Black Theatre: Ritual Performance In The African Diaspora

Introduction to Moon Marked and Touched by Sun

Sydné Mahone Introduction to Moon Marked and Touched by Sun Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind —Audre Lorde, from “A Woman Speaks” The Social Context When I consider the status of African-American women playwrights within the social context, my first thoughts wrap around the high-profile ascensions of black women in the larger American society. Call the roll on recent “first black woman” titleholders : Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature; Dr. Joycelyn Elders, surgeon general; Illinois Democratic senator Carol Moseley Braun; Sharon Pratt Kelly, mayor of Washington, D.C.; Dr. Johnetta Cole, president of Spelman College ; Queen Latifah, ruler of her own rap empire, the Flavor Unit; Oprah Winfrey, the only African-American woman owner of a television studio, the wealthiest black woman of all (prime) time. And the list rolls on. As we entered the nineties, more than fifteen million strong, we made up eight-and-one-half percent of the American population , twelve-and-one-half percent of American women and fifty-two percent of African Americans.1 No question: African-American women wield power in certain circles. My second thoughts wrap around the various crises facing all women in America. Every day five women lose their lives in domestic violence, murdered by men they From Sydné Mahone, ed., Moon Marked and Touched by Sun. Published in 1994 by Theatre Communications Group. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the publisher. know. More women end up in hospitals because they have been raped and battered by men than women needing treatment for cancer and heart attack. Clearly, black women are among the victims and casualties of our losing battle against drugs and violence in our communities. The number one cause of death for us is AIDS; fifty-two percent of the women with AIDS-related illness or diagnoses of HIV-positive are black. The fragility of the black family translates into one in four black children born to teen mothers. Fifty percent of all black households are headed by single mothers, many of whom swell the ranks of the working poor. One-quarter of all black families are living below the poverty level; more than two-thirds of these families are headed by single mothers. Forty-three percent of the women incarcerated in federal prisons are African-American. Our median income is still below that of black men, and of white women and men. It’s all true. In terms of economics and power, a few of us are at the top, many of us are at the bottom and most of us are in the eye of the storm. I place the African-American women playwrights represented here in the thick of it all. They’re clockin’ it, bringin’ it down front and unlocking our own code/conspiracy of silence. The Theatre Industry Like every other African-American woman—be she first or last—the playwright is living in a very hostile environment. The American theatre is still, for the most part, a white patriarchal institution. Its hostility toward African-American women writers and “others” has been expressed, not through malevolence, but more dangerously through avoidance and neglect. On the commercial theatre scene, the black woman playwright is rendered invisible . Before the all-too-brief 1994 run of Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight, when was the last time you saw a play on Broadway written by an African-American woman? For me it was ten years ago, when Whoopi Goldberg appeared in her one-woman show. An even more galling fact is that at the time of this writing there is not a single black play on Broadway. Obviously, Broadway is not the only measure of success, but it does reflect the largest capital investment in American theatre, conferring star status upon its writers. In the nonprofit professional theatre, African-American women writers are present , but a survey of plays produced delivers an alarming comment on the nature of that presence. The 1991–92 season preview of American Theatre magazine included listings for more than 190 theatre companies nationwide, a handful of which were African-American companies. Of the more than 1100 plays scheduled, nearly sixty were written by African Americans, representing approximately five percent of the total productions. About fifteen of those plays were written by African-American women—one-third of the black plays, and roughly one-and-one-half...