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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