Gale - A Study Guide for Alice Childresss The Wedding Band

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Alice Childress

1966

Although Alice Childress wrote Wedding Band (the full title of which is Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White) in the early 1960s, the play was not performed professionally until 1966. There was interest in producing the play on Broadway, but because of its controversial subject matter the play remained largely unknown to audiences. Finally in 1972 Wedding Band was produced in New York for the first time. Subsequently, a New York Shakespeare Festival production of the play, based on Childresss screenplay, was broadcast by ABC in 1973; however, several ABC affiliates refused to carry the television production. The play examines the enduring nature of love between a white man and a black woman in 1918 South Carolina. Wedding Band confronts racism, but Childress reveals that racism is not only directed at blacks, but is also displayed by blacks. In the play, whites, Asians, and Jews are also victims of racism. Childresss depiction of an interracial love affair broke long-standing taboos on stage and television. While white critics argued that Herman should have been stronger and more determined to break away from southern racism, black critics maintained that Childress should have focused her writing on a black couple. Childresss characters are not idealized human beings; they are the imperfect men and women of a real world. Rather than present audiences with a model for racial harmony, Childress exposes the reality of life for black and white Americans as she explores the frailty of a humanity so entrenched in maintaining rules and social lines that it forgets that there are lives at stake.

Alice Childress was born October 12, 1920, in Charleston, South Carolina. Childress, who dropped out of high school after two years, was raised in Harlem in New York City by her grandmother, Eliza Campbell. Campbell had only an elementary school education, but she was an accomplished storyteller and likely instilled in Childress an early interest in telling stories. Although her formal education ended early, Childress continued to educate herself during hours spent reading at the public library. She became interested in acting after hearing an actress recite Shakespeare and joined the American Negro Theatre (ANT) in Harlem when she was twenty years old. Childress was an actress and director with ANT for eleven years and appeared in some of their biggest hits, including A Midsummer-Nights Dream, Natural Man, and Anna Lucasta.

Childress wrote her first play, Florence, in 1949. This one-act play explored racial issues and was well received by critics and audiences. Florence examined the prejudices of both white and black characters and established the direction many of Childresss subsequent plays would take. She followed this early success with another play, Just A Little Simple, an adaptation of the Langston Hughess novel, Simple Speaks His Mind. Childresss third play, written in 1952, Gold Through The Trees, became the first play by a black woman to be professionally produced on the American stage. Childresss next play, Trouble in Mind, focused on a topic she knew well, the difficulties black women faced as actresses. The play was very successful, and Childress became the first woman to win the Village Voice Obie Award (for the best original Off-Broadway play of the 1955-1956 season). A revised edition of this play was published in Black Theatre: A Twentieth-Century Collection of the Work of Its Best Playwrights. Childress next composed Wedding Band and Wine in the Wilderness; the latter was written for public television in 1969 and was the first play broadcast by WGBS Boston as part of a series On Being Black. This was followed by a one-act play in 1969,