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Contemporary Theatre
and Its Diversity - Part 2
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African American Theatre
Theatres and plays concerned with African
Americans have probably made the greatest impact.
African American playwrights and producing
organizations have greatly increased since A Raisin in
the Sun was first produced.
Video of
A Raisin in the
Sun
African American Theatre
The most durable of the companies was the Negro
Ensemble Company (NEC), founded in New York in
1968 by Douglas Turner Ward.
The upsurge in African American theatrical activity
provided a corresponding increase in opportunities for
actors, directors, and playwrights.
Negro Ensemble Company
African American Theatre
Among recent playwrights,
one of the most successful
has been George C. Wolfe,
who first gained wide
recognition in 1986 with The
Colored Museum, a series of
eleven exhibits about African
American life that combine
satire and anger.
Video of
The Colored
Museum
African American Theatre
George C. Wolfe is now one of the most influential
figures in the American theatre.
Suzan-Lori Parks is perhaps the most admired female
African American playwright with The America Play,
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire
World, In the Blood, and TopDog/Underdog.
Suzan-Lori Parks
African American Theatre
Perhaps the most praised
African American playwright
is August Wilson, who has
declared his intention of
writing a play about black
experience in each decade of
the twentieth century.
His first success came in
1984 with Ma Rainey’s Black
Bottom.
Video of
Ma Rainey’s
Black Bottom
African American Repertory Theatre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgZDQeuWJNo
African American Repertory Theatre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtDaQLdYJlQ
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
The entire action of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom takes
place in a recording studio in Chicago during one day
in 1927.
Ma Reiney, “mother of the blues” and her band (all of
them are black), are preparing to recording.
Their two white managers have no respect for black
musicians and their music, the only thing they want is
money.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
When the band arrives for recording, without Ma
Rainey and her companions, tension begins to rise.
The struggle of power begin to take shape.
When Ma Rainey finally arrives, dressed in furs and
other finery, with her nephew, Sylvester and her girl
friend, Dussie Mae, trouble begins.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
The white men had decided Levee should play an
introduction to Ma Rainey’s signature song, she had
decided that Sylvester, who has a pronounced stutter,
must introduce it with a spoken passage.
After several attempts, Sylvester does succeed, but
they find that line to the recording booth was
disconnected.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
During the interruption that occurs, Dussie Mae
wanders down to the rehearsal room and, despite the
warning from others about Dussie Mae’s relationship
with Ma, Levee fondles and kisses her.
Eventually the recording gets completed, after which
Sturdyvant informs Levee that he is no longer
interested in his music.
Toledo accidentally steps in Levee’s shoe, the rage is
redirected, and Levee stabs and kills Toledo.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Wilson seems to suggest
that this violence is an
outgrowth of the
treatment of blacks that
has been discussed and
dramatized in the play.
Latino Theatre
After African American, Latino is the most
extensively developed alternative theatre in the
United States.
Non until the 1960s did Latino theatre begin to make
an impression on the wider American consciousness,
first through the work of El Teatro Camperino, a
bilingual Chicano company founded by Luis Valdez
in 1965.
Latino Theatre
A prolific playwright, Valdez has written works that
include Los Vendidos, Corridos, I Don’t Have to
Show You No Stinking Badges, and Bandito.
Valdez is probably best known to the general public
for his film work, especially La Bamba.
Valdez
Latino Theatre
One of the most notable Hispanic American
playwrights is Maria Irene Fornes, a Cuban American
who began writing plays in 1965.
Among her plays Fefu and Her Friends, The Conduct
of Life.
Video of
Fefu and Her
Friends
Video of
The Conduct of
Life
Latino Theatre
Another notable Latina dramatist is Milcha SanchezScott, daughter of a Colombian father and Indonesian
mother.
Her plays are Latina(1980), Dog Lady, Cuban
Swimmer, Evening Star, and The Old Matador.
Her best-known work is Roosters.
chicagostagereview.com
Roosters
Roosters, which takes place in
the present-day Southwest, uses
cockfighting as its basic
metaphor.
 The father of the family is
named Gallo (meaning
“rooster”, a word also
signifying “macho”, the male
animal focused in his own
needs)
Roosters
The primary action of the play is concerned with the
struggle for dominance between the forty-year-old
Gallo and his twenty-years-old son, Hector.
Gallo prefers a life focused on cockfighting, winning
at which in his eyes justifies any behavior, including
cheating, con games, and even murder.
Hector, on the other hand, dreams of going beyond
the mountains to escape his family and the kind of
life Gallo envisions for him.
Roosters
The struggle between two
men is brought to a head in
their attempts to assert
ownership of Zapata, a
fighting cock that Gallo
considers the culmination of
his efforts to breed a
champion but that has been
given to Hector by his
grandfather, who died while
Gallo was in prison.
Roosters
Set against this struggle between males are the three
women of the family:
 Juana, Gallo’s worn-down, thirty-five-year-old wife;
Chata, Gallo’s fleshy, forty-year-old sister,who
“gives new meaning to the word blowsy”;
and Angela, Gallo’s fifteen-year-old daughter who
wears angel wings, plays with dolls dressed as saints.
