African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader (review)

Abstract

To be or not to be part of the system has consistently been at issue for African Americans both in and out of the arts. Harry J. Elam, Jr. points to this ambivalent status when he writes in the introduction to African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader that the matter of race in America "is inherently theatrical" (4). African Americans are seen as eminently capable of performing. Much of what they performed as strategic means of cultural survival was difference—in dress, in speech, and even in gait. During the nineteenth century, African Americans were thought of as natural mimics, and according to the proverbial canard, their bodies are synonymous with rhythm—they can all sing and dance. Yet, African Americans in the arts rarely have leading positions in mainstream organizations and, more often than not, fail to develop theatrical institutions of long tenure. Standing outside the embrace of the official, they are institutionally challenged. Since its birth as a performance genre during slavery, African American cultural statements have had to contend with their outsiderness in multiple contexts.