the tradition of African-American women playwrights can be traced back as far as the late 19th century; nevertheless, contemporary women playwrights remain on the edge, scrawling in the margins of today’s mainstream theatre. But (as the author of from margin to center, bell hooks, so eloquently asserts) the margin need not be defined as a place that holds markings of less value; rather, for African Americans, it is a “site of resistance” to racial and gender oppression, silence, despair and invisibility. I have come to view these writers–these archaeologists of spirit and psyche who recompose the fractured self; these listeners to ancestral whispers who carve new forms from the clay of intuitive impulse; these visionaries who venture beyond the linear, the cornered, the squared-off edge of dramatic convention to find the rounded edge of reinvention; these word weavers, wor(l)d weavers, diviners who nestle with their dreams and nightmares in the bosom of night, knowing it to be the womb of light–I have come to view them as Seers perched on the rim of revelation.
Like every other African-American woman, the playwright is living in a very hostile environment. The American theatre is still, for the most part, a white patriarchal institution. Its hostility toward African-American women writers and “others” has been expressed, not through malevolence, but more dangerously through avoidance and neglect.
On the commercial theatre scene, the black woman playwright is rendered virtually invisible. When was the last time you saw a play on Broadway written by an African-American woman? For me it was 10 years ago, when Whoopi Goldberg appeared in her one-woman show. An even more galling fact is that at the time of this writing, there is not a single African-American play on Broadway. Obviously, Broadway is not the only measure of success, but it does reflect the largest capital investment in American theatre, conferring star status upon its writers.
In the nonprofit professional theatre, African-American women writers are present, but a survey of plays produced delivers an alarming comment on the nature of that presence. The 1991–92 season preview of American Theatre magazine included listings for more than 190 theatre companies nationwide, a handful of which were African-American companies. Of the more than 1,100 plays scheduled, nearly 60 were written by African Americans, representing approximately five percent of the total productions. About 15 of those plays were written by African-American women–one-third of the black plays, and roughly one-and-one-half percent of the overall total. Taken at face value, these figures suggest that the contributions of African-American women playwrights are insignificant.
But over the past nine years, in my work as a dramaturg at Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, N.J. and as a panelist for many playwriting awards, I have read hundreds of plays in search of “the extraordinary voice” in today’s theatre. Among the voices I find most compelling, thought-provoking and stylistically fresh are Laurie Carlos, Kia Corthron, Thulani Davis, Judith Alexa Jackson, Adrienne Kennedy, Robbie McCauley, Suzan-Lori Parks, Aishah Rahman, Ntozake Shange, Anna Deavere Smith and Danitra Vance. Sylistically and thematically diverse, informed by a vast array of influences from the classical Greek theatre to minstrel shows and vaudeville, these writers investigate political and social issues (the Crown Heights riots, the Clarence Thomas hearings, the life of women in prison, the legacy of lynchings) and intensely personal and spiritual experiences (family life, abandonment, betrayal, rape, survival and transformation) in their plays. Each of them in some way has created a testament to Originality, defining theatre in her own terms. Defiantly poised on the vanguard, writers like these sustain my hope for a dynamically evolving theatre as we move toward the year 2000 and beyond.
if plays by authors like these exemplify excellence and innovation in dramatic writing, then how do we account for their near absence in mainstream theatre? One could argue that their very extraordinary qualities justify their “outsider” status; to include them would somehow compromise or corrupt their integrity, thus diminishing their power to challenge the status quo. If this were the case, the pages of modern theatre history–from Bertolt Brecht to George C. Wolfe–would never have been written. So the question remains: Why are the plays of black women writers so rarely produced? The answer is a complex one involving the tangled web of economics, race and gender politics, and social conservatism–all of which have a direct impact upon the theatre as an industry and an art form.
The first point sounds like a cliche: America is a profit-driven, racist, sexist and homophobic society. Black women playwrights are not included in mainstream American theatre because their work in some way challenges or simply does not reflect the images and interests of the financially dominant culture. The black female playwright presents an alternative viewpoint to the white patriarchy and is therefore more likely to be embraced in those venues that serve alternative, progressive artistic agendas.
