01 TTH5 CAC 24142 KERNAN SC-205
This course provides a broad survey of canonical African American plays and playwrights that shine light on a panorama of African American theatrical production spanning from (1858 to 2002). Issues addressed will include: the place of “plantation performances” in the development of minstrelsy and its mimetic inversions, the central role played by the pulpit (or African American Christianity) in determining the function of performance before and after Civil War, the role of the theater in the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement, the manifestation of so-called “African retentions” in Black theater, the reworking of these retentions by playwrights associated with the Black Arts Movement, and the various manners in which African American theater has ritualized theatrical spaces to preserve and create African-American identity and its cultural values, affinities, and affiliations throughout the course of its existence, from its inaugural beginnings to its most recent productions. We will read works by William Wells Brown, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, Charles Fuller, August Wilson, and Suzan-Lori Parks. Evaluation will be based on active and engaged participation, short reading quizzes, a midterm paper (1000 words) and a final theater review (1250 words).