WORLDS OF PERFORMANCE
What is a performance? Where does it take place? Who are the participants? Not so long ago these were settled questions, but today such orthodox answers are unsatisfactory, misleading, and limiting Performance as a theoretical category and as a practice has expanded explosively. It now comprises a panoply of genres ranging from play, to popular entertainments, to theatre, dance, and music, to secular and religious rituals, to performance in everyday life, to intercultural experiments, and more.
For nearly forty years, The Drama Review (TDR), the journal of performance studies, has been at the cutting edge of exploring these questions. The Worlds of Performance Series is designed to mine the extraordinary riches and diversity of TDR's decades of excellence, bringing back into print important essays, interviews, artists' notes, and photographs. New materials and introductions bring the volumes up to date. Each World of Performance book is a complete anthology, arranged around a specific theme or topic. Each World of Performance book is an indispensable resource for the scholar, a textbook for the student, and an exciting eye-opener for the general reader.
Richard Schechner
Editor, TDR
Series Editor
Other titles in the series:
Acting (Re)Considered edited by Phillip B.Zarrilli
Happenings and other Acts edited by Mariellen R.Sandford
A Sourcebook of Feminist Theatre and Performance: On and
Beyond the stage edited by Carol Martin
The Grotowski Sourcebook edited by Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford
A SOURCEBOOK OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN PERFORMANCE:
Plays, People, Movements
Edited by Annemarie Bean
First published 1999 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
1999 Annemarie Bean, selection and editorial matter; individual chapters the contributors; this collection, Routledge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-415-18234-4 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-18235-2 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-18221-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-18225-1 (Glassbook Format)
To
the memories of
dreams deferred
Edward Elton Bean
(19381972)
Karl Friedrich Bean
(19661993)
ILLUSTRATIONS
Plates
Figures
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some of the material in this volume was previously published in The Drama Review (TDR). From 1956 to 1959 this was the Carleton Drama Review, then it became the Tulane Drama Review; since 1967 it has been simply The Drama Review. MIT Press took over publication in 1980. The following articles are used by permission of MIT Press Journals:
Dent, Tom, and Jerry W.Ward, Jr. After the Free Southern Theater: A Dialog. TDR 31, 3 [T115] (1987): 12025.
Drukman, Steven. Suzan-Lori Parks and Liz Diamond: Doo-a-diddly-dit-dit. TDR 39, 3 [T147] (1995): 5675.
Fine, Elizabeth C. Stepping, Saluting, Cracking, and Freaking: The Cultural Politics of African-American Step Shows. TDR 35, 2 [T130] (1991) 3959.
Hammer, Kate. John O'Neal, Actor and Activist. TDR 36, 4 [T136] (1992): 12 27.
Martin, Carol. Anna Deavere Smith: The Word Becomes You. TDR 37, 4 [T140] (1993): 4562.
Patraka, Vicki. Robbie McCauley: Obsessing in Public. TDR 37, 2 [T138] (1993): 2555.
Schechner, Richard. Anna Deavere Smith: Acting as Incorporation. TDR 37, 4 [T140] (1993): 634.
Some of the material in this volume has been previously published in publications other than The Drama Review (TDR).
Sally's Rape by Robbie McCauley, copyright 1994 by Robbie McCauley. From Moon Marked & Touched by Sun: Plays by African-American Women, edited by Sydn Mahone and published by Theatre Communications Group, 1994. Used by permission of Robbie McCauley.
The America Play by Suzan-Lori Parks, copyright 1992, 1994 by Suzan-Lori Parks. From The America Play and Other Works, published by Theatre Communications Group, 1995. Used by permission of Theatre Communications Group.
In the case of other pieces published here that previously appeared in the Tulane Drama Review or The Drama Review, copyright belongs to TDR and thus to the publishers of this volume.
PREFACE
The germination of this project possibly began on a late summer day in 1984 when I was an undergraduate student of Robert O'Meally in his Introduction to African-American Studies class. On that particular day, Professor O'Meally entered the classroom, strode over to the open-air window looking down on the illogically placed football field in the middle of the Wesleyan University campus, and placed a tape recorder on the sill. Music began without an introduction, but I soon realized we were learning this lesson by listening to the music of Bessie Smith. We the students sat and waited for interruption, for a critical application by the professor of Smith's fluid yet strained music to our future course of study. There was none. As I remember it, or at least like to tell the story, Professor O'Meally began, administered, and completed that day's lesson in the study of African-American literary studies by pressing a play button; the restconnections between Smith's music and the novels we were reading, confusion about the value of music in relation to literature, bliss because we were part of the beautiful experience of listening to artwas up to us.