The Development of Black Playwright

3230 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Importance of african american history

Black theater is as old as the first tribes in Africa who would dance with wooden masks to represent gods or legends (Kerr, p3). The playwrights of this time were the Griots, who were known as the keepers of history in African tribes and mark the beginning of African literary tradition (Freeman.) But when does the development of black playwright actually take off?
The first black playwright in history is Terence Afer, who was born around 159 BC (Arnott). He was taken to Rome as a slave, and because he impressed his master, was given a liberal education and as much freedom as a slave could have. Terence managed to produce six plays in his life which were the base for modern comedy of manners (Arnott). Terence’s literary career was deciphered from the collection of his own prologues, commentary of his plays written by Aelius Donatus, and the writings of a Roman biographer named Suetonius. After Terence, the history of playwrights of color have been lost or not kept up with consistently enough to get much from. The first section of history where the development of black playwright really takes hold is between the years of 1820 and 1930, in the country of the United States. This was the century when African Americans fought for freedom and equal rights. The major figureheads who developed and moved black playwright forward were William Wells Brown, Angelina Weld Grimke, Willis Richardson, Alain Leroy Locke, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry.
African Americans’ ancestors were chained, shrouded in death and pain they were dragged on long journeys across the sea from their home to work till their very last breath on fields run by colonists. With slavery being the foundation for African Americans, what circumstanc...

... middle of paper ...

...s Circle Award (A&E Networks). Later down the road the play would even be adapted into a musical and win a Tony Award (BHS).
At the age of 34 though, Lorraine Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and would die from it (BHS). Before her death she a second play about a liberal's experience dealing with politics and activism called The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (A&E Networks). But the reviews for the play were mixed, and the play became a bust.
After her death, Hansberry’s ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, finished her last works and published three of her plays, Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, and What Use are Flowers? (BHS). Nemiroff also composed a play in Lorraine Hansberry's honor using a combination of her writings and diary entries, called To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (BHS). Although death came to her at a young age, her work and fame live on.

Show More
Related

  • The Lives and Work of James Earl Jones and Geoffrey Holder

    2296 Words  | 5 Pages

    Gill, Glenda Eloise. No Surrender! No Retreat! : African American Pioneer Performers of Twentieth-Century American Theater. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. Print.

    Read More

  • The Cultural Movement In Willis Richardson's The New Negro Movement

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Harlem Renaissance, in the 1920’s, sparked a cultural movement known as the “New Negro”. Along with this movement, an anthology was published by Alain Locke named The New Negro. Within this anthology, the playwright Willis Richardson left his mark in the movement through his play Compromise. Compromise depicted what Alain Locke meant by the New Negro movement. Many plays that were published established ideas similar to Compromise. In the single issue magazine Fire, the play Color Struck had similar agendas but from a different point of view, culturally. Willis Richardson, through his work, Compromise, tries to establish the idea of how culture influences the political sphere in society.

    Read More

  • Symbolism in Their Eyes Were Watching God

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    3. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Trudier Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Gale Group, 1987. pp. 133-145.

    Read More

  • Ira Aldridge: The First African-American Othello

    1913 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ira Aldridge’s early life is one of the reasons why Aldridge was such an important actor. Aldridge was born in New York sometime in 1807 (Evans). When he was a teenager, Aldridge acquired his education at one of New York’s African Free Schools, earning an education most African-Americans did not receive in Aldridge’s time (Evans). In essence, the extra schooling Ira Aldridge received helped him to advance his career, because most African-Americans at the time were still working in low ranking jobs and did not get the opportunity to further themselves as Aldridge did. Aldridge went even further to get into an acting career. The first taste of theatre Ira Aldridge got that sparked his interest was at The African Grove Theatre performi...

    Read More

  • Simple Justice

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this story it clearly shows us what the courts really mean by freedom, equality, liberty, property and equal protection of the laws. The story traces the legal challenges that affected African Americans freedom. To justify slavery as the “the way things were” still begs to define what lied beneath slave owner’s abilities to look past the wounded eyes and beating hearts of the African Americans that were so brutally possessed.

    Read More

  • Blanche's State of Mind in Tennessee Williams’ Play, A Streetcar Named Desire

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    To conclude, the author portrays Blanche’s deteriorating mental state throughout the play and by the end it has disappeared, she is in such a mental state that doctors take her away. Even at this stage she is still completely un-aware of her surroundings and the state she is in herself.

    Read More

  • What did freedom mean to harriet jacobs

    1325 Words  | 3 Pages

    To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...

