Week 16- From the Plantation to Hollywood: Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All by Myself

This week, we are discussing the Chitlin' Circuit and the binary created between "legitimate" black theater and the "Chitlin' Circuit." Tyler Perry can be read as one of the most successful playwrights in African American Theatre history. His plays and videos have grossed over 75 million dollars. Considering Dubois' assertion that black theater should be " by, about, for and near" black people, how do you think Perry answers this call? Some prompts to consider are as follows: Is it possible to understand African American theater as theater that speaks to specific African American experiences within the larger scope of Black Theater created around the world? How do you think that Perry speaks to the immediate concerns, trials, triumphs and tribulations of everyday black people? How does this play address many of the key themes discussed by African American playwrights? How does Perry bridge the ideals of Parks and Dubois in his work?

Week 15 - Hip-Hop Theater and Performance- Kamilah Forbes' Rhyme Deferred and Danny Hoch's Jails, Hosptials and Hip-hop

This week we are reading Kamilah Forbes' Rhyme Deferred and watching Danny Hoch's Jails, Hospitals and Hip-hop, two theatrical works that are heavily influenced by Hip-Hop music and culture. As you blog this week on Hip-Hop Theater and Blackness, what connections can you make between Hip-hop theater and expressions of Blackness in Hip-hop music and culture? In what ways does Hip-Hop Theater rely upon African American expressive culture in Hip-hop to define itself? If Hip-Hop Theater is a diverse matrix of cross-racial, ethnic, and class exchanges, how does Hip-Hop's relationship to Blackness offer opportunities to diverse groups to understand African American experiences through Hip-Hop Theater? Think of the ways the four elements of Hip-hop, MCIng, Breaking, Graffiti and DJing, are used both literally and figuratively by these artists.

Week 14- Queering Blackness Robert O'Hara's Insurrection: Holding History

This week we are reading Robert O'Hara's Insurrection: Holding History and viewing Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied.
In Insurrection, O'Hara questions the normative heterosexuality of slavery by centering the story of a gay black man as he complicates how history is remembered and recorded. Riggs presents the stifled stories of same sex loving black men, their familial and social relationships and ways that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has shaped the lives of queer black men. As you blog about queering blackness, think about how Ron and Marlon's stories shape your ideas of American history, theater and performance? How do these complicate how we understand blackness and its representation in American Theatre? In what ways do these stories "queer" dominant narratives about blackness, American history and sexual difference?

Week 13- Black is, Black Ain't: Hair and Color Politics in African American Theatre/Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman

This week, we are reading Dael Orlandersmith's Yellowman and watching Chris Rock's Good Hair. In both of these works, we see connections to the ways that the hair and skin color of African Americans can be read as important facets of
identity negotiation. African Americans relationship to their skin color and hair texture has a direct correlation to how they perceive themselves and how they are perceived by dominant society. In Yellowman skin color is the basis for intraracial tension. Alma and Eugene must negotiate their relationship within social constraints that they inherit from their families based on the color of their skin. In Chris Rock's Good Hair , we see Black women of all skin colors discuss their hair as a site of oppression and empowerment.

As you blog on the key themes of Hair and Color Politics, think about the ways that Alma and Eugene identify with their hair and skin color as living parts of their identities? What opportunities are enabled or foreclosed by their skin color and/or hair texture? How are the characters defined by their skin color and the social and cultural stigmas and/or entitlement associated with them? How do you understand hair and skin color as representing "political" identifications?

Week 12- New Black Subjectivities/Suzan-Lori Parks's The America Play

For Parks, history is. The Foundling Father is just as real as the Founding Father it just depends on who is writing the historical perspective. Parks's play is about black people, yet blackness is never mentioned. How do you feel that Parks' uses language to produce the blackness of her characters?

As you blog about blackness this week, consider Park's "New Black Math" and the myriad of ways that Parks's envisions a black play. Do you see Parks's work as different from and/or similar to other works we have read this semester? If Parks is "''to locate the ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down.'' " (Possession, The America Play 1995), then what do you think is found in The America Play that supplements and/ or subverts existing narratives of Americanness? Why isn't this the African American play?

