The Civil Rights Theatre Movement in New York, 1939–1966: Staging Freedom

Description

This book argues that African American theatre in the twentieth century represented a cultural front of the civil rights movement. Highlighting the frequently ignored decades of the 1940s and 1950s, Burrell documents a radical cohort of theatre artists who became critical players in the fight for civil rights both onstage and offstage, between the Popular Front and the Black Arts Movement periods. The Civil Rights Theatre Movement recovers knowledge of little-known groups like the Negro Playwrights Company and reconsiders Broadway hits including Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, showing how theatre artists staged radically innovative performances that protested Jim Crow and U.S. imperialism amidst a repressive Cold War atmosphere. By conceiving of class and gender as intertwining aspects of racism, this book reveals how civil rights theatre artists challenged audiences to reimagine the fundamental character of American democracy. Front Matter ....Pages i-xv Introduction (Julie Burrell)....Pages 1-24 The Negro People’s Theatre and the Emergence of the Civil Rights Theatre Movement (Julie Burrell)....Pages 25-67 “An American Dilemma”: Dramas of the Returning Negro Soldier (Julie Burrell)....Pages 69-111 Rescripting the Negro Problem: The Cold War-Civil Rights Play (Julie Burrell)....Pages 113-152 “To Be a Man”: Progressive Masculinities in Lorraine Hansberry’s Cold War-Civil Rights Plays (Julie Burrell)....Pages 153-184 Alice Childress’s Wedding Band and the Black Feminist Nation (Julie Burrell)....Pages 185-216 Epilogue (Julie Burrell)....Pages 217-225 Back Matter ....Pages 227-236