    Read More

  • The Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro Movement

    1679 Words  | 4 Pages

    That’s when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artist, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers”(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). African Americans writers during this time was capturing the beauty of black lives. Blacks were discovering many reasons to have pride in their race. Racial pride was helping them achieve equality in society. People were starting to write the way they wanted, instead of the ways whites wanted. Creating their

    Read More

  • Essay On Slave Trade

    1329 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since the beginning of slavery in the America, Africans have been deemed inferior to the whites whom exploited the Atlantic slave trade. Africans were exported and shipped in droves to the Americas for the sole purpose of enriching the lives of other races with slave labor. These Africans were sold like livestock and forced into a life of servitude once they became the “property” of others. As the United States expanded westward, the desire to cultivate new land increased the need for more slaves. The treatment of slaves was dependent upon the region because different crops required differing needs for cultivation. Slaves in the Cotton South, concluded traveler Frederick Law Olmsted, worked “much harder and more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions.1 Since the birth of America and throughout its expansion, African Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to achieve freedom and some semblance of equality. While African Americans were confronted with their inferior status during the domestic slave trade, when performing their tasks, and even after they were set free, they still made great strides in their quest for equality during the nineteenth century.

    Read More

  • Slavery Synthesis Essay

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    When one thinks of slavery, they may consider chains holding captives, beaten into submission, and forced to work indefinitely for no money. The other thing that often comes to mind? Stereotypical African slaves, shipped to America in the seventeenth century. The kind of slavery that was outlawed by the 18th amendment, nearly a century and a half ago. As author of Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People, Kevin Bales, states, the stereotypes surrounding slavery often confuse and blur the reality of slavery. Although slavery surely consists of physical chains, beatings, and forced labor, there is much more depth to the issue, making slavery much more complex today than ever before.

    Read More

  • The Extreme Cruelty of the Middle Passage

    1719 Words  | 4 Pages

    There is no other experience in history where innocent African Americans encountered such a brutal torment. This infamous ordeal is called the Middle Passage or the “middle leg” of the Triangular Trade, which was the forceful voyage of African Americans from Africa to the New World. The Africans were taken from their homeland, boarded onto the dreadful ships, and scattered into the New World as slaves. 10- 16 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic during the 1500’s to the 1900’s and 10- 15 percent of them died during the voyage. Millions of men, women, and children left behind their personal possessions and loved ones that will never be seen again. Not only were the Africans limited to freedom, but also lost their identity in the process. Kidnapped from their lives that throbbed with numerous possibilities of greatness were now out of sight and thrown into the never-ending pile of waste. The loathsome and inhuman circumstances that the Africans had to face truly describe the great wrongdoing of the Middle Passage.

    Read More

  • Slavery During the 1800s

    481 Words  | 1 Pages

    Slavery in the eighteenth century was worst for African Americans. Observers of slaves suggested that slave characteristics like: clumsiness, untidiness, littleness, destructiveness, and inability to learn the white people were “better.” Despite white society's belief that slaves were nothing more than laborers when in fact they were a part of an elaborate and well defined social structure that gave them identity and sustained them in their silent protest.

    Read More

  • African American Theater

    1967 Words  | 4 Pages

    Over the course of approximately one-hundred years there has been a discernible metamorphosis within the realm of African-American cinema. African-Americans have overcome the heavy weight of oppression in forms such as of politics, citizenship and most importantly equal human rights. One of the most evident forms that were withheld from African-Americans came in the structure of the performing arts; specifically film. The common population did not allow blacks to drink from the same water fountain let alone share the same television waves or stage. But over time the strength of the expectant black actors and actresses overwhelmed the majority force to stop blacks from appearing on film. For the longest time the performing arts were the only way for African-Americans to express the deep pain that the white population placed in front of them. Singing, dancing and acting took many African-Americans to a place that no oppressor could reach; considering the exploitation of their character during the 1930's-1960's ‘acting' was an essential technique to African American survival.

    Read More

  • Dreams Deferred

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    Looking to Lorraine Hansberry’s own life, we see her own dreams deferred. The title of her own book, A Raisin in the Sun, is taken from a Langston Hughes poem titled Harlem or Dream Deferred. Specifically, to answer the question “What happens to a dream deferred”?, the namesake of her own book comes from the following line “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun”? This relates to Hansberry’s own life which can been seen in the Supreme Court Case Hansberry v. Lee which holds that “Res judicata will not preclude a plaintiff who was not a part of a prior class action on the same matter” (Hansberry v. Lee). Professor Allen R. Kamp of the John Marshall Law School explains that “Hansberry” in Hansberry v. Lee is Lorraine Hansberry's father and that A Raisin in the Sun was based on her family's experience (Kamp). Her family bought and moved into a...

    Read More

  • The Story of an Hour

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    Unfortunately, her hope for long years and many beautiful spring days was abruptly ended in an ironic twist. Unbeknownst to herself and her company, Mr. Mallard had survived, and within an hour the promises of a bright future for Mrs. Mallard had both began and came to an end. Her grievous death was misconstrued as joy to the others: "they said she had died of heart disease-of joy that kills" (Chopin 471). This statement embodies the distorted misconception that a woman lives only for her man. The audience, in fact, sees just the opposite. To Louise her life was elongated at the news of her husband's death, not cut short. Throughout the story, one hopes Louise will gain her freedom. Ironically, she is granted freedom, but only in death.

    Read More

More about The Development of Black Playwright

Open Document