Week 10 - Who Can Write African American Theatre? Thomas Gibbons's Bee-Luther-Hatchee

This week, we are exploring notions of racial and cultural authenticity as explored in the play Bee-Luther-Hatchee by Thomas Gibbons. As the second non-African American playwright we have discussed in the course, Gibbons joins many white American writers who have written extensively on African American life and race relations in the United States in both positive and negative ways. Some of these writer's works have re-inscribed racial stereotypes and denigrated black subjects, while other have attempted to present the self-determination of African Americans.
In what ways do you think the race of the playwright does/does not impact his ability to write African American characters and their experiences in a believable fashion? Do you read the work as more/less "authentic" because of his racial identification? As you blog on authenticity this week, think broadly what it means to "authentically" represent racial and cultural experiences. Is this possible? For discussion, you may consider ways you can issues of authenticity to fictional representations of African American life in American popular culture such as television, film, music, etc.

Week 9 - Why African American Theater Matters/August Wilson's Fences

This week we read Fences by August Wilson and the playwrights polemic speech "The Ground on Which I Stand." As you think about how the notion of Africa is translated into the work of Wilson, consider how the aftermath of slavery becomes a link to the African past of African Americans. How, if at all, do you see references to Africa in Wilson's work? Are they obvious or masked? How does the past, and its recollection, in Fences suggest links to the history of slavery and African culture? Why does African American Theater matter to Wilson? Why does it matter to you?

Week 8-Colored Contradictions: The Colored Museum- Midterm reflection

This week we completed our midterm exam which was an opportunity for you to stretch out and explore what your thoughts are on African American Theatre thus far. We read The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe which is a meditation on the variosu representations of African American life by black playwrights and performers from slavery to the the contemporary moment. Written in 1985, the play presented a compelling cultural critique of many African American playwrights we have read to date, including Lorraine Hansberry,Charles Fuller, Amiri Baraka and Ntozake Shange. Wolfe critiques the work of these playwrights within a broader analysis of African American cultural production in the aftermath of slavery. As you blog about racial stereotypes in African American Theatre, consider how African American writers and performers manipulate these recognizable characters in both positive and negative ways. What social contradictions do you find? How do class and gender complicate the manipulation of these stereotypes?

Week 7- Brothers, Sisters, Mothers, Fathers: Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls and Lynn Nottage's Crumbs from the Table of Joy

This week we explore the black family in African American Theater, specifically focusing on the role of women and their multiple roles. As we explore the terms Negro, Colored, Black, Afro-American and African American, and their relationship to the black family, how do these terms define the limits of what roles are available to women? How are women's roles over time reflected in the ways that black people in the United States identify themselves as "black"? Shange's For Colored Girls explores the multiple roles of black women as sisters, mothers, lovers, friends. The play takes place in the 1970s as black women began to assert themselves as feminists and create their own perceptions of black female identity. In Nottage's Crumbs, we see African American women in the 1950s defining themselves both in and outside the family home in realtionship to black men and socially prescribed roles for women. Both plays address the ways that black women define themselves in relationship to dominant society and black men.
As you blog this week, link your ideas about the play to the shifting definitions of blackness reflected in the terms Negro, Colored, Black, Afro-American and African American. How does the historical time period assigned to these terms shape possibilities for black women to self-define?

Week 6- Disrupting the Black-White Binary / Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro

This week, we continue our examination of plays influenced by the avant-garde that have shaped African American Theater. As you blog on the key term for this week, racial passing, see if you can identify the ways that Kennedy disrupts and/or reinforces the hierarchies between blackness and whiteness. Some questions that may prompt you to write are:
How does the playwright suggest relationships of power between the'selves' of Negro Sarah? What examples in the play does Negro Sarah give for wanting to be white?
How is her performance of blackness shaped by her hatred for all things "black"? What themes in this play are similar to other playwrights who experiment with the avant-garde such as Baraka and Genet?

Week 5- The Black Theater and the Avant-garde...Jean Genet's The Blacks

This week we are reading Jean Genet's The Blacks: A Clown Show. The play, written by a French playwright, became a seminal work in African American Theater because of its complex themes, avant-garde structure and searing look at complex issues of power, race and corruption.

