African American drama

African American drama
Realism
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Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)
Charles Gordone (1925-1995)
Charles Fuller (1939- )
August Wilson (1945-2005)
Issues in Realism
•  Questions of moving from the margins to
the center
•  Rewriting lost history
•  Canon formation – what is an African
American dramatic literature?
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-65) •  Born in Chicago
•  Father was a real estate broker, won an antisegregation case before the Illinois Supreme
Court. •  A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
•  Winner of the Drama Desk Award that year.
Charles Gordone (1925-1995)
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Born in Cleveland, grew up in Elkhart, IN
Performed in The Blacks (1961-1966)
No Place to Be Somebody (1967)
Won Pulitzer Prize in 1970
First African American to win Pulitzer
Charles Fuller (1939- )
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Born in Philadelphia
In the Army from 1959-1962
Brownsville Raid (1975)
A Soldier’s Play (1981)
Won the Pulitzer in 1982
A Soldier’s Play
August Wilson (1945-2005)
•  Grew up in Pittsburgh
•  Playwriting fellow at the Minneapolis
Playwright's Center in 1980.
•  Fences (1985)
•  The Piano Lesson (1989)
•  Pittsburgh Cycle
•  1997 public debate with Robert Brustein stir
controversy over "color blind" casting
The Piano Lesson
OyamO (1943- )
•  Charles F. Gordon (not to be confused with
Gordone)
•  Also from Cleveland
•  Studied playwriting at Yale
•  Prolific writer on many themes, including
stories adapted for children’s theatre
•  The Resurrection of Lady Lester (1981)
Non-realism and black feminist writers
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Glenda Dickerson (1945- )
Ntozake Shange (1948- )
Anna Deavere Smith (1950- )
Suzan-Lori Parks (1963- )
Glenda Dickerson (1945- )
•  Born in Houston
•  Trained primarily as a director
•  Began creating devised pieces based on
personal stories, folklore, and news items
•  For My People (1971 Peabody Award)
•  Eel Catching in Setauket (1988)
•  Kitchen Prayers (2002-2007)
Two new forms . . .
•  Documentary Theatre – using historical
sources, news accounts, interviews,
photographs to devise a theatre piece
•  Verbatim Theatre – using interviews word
for word to create theatre.
Kitchen Prayers
Ntozake Shange (1948- )
•  Born in New Jersey, raised St. Louis
•  For Colored Girls who have Considered
Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf (1975)
•  “choreopoem”
•  Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle Award
For Colored Girls . . .
Anna Deavere Smith (1950- )
•  Trained as an actress, doing roles from All
My Children to Philadelphia. •  Famous for “verbatim theatre”
•  Fires in The Mirror (1992) – nominated for
Pulitzer
•  Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 (1993)
•  MacArthur Fellowship (1996)
•  The Arizona Project (2008)
Suzan-Lori Parks (1963- )
•  "Tone and rhythm convey more than what is
actually coming out of the mouth. People
aren't as good with words as with gestures." •  The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole
Entire World (1990) – fractured language,
inspired by jazz
•  The America Play (1994)
•  Top Dog/Underdog (2001) – Pulitzer Prize
for 2002.