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Updated: 8/12/2015 THE SOURCE LIBRARY: HISTORY OF BLACK THEATRE Bob Cole and William Johnson conceived, wrote, produced and directed one of the first black musical comedies in 1898. The show was called A Trip to Coontown. With JR Johnson, Bob Cole created The Shoo-Fly Regiment in 1906 and The Red Moon in 1908, both of which were more successful. These shows helped to establish a trend of black performers moving away from the previous standard of minstrelsy and into sophisticated themes and lyrics. Bob Cole was a performer and composer who greatly influenced the development of the black musical. Bert Williams ans George Walker starred in the first black musical to perform on Broadway- In Dahomey (1903). The successful production later moved to London. The duo performed together for several vaudevillian shows including The Gold Bug (1895), Clorindy (1897), The Policy Player (1899), Sons of Ham (1900), Abyssinia (1906) and Bandanna Land (1906). It was after the latter performance that George Walker fell ill and retired from performing. Bert Williams was one of the most famous comedic performers for all audiences of the era. William Brown and James Hewlett founded the first formal black theatre company in New York City in 1821- The African Company of The African Grove Theatre, while slavery was still legal in the state of New York. There had been two previous unsuccessful attempts to create a black theatre company in New York City. Brown & Hewlett's venture proved to be the most commercially successful. However, the theatre was burned down in 1826 after city officials shut it down due to complaints of "improper conduct" among the theatre's black audience (conduct that was acceptable and common among white theatre goers of the time). The African Grove launched the prestigious career of one of the 19th century's leading Shakespearean actors: Ira Aldridge. Aldridge went on to have greater success in Russia and England. Updated: 8/12/2015 In 1915, black theatre pioneer Anita Bush- a frequent player in the shows of Bert Williams and George Walker, formed the Anita Bush All-Colored Dramatic Stock Company and performed shows that were considered "white" plays. This effort proved that blacks can perform serious drama and also introduced Broadway to the African-American community. The company began its life at the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem, and later moved to the Lafayette Theatre and became the Lafayette Players. The Lafayette Players proved that a black theatre company can sustain itself over a long period of time, lasting all the way until 1932 when the Great Depression brought the venture to an end. Bush had left the company in 1920 to pursue a career in the burgeoning motion-picture industry. In 1905, Robert Motts opened Chicago's first black theatrethe Pekin Theatre, which not only featured black entertainment, but was also open to interracial audiences. The turn of the century was a time when America did not believe that blacks could successfully operate and sustain a theatrical enterprise. It is theorized that Motts named the theatre "Pekin"- an oriental-sounding name, in order to prevent white audiences from automatically associating it as a black theatre and dismiss its legitimacy. The theatre was home of the Pekin Theatre Stock Company and featured Jesse Shipp as its resident playwright. Motts passed away in 1911, by which time the theatre was in decline. Shipp took over operations of the theatre and renamed its company the Jesse Shipp Stock Company. Founded in 1963 by John O'Neal, Doris Derby, and Gilbert Moses at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, the Free Southern Theater was designed as a cultural and educational extension for the civil rights movement in the South. Closely aligned with the Black Arts Movement - and more specifically the Black Theatre Movement - several members of the Free Southern Theater were figures of national prominence. The leaders aimed to introduce theater to the Deep South - free of charge - to communities which had no theater in their communities and little in the way of cultural production. With both political as well as aesthetic objectives, the group aspired to validate positive aspects of African American culture and to act as a voice for social protest. The legacy of Free Southern Theater serves as a model for other community theater groups across the nation. Since 1963, John O'Neal has been a leading advocate of the view that politics and art are complementary not opposing terms. His work as a writer, performer and director has been acclaimed by audiences in the US and worldwide. He is founder and artistic director of Junebug Productions, the organizational successor to the Free Southern Theater, of which O'Neal was also a co-founder and director. He was a field secretary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and worked as National Field Program Director with the Committee for Racial Justice. Updated: 8/12/2015 From 1966 to 1972 one of the most innovative, productive, and influential groups was the New Lafayette Theatre Company of Harlem. By 1970, there were approximately 125 black theatres within the United States. The New Lafayette Theatre's performances served as an inspiration to a number of artists and organizations while operating it's own literary and talent agency, developing actors, writers, directors, designers, and others at The Black Theatre Workshop. They presented concerts, symposiums, created a film company, published the nationally renowned Black Theatre Magazine and introduced the playwright Ed Bullins. Founded by Robert Macbeth, the NLT was a resurrection of Anita Bush's earlier Lafayette Players- but with new concepts. Macbeth believed that the purpose of the NLT was to "show black people who they were, where they are and what condition they are in". Ed Bullins was not only a playwright, but also the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. As a playwright, he was one of the pioneers of the Black Theatre Movement and had a style of writing that he described as "natural"- not to be mistaken for naturalistic. Along with co-managing the New Lafayette Theatre as associate director alongside artistic director Robert Macbeth, Bullins also took on the ambitious project of writing the "Twentieth Century Cycle"- not to be confused with August Wilson's 'Pittsburgh Cycle'. Bullins cycle (which does indeed chronicle the black experience, but within 20 plays as opposed to Wilson's ten) includes the plays In the Wine Time (1968), In New England Winter (1971), The Duplex (1970), The Fabulous Miss Marie (1971), and Home Boy (1976) and Goin' a Buffalo- the play that brought him to the attention of Robert Macbeth. Like Wilson, Bullins was also influenced by music in the writing of his plays and was inspired by Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones). Ed Bullins was born and raised in North Philadelphia before joining the Navy and moving first to Los Angeles, then to San Francisco before ending up in New York. Updated: 8/12/2015 Butterbeans and Susie, stars of black vaudeville from the 1920s through the '50s, had originated the husband/wife comedy routine that later got translated into the likes of George Burns and Gracie Allen. Jodie Edwards and Susie Hawthorne were both teenage chorus dancers in a T.O.B.A. (Theatre Owners Booking Association...also known as Tough On Black Asses) vaudeville show when a publicity agent offered them $50 each to get married on stage at the Standard Theatre in Philadelphia in 1917. It started out as a joke, but they stayed together for life. Jodie recalled having launched his performing career as a child, on a neighborhood street corner: 'Get out there, dance barefooted, pass the hat.` By the time he was nine or ten, Jodie was tagging along with a local string band, serenading the rich white folks of Marietta. For her part, Susie is known to have appeared in southern vaudeville as early as 1911, when she was billed as a 'coon shouter' at the Budweiser Theater in Macon, GA. Jodie and Susie met in 1915, as teenaged members of the singing and dancing chorus of Tolliver`s Smart Set, a tented minstrel variety show that was billed like a circus. Their relationship began as a publicity stunt, when they were married on stage with the show, but they did not immediately team up on stage. In 1927, Butterbeans and Susie appeared in Jimmy Cooper`s "Black and White Revue" at the mainstream Columbia Theater in New York and went on to play some of the biggest spots that black acts could play in the South. During the 1930s, with vaudeville in decline, Butter and Sue diversified, taking up residence in hotel lounges and supper clubs. They also found a new generation of fans in the "modern" race theaters of the 1940s and 50s, including the Apollo Theater in Harlem.