The Black Scholar · 1979 · 18 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesLiteratureTheatre StudiesAfrican American LiteratureAfrican American MusicDramaAfrican American Literary CriticismAfrican American Literary StudiesAfrican American TheaterBlack Music StudiesBlack Performance StudiesImprovisation In African American MusicAesthetic ImpactAesthetic QualitiesBlack Musicians BiographyBlack PoeticsBlack Theatre HistoryRace In TheatreTheatrical CensorshipTheatrical Makeup
sa poet in american theater/ i find dmost activity that takes place on our stages overwhelmingly shallow/ stilted & imitative, that is probably one of the reasons i insist on calling myself a poet or writer/ rather than a playwright/ i am interested solely in the poetry of a moment/ the emotional & aesthetic impact of a character or a line/ for too long now afro-americans in theatre have been duped by the same artificial aesthetics that plague our white counterparts/ 'the perfect play/ as we know it to be/ a truly european framework for european psychology/ cannot function efficiently for those of us from this hemisphere. furthermore/ with the advent of at least 6 musicals about the lives of black musicians 8c singers/ (EUBIE, BUBBLING BROWN SUGAR, AIN'T MISBEHAVIN, MAHALIA, etc.)/ the lives of millions of black people who dont sing & dance for a living/ are left unattended to in our theatrical literature, not that the lives of Eubie Blake or Fats Waller are well-served in productions lacking any significant book/ but if the lives of our geniuses arent artfully rendered & the lives of our regular & precious are ignored/ we have a double loss to reckon with. if we are drawn for a number of reasons to the lives & times of black people who conquered their environments or at least their pain with their art