Images of Blacks in Plays by Black Women

Abstract

ALICE CHILDRESS, born in 1920 in Charleston, South Carolina and reared in New York City, is an actress, playwright, novelist, editor, and lecturer.' Claiming her grandmother, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Paul Laurence Dunbar as principal influences, Childress developed into an exceptional playwright.2 However, few are aware of the immense contributions that she has made to black playwriting in America in her 36 years of writing for the American stage. Consequently, the aim of this paper is twofold: (a) to demonstrate that Alice Childress, a black woman who has struggled against powerful odds to survive in the theatre, has made monumental contributions to black women's playwriting in America, and (b) to illustrate that Childress' heroine in Wine in the Wilderness survives whole, just as Childress has, regardless of seemingly impenetrable barriers. Alice Childress has written twelve plays, some of which include Florence (1949); Gold Through the Trees (1952 first play by a black woman to be produced professionally on the American stage); Trouble in Mind (1955 first Obie Award to a woman for the best original Off-Broadway play of 195556 season; the play also was produced by the BBC in London);3 Wedding Band (1966 broadcast nationally on ABC); Wine in the Wilderness (1969 presented on National Educational Television); Mojo (1970best known because of frequent productions); and When the Rattlesnake Sounds (1976 children's play about Harriet Tubman).4 Alice Childress' plays, which Genevieve Fabre in Drumbeats, Masks, and Metaphors places in the category of ethnic theatre of black experience as opposed to militant theatre of protest,5 have neither been produced nor critically written about to the extent that they deserve. Suffice it to say that the American stage, with its highly political infrastructures, has traditionally disregarded women playwrights generally, not to mention black women playwrights. However, Childress has continued to write for the American stage even when it has apparently looked upon her with blind eyes and turned to her with deaf ears. She is a driven playwright and her compulsion to write is evident in the following lines: