Moving Beyond the Movement

A Sourcebook Of African-american Performance: Plays, People, Movements Edited By Annemarie Bean 1999: Routledge

A Sourcebook of African-American Performance is a welcome, desperately needed compilation of writings on African American theatrical performance from the 1960s to the 1990s. The reader who can sift through the uneven contributions may find the seed of an interesting topic deserving further investigation. As a sourcebook, it is an eclectic selection of essays and plays that does not attempt to be comprehensive in scope, nor does it attempt to tie the pieces together, align the works in support of a singular thesis, or put forth new arguments. The reason for the seemingly odd selection of essays, interviews, and plays is that all of the noncommissioned work has previously appeared in the Drama Review, which is an important resource but hardly the only one.

In her introduction, Bean decries histories that cluster African American culture as "isolated 'events' usually categorized under the rubric of 'renaissance.'" Rather, she claims, African American performance history should be based in continuum, not moments. I agree wholeheartedly that African American performance has survived along the diasporic continuum and that we must examine work that does not fall neatly into movements. However, we should not ignore the fact that the 1920s and 1960s were incredible periods of prolific, nationally recognized African American cultural production. And Bean undercuts her point by organizing the collection in terms of "renaissances," with the black arts movement on one end and the "New Black Renaissance of the 1990s" (a term she is helping to establish) on the other. Half of the book is devoted to the work of the 1960s black arts movements in the urban North and rural South. The "Black Renaissance of the 1990s" is harder to locate in this text, though. Since part 1 is on the black arts movement, one would expect the last part, part 4, to be on the black Renaissance of the 1990s. Does the fact that this part is entirely devoted to African American women playwrights mean that there are no male figures in the black Renaissance of the 1990s? It is a provocative implied argument that I'm sure would draw many objections and probably a round of heated town-hall debates. In the opening article, Ed Bullins claims that "today is the time of August Wilson. His voice will carry the American Black Theatre Movement into the twenty-first century." Odd, then, that he finds no place in this text. True, African American women are producing some of the most innovative and interesting contemporary performance work, but by excluding the important contributions of men like Wilson and George C. Wolfe, this book runs the risk of creating new "holes in history." The 1960s black arts movement has been rightly criticized for its tendency to ignore the contributions of its women; this book does a good job of including the voices of women from that era.

Part 1 examines several examples from the black arts movement. The inclusion of The Bronx Is Next by Sonia Sanchez alongside Amiri Baraka and Bullins highlights the fact that sententious, caustic, revolutionary writing crossed gender lines. In a new article, Barbara Lewis rescues Barbara Ann Teer from obscurity and reminds us that black women refused to simply sit on their hands. Lewis eloquently describes Teer's attempts to reinvent and redefine performance out of ritual and experimentation and toward liberation. Dancers and dance scholars will prize DeFrantz's contribution to the discussion on black arts with a look at dance and the movement. We might ask, "What did dance have to do with the revolution?" The answer is "Not much," but there are several important, interesting contributions that have largely been ignored.

Part 2 successfully provides a rich, provocative introduction to the work of the Free Southern Theater during the late 1960s and early 1970s. To introduce this section, John O'Neal gives a poignant reflection on his work, goals, and life choices. Bean also includes a 1968 article...