In most cultures, the traditional theatrical vocabulary includes character types–archetypes, stereotypes and prototypes. We have heroes and villains, foils and raisonneurs. Historically, male playwrights, both white and black, have molded the image of the black woman into the stereotypes of mammies, “ho’s,” bitches and loons. In this way, the American theatre has devalued and denied the human dignity of African-American women.
The very act of a black woman telling her story, speaking her truth, can be perceived as an act of resistance to oppression; the real power in her exercise of artistic freedom is the casting of her own image by her own hand. This process of self-definition inspires African-American women playwrights to render new characters that spring full-blown from the wordwomb, with new attitudes and new world views.
These playwrights thrive on artistic risk and aesthetic adventure. To the commercial and nonprofit producer alike, artistic risk represents an inflation of financial risk. In this period of extreme economic and political conservatism, such risk poses a threat to institutional survival, which often results in artistic anemia, a lack of dare, a “play-it-safe-till-the-storm-passes” mentality. In some cases, spectacular set-and-light shows feed the production machine, masking the lack of substance with form, and the laboratory is reduced to an assembly line. Those who keep doing what they’ve done before drain their resources in repetition and cut themselves off from the lifeblood of the theatre–the words of the playwrights whose daring visions open on new pathways of perception.
When I came into the theatre 15 years ago, it seemed that artists were packing agendas for social change the way people pack pistols today. Many artists who carried the spirit of revolution in the 1970s now find themselves in mid-life crisis, sitting in power at theatre institutions (within a nation and a world) suffering a similar identity crisis. For them, the battleground is in the meeting room where they struggle with the board of trustees to hold onto the artistic ground they gained 10 years ago. They are now officially a part of the establishment, with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of membership–credit cards, corporate accounts, faxes, modems, conferences, state-of-the-art technology, annual deficits and competition for a declining market. The social agenda for institutions has also been influenced by funding shifts: cuts in the arts and increases in education and outreach programs.
The revolutionary agendas of the ’70s are now in the hands of the evolutionaries–the avant-garde artists, many of whom are women and artists of color.
The cultural diversity movement of the ’90s has altered the economic climate in the arts by its significant increase in opportunities for these artists. With increased opportunity comes increased competition. Theatre companies compete for funding and artists compete against each “other” for the multicultural “slot” in production schedules. Women and artists of color have greater access to the mainstream, but true entitlement is limited. Artists are not involved in setting national policies and strategies. The scent of paternalism and tokenism lingers in the air. In other words, women and artists of color are welcome to visit the mainstream, but it is not their “home.” The current cultural diversity plan marks only the beginning of a much more complex process that will eventually have to address the residual racist and sexist conditioning that undermines the integrity of the diversity movement.
despite the movement’s gains, the many artists who create provocative new work are rarely given an opportunity for full production. Often these works are recognized for their potential but ultimately deemed “not ready” for the big leagues. Beyond the confines of the mainstage slot-system, the “other” artist languishes in the Sisyphus-syndrome of the developmental track; i.e., workshops and readings, presented on “the second stage.” Because so few writers of color move beyond that purgatory phase, in effect it forms a ghetto of multiculturalism within the theatre. In order to move beyond the sharecropocracy model, the new faces, themes and styles call for an innovative redesign of the process for developing and producing new plays. (The model of development for August Wilson’s plays–taking each play on a regional tour en route to Broadway–is an alternative process that produces excellence and completion. It calls for the kind of cross-cultural and inter-theatre partnership that is rarely seen in nonprofit theatre, yet it holds great possibility for the cooperative enhancement of our artistic process.)
Whatever the course of the economic and political trends in American society, the resuscitation of imagination in American theatre will depend upon our collective ability to negotiate a balance of power, and a recognition of the interdependence of polarities–male/female, black/white, rich/poor. True diversity will empower and enfranchise each interest group as cultural allies.
Many black women playwrights innovatively address these goals by returning to and reinventing African-engendered elements: signifyin’, ancestral invocation, the incorporation of music and movement, use of the circle of time, the word as magic and storytelling as healing. Signaling from the margins, they use these cultural charms to voice universal concerns.
But if we place these playwrights, along with all other playwrights, in a circle, then there is no margin. Each writer claims her space on the continuum of dramatists who play a dynamic role in the evolution of the art form, using it as a tool for the transformation of human consciousness.