Juana Gallo
Roosters
Unlike Gallo and Hector, both of whom are described
as being unusually handsome, the women are all
homely.
The men are set off by the women, like colorful
roosters surrounded by drab hens, and the women
apparently are expected to feel grateful to be
associated with these handsome creatures.
Roosters
Roosters is divided into two acts and eight scenes.
The elapsed time is unclear but apparently not more
than a day or two.
The atmosphere, shifting easily between realism and
fantasy, is characteristic of Latino “magic realism”.
Overall, Roosters is a powerful play that has much to
say about machismo, women, love, and psychological
need in a male-dominated Latino culture.
Roosters
There are in the United
States more than one
hundred Hispanic American
theatre groups –
 Chicano, Puerto Rican,
Cuban, or other categories.
Asian American Theatre
Asian American have also made their mark in theatre.
Asians first came to America in large numbers when
Chinese workers were imported in the mid-nineteenth
century to help build railroads.
Those who remained usually clustered together
within cities such as San Francisco, New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle.
Asian American Theater Company
Asian American Theatre
When Asian Americans
were depicted by white
dramatists, they were
usually reduced to a few
stereotypes:
 dutiful houseboy,
inscrutable detective,
 wise Confucian patriarch,
 treacherous dragon lady,
 or submissive Asian dollbride.
Asian American Theatre
Asian Americans began to rebel against these
stereotypes around 1965, writing their own plays and
founding their own theatres.
Some of the most important of the companies were
the East-West Players, founded in Los Angels in
1965;
the Asian Exclusion Act, founded in Seattle in 1973
and later renamed the Northwest Asian American
Theatre Company;
the Asian American Theatre Workshop, founded in
San Francisco in 1973; and the Pan Asian Repertory
Theatre, founded in New York in 1977.
Asian American Theatre
Frank Chin was the first Asian American playwright
to win wide recognition;
The Ckickencoop Chinaman satirized both selfstereotyping and media-stereotyping, and his The
Year of the Dragon was said in 1977 to be first Asian
American play ever produced in New York.
Asian American Theatre
The best-known Asian American dramatist is David
Henry Hwang, who first came to prominence in 1980
with F.O.B. His subsequent plays include The Dance
and the Railroad, Family Devotions, Face Value, The
Golden Child, and several works written in
collaboration with Philip Glass.
Asian American Theatre
Hwang’s best-known work is M. Butterfly (1988),
which focuses on race, gender, and politics and
suggests that Westerners view “Orientals” as
submissively “feminine”, willing to be dominated by
the aggressive, “masculine” West.
Video of
M. Butterfly
Asian American Theatre
Other prominent Asian
American playwrights
include
 Ric Shiomi, Hans Ong,
Ping Chong, Elizabeth
Wong, Rosanna
Yamagiwa, Winston
Tong, Daryl Chin, and
Naomi Lizuka.
Native American Theatre
There have been a few Native American theatre
groups.
The first all-Native American company, the Native
American Theatre Ensemble, was founded by Hanay
Geiogamah in 1972. With support from the LaMama
company in New York.
Hanay L. Geiogamah Professor
Native American Theatre
In recent years, Geiogamah has transformed his
company into the American Indian Dance Theatr,
with nineteen members drawn from a dozen tribes.
The American Indian Community House in New
York has long served as a community center for
Native Americans living in New York and has
maintained a performing arts program that has sought
to revive authentic Native American rituals and
performance traditions.
Native American Theatre
Spiderwoman Theatre,
founded by three Native
American sisters, was the
first all-female Native
American group in the
United States.
Native American Theatre
Still other theatres and playwrights reflect the
concerns of such groups as the deaf, blind, and
elderly.
Theatre by and for Women
Women, representing as they do roughly one-half of
the world’s population, cannot on one level be
considered a minority.
Throughout the theatre’s history they have been
relegated to a minor position.
In England they were not permitted to appear on the
stage until 1661 , and though prominent as actresses
thereafter, seldom did they write plays or attain
positions of power in the theatre until recently.
Theatre by and for Women
Only gradually since World War II have women
come to be accepted as directors and heads of theatre
companies.
Changes have come about primarily through concerns
for women’s rights, which date back to at least the
nineteenth century but were given new energy by the
civil rights movement that accelerated in the 1960s.
Theatre by and for Women
Beginning in the 1970s, a number of theatres were
formed to present the work of feminist writers.
Some of the most important of these were The
Looking Glass Theatre, New Georges, Six Figures
Theatre Company, Voice and Vision, Women’s
Interart Theatre, Spiderwoman Native American
Theatre, and the Women’s Project and Productions,
all in New York.
Theatre by and for Women
Many female playwrights have written almost
exclusively for feminist theatres and have not sought
a larger audience.Others have won recognition in
mainstream theatres.
Among the best known of the latter group are Marsha
Norman, Beth Henley, and Wendy Wasserstein.
Theatre by and for Women
Norman is best known for ‘night, Mother, winner of
the Pulitzer Prize in 1983.
