Craig R. Prentiss - Staging Faith: Religion and African American Theater from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II

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STAGING FAITH

Religion and African American Theater from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II

Craig R. Prentiss

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org

2014 by New York University
All rights reserved

Portions of were previously published in Craig Prentiss, Terrible Laughing God: Challenging Divine Justice in African American Antilynching Plays, 19161945, ed. Anne P. Rice, Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 18 (Summer 2008): 177214.

References to Internet Websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Prentiss, Craig R.

Staging faith : religion and African American theater from the Harlem renaissance to World War II / Craig R. Prentiss.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8147-0795-1 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8147-0808-8 (pb : alk. paper)

1. African American theaterHistory20th century. 2. American dramaAfrican American authorsHistory and criticism. 3. TheaterReligious aspects. 4. Religion in literature. I. Title.

PN2270.A35P74 2013

792.08996073dc23

2013018429

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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For the boys in my life:

Peter Brett Prentiss
Ben and Cole

In early 1997, my father sent me a New Yorker article by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates juxtaposed August Wilsons vision for an autonomous African American theater with a vibrant tradition of fairly lowbrow, melodramatic plays touring the country attracting large black audiences, sometimes grossing several million dollars. My father forwarded the article to me because he knew of my academic interest in questions of racial identity, and because theater is in my familys DNA. In 2009, my father retired after nearly four decades as an actor and theater professor at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. Through my early twenties, I weighed the prospect of attempting an acting career (and like many academics, I continue seeing myself as a frustrated actor). I met my wife, Shana, doing summer stock, and she continues inspiring high school students as a talented theater teacher. On my mothers side, my cousins include Barbara Heliodora, a renowned Brazilian director, critic, and scholar. Roberto Athayde is a prolific playwright whose Miss Margaridas Way earned Estelle Parsons a Tony nomination. Patricia Scott Bueno, Dudu Sandroni, and Paula Sandroni have all dedicated their lives to the Brazilian stage. I take great pride in my familys theatrical exploits. For these reasons, my fathers sending me Gatess article on African American theater did not seem out of the ordinary.

However, something in the article caught my eye. Gates focused on a play entitled My Grandmother Prayed for Me. The play was not high art (Gates said it makes Good Times look like Strindberg), but it was clearly a theological narrative. It told the story of a grandmother struggling to raise her drug-addled daughter and two grandsons. Based on Gatess description, the play focused on bringing them back to God and included rousing gospel songs. Audience members cried out Hallelujah! and Testify! as characters delivered impassioned pleas for living their lives right for the Lord.

Gates suggested that the play was fairly standard fare for the theatrical tours he was describing, so I wondered what scholarly work had been done on the topic. Very slowly, over the following months and years, I researched what had been published that grappled with these scripts from the perspective of their religious messages (religious in the context of this study will refer to practices, beliefs, and social organizations authorized by appeals to the supernatural). I found nothing. In the process, I started picking up scripts by African American authors, only to find religious themes being front and center in many of them. Surely somebody had taken the time to focus on the religious features of black-authored plays dating back to the early twentieth century? And yet, I found nothing. Yes, articles had been written about many plays, and religious themes were mentioned. But these references were almost always in passing, focusing instead on the real messages involving race, gender, and occasionally class. As central as these themes were to the plays, religion appeared to be a blind spot for scholars. As it became clear to me what a treasure trove of religious material could be found in these scripts, I narrowed my focus to plays written before World War II and began systematically reading every extant script written by an African American author in that period, selecting scripts that utilized religion in an interesting and significant way.

Though this book examines the representation of religion in nearly forty plays, it is by no means comprehensive. Much remains unsaid, and I sincerely hope that Staging Faith will not only introduce the topic but also inspire other scholars to give attention to African American theater as a source of vernacular religious expression, providing insight into the dynamics of black religious life. Countless pages have been written on religions connection to African American music and dance, but theater has, by and large, been left out in the cold. I want that to change. With each script, the temptation to discuss features of the plays production and popular reception having nothing to do with religion was always present. For the sake of directing attention to my primary concern, I was forced to leave a lot of otherwise fascinating information out of this book. Consider this effort an opening statement in what I hope will prove a rich conversation.

Theater is storytelling, and our identities (racial or otherwise) are the fruit of the stories we tell about ourselves and about one another. An anthology I published with NYU Press in 2003, Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity: An Introduction, focused on the role mythic stories in multiple religious contexts have played in shaping the way we imagine the social boundaries that we call races and ethnicities. While we may choose to view plays as more ordinary means of storytelling, they too often help us see ourselves and our lives in a different light.

I am grateful to many people for their assistance at every stage of this project. First, Jennifer Hammer, my editor, and the entire staff of NYU Press have been a joy to work with. Without the library staff at Rockhurst University, it is unlikely I could have ever brought this book to a close. I also owe a great debt to the staffs of the University of MissouriKansas City library, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University (especially Ida E. Jones and JoEllen Bashir), the New York Public Librarys Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Beinecke Library and Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. Emory Universitys Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library supported my research with a Billops-Hatch Fellowship, and Randall Burkett was a stunningly welcoming host during my time there. My home institution, Rockhurst University, supported me with two summer Presidential Grants and a sabbatical that funded both writing and several research trips. An Individual Research Grant from the American Academy of Religion was especially helpful during my work on antilynching plays.