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?