varying degrees of contemporary blackness that now demands new meanings are brought to the fore. Like DeFranz and Gonzalez, I believe that we must stand our ground by contesting and challenging limited definitions that try to supress notions of embodied and performed blackness within criminal justice settings, and in those spaces where black offenders can negotiate embodied practices designed to heal and transcend those oppressive forces that compel many black offenders to reoffend. DeFranz and Gonzalez conclude by demanding we uncover the history of black performance by reclaiming those mechanisms used to root blackness and the black presence within it. So how does applied theatre respond to those needs pertaining to incarcerated black people?
Some of the greatest moments in my creative life have been as a dramatist and theatre director. It is also true that many of my most important teachable moments emerged from watching and studying the iconic theatre of August Wilson, alongside the uncompromising theatrics of Amiri Baraka, who both chronicled black life unapologetically, with beautiful dramatic brush strokes unimpeded by the expectations of society. Their dramatic works have created a route map into understanding the oppression of black people and its relationship to criminality based on a black condition shaped by a history of racial subordination. Equally as important is in the role played by applied theatre, which has enabled me to tell the real stories concerning black criminality, the plight of black offenders, the communities they came from, and the victims they have affected. Applied theatre, in this context, is a term that defines theatre that operates beyond the traditional and restrictive nature of Western theatre forms. It is characterized by work that deliberately engages in spaces with groups of people excluded, marginalized, or rendered invisible within the socalled mainstream theatre landscape. Applied theatre laid the foundation for me to bring the lived experiences of black offenders to a heightened prominence, providing a voice and an embodied space from which to explore issues traditional criminologists have feared or avoided to engage with on account of art not being scientifically robust enough.
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- Information
- Reimagining Black Art and CriminologyA New Criminological Imagination, pp. 43 - 66Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021