Kate Dossett - Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal

This project was first inspired by black theatre communities who created daring and exhilarating theatre as part of the Federal Theatre Project in the 1930s. Along the way, it has been inspired by contemporary theatre practitioners. In 2016, the National Theatre in London gave me the opportunity to run a two-day workshop on African American Playwriting in the Twentieth Century. The theatre professionals who participated over the course of the weekend echoed many of the same concerns of black theatre makers in the 1930s, but they also engaged with black Federal Theatre dramas in ways that created fresh meaning. We heard from the playwright Bonnie Greer and director Paulette Randall on the challenges and delights of writing and directing black dramas in Britain and the United States, while many of the workshop participants shared their frustration with the racial and gender politics of canon makers, who have long excluded a rich and diverse black theatre heritage. Most workshop participantsof which black British and African American women were in a majorityhad never heard of the black dramas and dramatists who developed new works as part of the Federal Theatre Project. The National was then staging the most often revived African American dramatists of the twentieth century: August Wilson (Ma Raineys Black Bottom) and Lorraine Hansberry (Les Blancs). Meanwhile, at the Nationals Clore Learning Centre, we were studying long neglected dramas written by black dramatists and paid for by the U.S. federal government between 1935 and 1939. The director Ola Ince and National Theatre actors Jermaine Dominique, Terri Ann Bobb-Baxter, Tamara Lawrance, and Kadeem Pearse brought these dramas to life in staged readings of Abram Hill and John Silveras Liberty Deferred and Theodore Wards Big White Fog. We were blown away by their performance, by how they spoke to the needs of the present: Hill and Silveras biting satireit includes a scene set in Lynchotopia, a land inhabited by victims of white lynch mobsoffers a way to reflect on the histories of resistance to the dehumanization of black bodies out of which the Movement for Black Lives arose; and Wards family drama offers a feminist critique that is also a sympathetic portrait of black masculinity.

The difficulties of accessing black theatres literary and production heritage is a key theme of this book and one that ties the history of black theatre to the politics of knowledge production today, for decisions about which black dramas are studied and staged in theatres in the English-speaking world are still shaped by what was considered worthy of preserving over the last century and even before. As a white woman working in a research-supportive university in Britain, being able to access this heritage has been both a privilege, and a problem. It raises questions about who gets to access and mediate these histories, to whom black theatre history belongs, and how my own privileged position within the academy shapes the particular choices I made in researching black Federal Theatre. For this book, I was concerned that histories of knowledge production were not hidden from view, that in fact they took center stage. Early on I recognized that these are histories that will continue to evolve, rather than offer neat resolution.

The opportunity to talk with and learn from black feminist scholars has helped me think about how to write histories of black theatre that center on the experiences and values of those who make it. It has been a privilege to read the work produced by, and discuss black womens history with, many fabulous scholars, and especially Kim Warren, Nicole King, Ayesha Hardison, Althea Legal-Miller and Imaobong Umoren. At American Studies, History and Literature conferences from Leeds to London, Ghent to Copenhagen, and Washington, D.C., to Lisbon, colleagues, students, and broader audiences have responded generously, critically, and thoughtfully to the project. I am particularly grateful to colleagues at the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, East Anglia, Glasgow, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Sussex, Queen Mary London, and Sydney and at the Institute of Historical Research, who shared their ideas and critiqued my work at departmental research seminars. The 2018 Protest and Censorship Conference hosted by Cara Rodway at the British Library and Laura MacDonald for the American Theatre and Drama Society helped me think about the multiplicity of ways in which theatre engages and reinvigorates political debates and also introduced me to the playwright Naomi Wallace. I am grateful to Naomi for her thoughtful and generous engagement with chapter 2 of this book and for her extraordinary drama, Things of Dry Hours, which has helped historians to see the 1930s in new ways.