As you blog about the idea of "performing blackness," think about what examples from the play you can use in your response that challenge your perceptions of what blackness "is" or how it can be expressed in performance. The following questions may be prompts that help you develop your entry about performing blackness this week:

How do the characters perform blackness in the play? Genet is not writing about African American experiences specifically, but black experiences of colonialism.

Are Genet's thought provoking ideas about blackness different and/or similar to those expressed by African American playwrights?

Can you tell that Genet is not a black writer?

How does the author challenge what counts as a "black" play?

Avant-garde writers depart from bourgeois theater forms in order to disrupt the status quo and incite reaction from their audiences. How can a white man from France write about experiences of blackness? Is this as an avant-garde tactic used by Genet to shock and provoke audiences?

Week 4- The Black Arts Movement and The Dutchman

This week we are discussing the Black Arts Movement which was started by Amiri Baraka. Many of the plays produced during this time period, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, worked to establish a new Black Aesthetic for creating art. In his play "The Dutchman," Leroi Jones (AKA Amiri Baraka) uses the theater and the characters he creates to explore many polemic issues that shape American identity at this time. As you blog this week about Inter-racial conflict,think about the following questions. In what ways does Baraka use the relationship between Clay and Lula to explore and disrupt socially constructed racial stereotypes?
How does the play address inter-racial relationships?
If you consider the platform of the Blach Arts Movement as one that stressed separatism, community involvement and the development of a new arts aesthetic that departs from Euro-American ideals, how successful is Baraka at achieving these goals? Where does he fail?You do not have to respond to all of them,but do let them guide you to think more broadly abut Civil Rights and quests for self-determination by African Americans in the 1960s.

Week 3- A Soldier's Play

This week, we are exploring very complex themes presented in Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play (1981). The play discusses issues of aleination, intraracial tensions, internalized racism and racism in the American military. As you blog on many of thesethemes and the key word "internalized racism" this week, think about how the relationships established between blacks and whites during slavery persist in the play. Though the play is written in the early 1980s, it takes place during WWII when the armed forces were segregated. Here are some questions to consider to help you develop your blog response. Go to the texts, engage them, agree and disagree with them--just use examples in your response. You must support your ideas with evidence from lecture, the plays, supplementary readings, etc.

How do you see the soldiers in the play interlaize many of the separate and unequal practices that are in play during this time period?
What examples from the play, film or readings can you use to illustrate points of internalized racism?
Do all of the black soldiers have a positive image of themselves in this work?
How do white characters perceive blacks at this time?
How are feelings of inferiority imposed by the dominant society played out or resisted by the black characters?

Week 2- From Negro to Colored...the Separate Unequal Struggle for Civil Rights

This week, we are discussing Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun which premiered on Brodway in 1959- right in the fire of the Civil Rights Movement. As you consider many of the key themes in the play, how do you understand the term "Civil rights" in relationship to the story told? Here are some prompts to consider as you blog "Civil Rights": In what way(s) does Hansberry consider the realtionship between race, class, gender and its relationship to American citizenship? How do the Youngers' social postion engage particular topics of concern in the Civil rights Movement such as restrictive covenants, assimilation, integration, etc.? How do narratives of the American Dream in the play relate to larger civil rights struggles?

Week 1- What is African American Theater?

In the introduction to the course this week, we discussed the relationships that produce the African American Theater. From slavery through emancipation, from reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance, from the Black Arts Movement to the Hip-hop movement, African American writers, actors and directors have worked to represent the experiences of African American people on stage. After reading the articles by W.E.B. Dubois and Suzan-Lori Parks, what are your ideas about African American Theater? How and why do you think African American Theater documents American identity?
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Welcome to KU African American Theater

Thank you for logging on to KU ( The University of Kansas) African American Theater! This is a course covers African American Theater from 1958 to the present. I hope that you will enjoy this amazing journey that we taking together. As we begin to understand the social,cultural,political and economic circumstances that shape representations of African American in the American Theater, we will see how these stories and images have and continue to shape the way we see and understand African American experiences represented in popular culture. I look forward to working with you this semester and getting to know your interests in theater and performance.

Best-
Nicole Hodges Persley, PhD
Assistant Professor of Theater
The University of Kansas