Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora [Paperback]

Paul Carter Harrison (Author), Victor Leo Walker II (Author), Gus Edwards (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2002

Generating a new understanding of the past as well as a vision for the future this path-breaking volume contains essays written by playwrights, scholars, and critics that analyze African American theatre as it is practiced today. Even as they acknowledge that Black experience is not monolithic, these contributors argue provocatively and persuasively for a Black consciousness that creates a culturally specific theatre. This theatre, rooted in an African mythos, offers ritual rather than realism; it transcends the specifics of social relations, reaching toward revelation. The ritual performance that is intrinsic to Black theatre renews the community; in Paul Carter Harrison's words, it 'reveals the Form of Things Unknown' in a way that 'binds, cleanses, and heals'. Author note: Paul Carter Harrison is playwright in residence at the Theatre Center, Columbia College, Chicago. He is the author of several books including, "The Drama of Nommo" and the editor of several play anthologies. His play, "The Great MacDaddy", received an Obie Award for playwriting. Victor Leo Walker is Chief Executive Officer of the African Grove Institute for the Arts, Inc. and the author of "The Cultural MatriX: Los Angeles Inner City Cultural Center, 1965 to 1998" (forthcoming). Gus Edwards teaches Film Studies and directs a multi-ethnic theatre program at Arizona State University. He has published two volumes of monologues from his plays including "The Offering", "Black Body Blues", and "Louie & Ophelia". He is coeditor with Paul Carter Harrison of the anthology, "Classic Plays from the Negro Ensemble Company".

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This important and groundbreaking collection of 32 essays is particularly valuable to those who have scant knowledge about African American theater, as the ideas are informing, eyeopening, and challenging. Gathered here are pieces by playwrights such as Ntozake Shange, Femi Euba, Wole Soyinka, Derek Wolcott, and Gus Edwards, while academic writers include Paul K. Bryant-Jackson, William Cook, and Keith Walker. The academic essays are excellent, but this reviewer favored those by theater professionals as they are the people who deliver "the goods" to the audience. Playwright and director George C. Wolfe contributes a superb and thought-provoking essay called "Performance Method," in which he discusses his use of the minstrel show, carnival, mask, and the Japanese theater techniques found in bunraku. For Wolfe, television is about character, film is about story, and theater is about ideas. His essay, which deserves a careful reading, is last in the text but should be read second, after Paul Carter Harrison's introductory "Praise/Word," which sets out the volume's theoretical underpinnings. Recommended for all academic libraries and public libraries with theater and/or African American collections.
Susan L. Peters, Univ. of Texas, Galveston
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"What is to be celebrated regarding this anthology is that it has been edited by black theater educators and practitioners." Research in African Literatures "Black Theatre is an indispensable volume--insightful, wide-ranging, global in scope--to be enjoyed, studied, mulled over and argued with." --Douglass Turner Ward, Founder of The Negro Ensemble Company "In 1970, in the heat of the Black Arts Movement, Paul Carter Harrison published his seminal The Drama of Nommo, challenging readers to look beyond the political orthodoxy of kitchen sink realism to discern the aesthetic foundations of black theatre. This present anthology demonstrates the impressive extent to which scholars, playwrights, and directors have built upon that call. Drawing from performance practices in Africa, the Caribbean, the United States, and black Britain, this landmark collection delineates the cultural specificity of an African diaspora theatre that, while it appears to 'wear the mask' of conformity to EuroAmerican values, enacts a profoundly different world view aimed at confronting an oppressive past and reaffirming the humanity of black peoples. The anthology's analytic rigor and creative insight set a challenge for subsequent generations to engage." --Sandra L. Richards, Leon Forrest Professor of African American Studies and Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Northwestern University "The spirit and the intellect of the late Larry Neal, as well as the tremendously resilient legacy of the radical Black theatre movement of the sixties and seventies, animate most of the essays and documents collected in this volume. It is a feast of powerful critical and theoretical reflections on the past and the future of Black theatre in this country and in other parts of the African diaspora. Without the slightest nudge toward racial absolutism or essentialism, the volume is a model of how 'race' can be deployed as a subtle and progressive analytic category in contemporary dramatic and cultural criticism. This book should be compulsory reading for every student of contemporary theatre scholarship." --Biodun Jeyifo, Professor of English, Cornell University "...a powerful examination of ritual-based performance traditions practiced throughout the African diaspora. It belongs on the shelf of anyone studying black performance. [The editors] succeed on many levels with this collection of compelling articles...this text is a valuable contribution to current critical, historical and theoretical debate about this rich and varied field." --Theatre Research International "[E]ssential. This book illuminates, challenges, and expands the consciousness. It also inspires the reader..." --The African American Review "This book is a powerful examination of ritual-based performance traditions practiced throughout the African diaspora. It belongs on the shelf of anyone studying black performance... This text is a valuable contribution to current critical, historical and theoretical debate about this rich and varied field." --Theatre Research International

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Product Details

• Paperback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566399440
• ISBN-13: 978-1566399449
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,542,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)