Black Theater, City Life: African American Art Institutions and Urban Cultural Ecologies

Black Theater, City Life: African American Art Institutions and Urban Cultural Ecologies

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Document Type

Book

Department

Theatre Arts

Description

Macelle Mahala’s rich study of contemporary African American theater institutions reveals how they reflect and shape the histories and cultural realities of their cities. Arguing that the community in which a play is staged is as important to the work’s meaning as the script or set, Mahala focuses on four cities’ “arts ecologies” to shed new light on the unique relationship between performance and place: Cleveland, home to the oldest continuously operating Black theater in the country; Pittsburgh, birthplace of the legendary playwright August Wilson; San Francisco, a metropolis currently experiencing displacement of its Black population; and Atlanta, a city with forty years of progressive Black leadership and reverse migration.

Black Theater, City Life looks at Karamu House Theatre, the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh Playwrights’ Theatre Company, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the African American Shakespeare Company, the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, and Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company to demonstrate how each organization articulates the cultural specificities, sociopolitical realities, and histories of African Americans. These companies have faced challenges that mirror the larger racial and economic disparities in arts funding and social practice in America, while their achievements exemplify such institutions’ vital role in enacting an artistic practice that reflects the cultural backgrounds of their local communities. Timely, significant, and deeply researched, this book spotlights the artistic and civic import of Black theaters in American cities.

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https://search.worldcat.org/title/1330932600

ISBN

978-0-8101-4515-3

DOI

10.2307/j.ctv2nhq3s3

Publication Date

2022

Publisher

Northwestern University

City

Evanston, IL

First Page

1

Last Page

280

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory | Inequality and Stratification | Race and Ethnicity | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Social Justice | Theatre and Performance Studies | Theatre History

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Black Theater, City Life: African American Art Institutions and Urban Cultural Ecologies
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