Stylizing the Folk: Hall Johnson's Run, Little Chillun Photographed by Doris Ulmann

Abstract

The following photographs have been selected from a group of twenty-five prints by Doris Ulmann documenting the original Broadway production of Hall Johnson's musical drama Run, Little Chillun, which opened at the Lyric Theatre on March 1, 1933. The pictures provide an unusual record of the interest in regional American cultures and the resulting stylized revival of traditional regional customs characteristic of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Run, Little Chillun, named after a famous spiritual and based on the conflict between Christian and pagan religious forces in a small Southern town, was the most important black example of the folk-theater movement of the period. Doris Ulmann, a fashionable portrait photographer of New York's moneyed literary and scientific intelligentsia, was also—and more importantly—passionately devoted to documenting isolated rural communities and the efforts to preserve their cultural heritage. Despite her intense interest in the theater, this collection is probably her only extensive series based on a theatrical production that has been preserved, and it may be the only one she ever made. The collection derives from the estate of Oliver M. Sayler, the press representative for the production.