Beth Henley has written primarily about colorful
characters in small southern towns.
She was most successful with Crimes of the Heart.
Theatre by and for Women
Wendy Wasserstein is best known for The Heidi
Chronicles.
Other contemporary female playwrights is Paula
Vogel. Her plays include And Baby Makes Seven,
The Oldest Profession, The Baltimore Waltz, and The
Mineola Twins. The bet known her play is How I
Learned to Drive.
Video of
How I Learned
to Drive
How I Learned to Drive
How I Learned to Drive brings into focus Vogel’s
twin themes of incest and pedophilia, which “drive”
the play.
The play was inspired by Vogel’s reading of Vladimir
Nabokov’s novel Lolita about a relationship between
a man in his forties and a pre-teen girl.
Video of
Lolita
How I Learned to Drive
Vogel’s nonlinear narrative is madeup of nineteen
scenes that portray the sexual initiation of Li’l Bit,
beginning at age eleven and continuing to age
eighteen.
How I Learned to Drive
Li’l Bit’s family and friends
from the backdrop to explain
her socially conditioned
responses to her sexual
initiation by an adult relative.
The story’s complexity is
enlarged by Peck, whose
personal history is that of
pedophile, voyeur, and sexual
deviant.
How I Learned to Drive
The play begins with Li’l Bit (all family nicknames
are derived from their sexual features and her
nickname derives from the family’s discovery at birth
that the baby’s genitals are “just a little bit”) at age
thirty-something reflecting on the “secret” of her
forbidden sexual life when she was an adolescent.
How I Learned to Drive
The play is framed by Li’l Bit’s two monologues,
which set the emotional and physical landscape for
the adolescent’s sexual molestation.
How I Learned to Drive
Li’l Bit’s unspoken lesson is the
residual effects, twenty years
later, of her seven-year sexual
molestation during her formative
adolescent years.
She is suspended in a condition
of alienation from others, having
become the perpetual outsider
and able to feel sensations only
when she is driving a car.
How I Learned to Drive
In her theory of memory,
Paula Vogel puts weight
on the sensory
dimensions of Li’l Bit’s
recollections – warm
nights, full moon, and the
fragrance of leather car
seats pressing against her.
How I Learned to Drive
As the narrator, Li’l Bit’s control of the narrative
development affords her a creative role as she puts a
figurative hand into her memory bank and pulls out
the sexual initiations of her youth.
How I Learned to Drive
Music, like sound effects, is an important feature of
Vogel’s work.
She tells us that before she sits down to write a play,
she makes a tape of songs and music to play
continuously throughout her process.
How I Learned to Drive
Nonetheless, Vogel’s is a balanced view of her
feminist landscape.
For Vogel, the stage with its capacity for metaphor
and live performance is a vibrant site for
demonstrating the human act of remembering.
How I Learned to Drive
Vogel’s ending is problematic.
The final scene suggests that Li’l Bit cannot fully
escape the consequences of her abusive past.
She has been damaged but she can come to an
understanding of her relationship with Pick.
How I Learned to Drive
As she works toward finding self-forgiveness,
understanding, and peace, she is effectively getting on
with her life.
How I Learned to Drive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfs35SEMWPE
Gay and Lesbian Theatre
Although homosexuality has been an occasional topic
in drama since the Greeks, it was the primary focus in
few plays until recently.
Matt Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (1968), the
first play on Broadway specifically about gay men, is
often said to have marked a turning point in the
acceptability of plays about homosexuality, although
all of its characters were still treated as doomed or
irrevocably unhappy.
Gay and Lesbian Theatre
One of the best-known exponents of gay theatre was
Charles Ludlam (1943-1987), head of the Ridiculous
Theatrical Company from 1967 until his death and
author of several plays which parodied familiar
literary genres and the absurdities of art and life,
Ludlam acted in his own plays, often playing several
roles, most of them female.
Gay and Lesbian Theatre
Beginning in the 1980s, the AIDS crisis generated
numerous gay plays, among the first of which were
Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart and William
Hoffman’s As Is, both in 1985.
Later AIDS plays include Cheryl West’s Befor It Hits
Home, Terrence McNally’s Lips Together, Teeth
Apart, Paul Rudnick’s Jeffrey, and Richard
Greenberg’s Take Me Out.
Gay and Lesbian Theatre
Few lesbian plays were made their way into the
mainstream.
Jane Chambers’s Last Summer at Bluefish Cove and
Holly Hughes’s The Well of Horniness are among the
best known.
Video of
Last Summer at
Bluefish Cove
Video of
The Well of
Horniness
Gay and Lesbian Theatre
Gay theatre companies in the United States have
included
 TOSOS, the Stonewall Theatre, The Glines, and the
Meridian Gay Theatre, all in New York; Theatre
Rhinoceros in San Francisco; Diversity in Houston and
others.
Conclusion
The theatre has become quite
diverse.
Broadway’s attempt to
encompass all tastes often
leaves no one satisfied.
Ultimately, the need for
intercultural communication
and understanding may exceed
the need for unicultural theatre.