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Title
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American theatre and the civil rights movement, 1945-1965.
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Identifier
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AAI9605639
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identifier
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9605639
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Creator
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Nadler, Paul David.
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Contributor
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Adviser: James V. Hatch
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Date
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1995
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Literature, American
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Abstract
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This dissertation surveys American theatre related to the civil rights movement from 1945 to 1965, and demonstrates that it constituted an important and heretofore largely unrecognized category of American political theatre. In over eighty produced plays, African American and white playwrights as well as integrated production groups educated the public, motivated demonstrators, and raised funds for the movement.;The civil rights movement and its theatre both had their roots in World War II. After the war, many reformist works such as D'Usseau and Gow's Deep Are the Roots focussed on the discrimination suffered by Blacks. During the McCarthy period, though a chill descended over most forms of American political expression, several activist civil rights plays demanded racial justice.;In 1954, after the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools, the civil rights movement and its theatre entered a new and more activist phase. Most plays, notably Mitchell's A Land Beyond the River and Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, supported the movement's advocacy of nonviolence and integration, but Louis X (later Louis Farrakhan) wrote plays for the Nation of Islam that prefigured subsequent developments in Black separatism.;In the early 1960s, the civil rights struggle became truly a mass movement. During this period, many shows, including Davis' Purlie Victorious, used politically charged humor and satire; and several, notably Genet's The Blacks, played with costuming, makeup, and masks in exploring racial identities.;In the mid-1960s, the Black Power movement led to a decline of civil rights theatre. Many works, such as Jones' Dutchman, rejected integration and nonviolence outright, and white playwrights, who until now had played an active role, disappeared from the picture almost completely.;Major playwrights covered by the dissertation include Maxwell Anderson, James Baldwin, William Branch, Norman Corwin, Alice Childress, Ossie Davis, Martin Duberman, Randolph Edmonds, Jean Genet, Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), Adrienne Kennedy, John Oliver Killens, Louis X, Loften Mitchell, Douglas Turner Ward, and Theodore Ward. Theatre companies include the American Negro Theatre, the Free Southern Theatre, the Greenwich Mews, the Kaleidoscope Players, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
