The Development of Black Theater in America: From Shadows to Selves by Leslie Catherine Sanders (review)

Book Reviews critical biography suggesting numerous worthy topics for further study; and it is a readable book, a rarity these days. David Rabe: A Stage History will doubtless encourage and ease the way for further scholarly consideration of Rabe's career. LAURA MORROW, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY-SHREVEPORT LESLIE CATHERINE SANDERS. The Development of Black Theater in America: From Shadows to Selves. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press 1988. pp. 252. $25.00. Leslie Catherine Sanders's study of the development of black theatre in America concentrates on five prolific writers with the aim ofproviding a context for the study of others. Her main concern is with examining the "process of creating a black stage reality. of freeing black figures of their metaphoric burden and making the ground on which they stand their own". This also means "transfonning conventions borrowed from white European culture into fonns appropriate to black artists and audiences" (p. 2). Sanders's view is thus unapologetically fixed on the appropriationof white theatre rather than on the development of fonns rooted more directly in Africa. Beginning in the I920S, Sanders sees Willis Richardson and Randolph Edmonds as pioneers in their attempts to counter black stereotypes, especially in folk plays, in putting a variety of black characters on stage, and in making black life the subject of serious drama. However, Richardson's desire to avoid stereotypes often has his characters recognizable as blacks principally through their dialect, while Edmonds was tom between his literary and social values, wanting both heroes ofclassical tragic stature and heroes who were simply men doing heroic things. Both writers were unable to create a black stagereality because they were too close to the white traditions available to them. Langston Hughes's beliefthat blacks shouldn'tjust be represented on stage but should be seen articulating their experience in their own fonns (comedy, folk culture, blues, etc.) advances him beyond Richardson and Edmonds, His Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938) creates a black stage reality by depicting the landscape of the black imagination and having whites in the audience perceive themselves as they are seen by blacks. Yet, says Sanders, he still seeks the assent of the white audience and his characters are ultimately non-threatening. LeRoi Jones's Dutchman (1964) signals a new era. Form becomes an extension of content. Stereotypes of blacks are demystified, with the stereotype instead imposed on the white figure. But Sanders fails to explore how this demystification is achieved at the expense of women's characterization. Many ofJones's and Bullins's women characters function as symbols and objects ofsex and power. Sanders needs to tackle this point. Her exclusion of women playwrights and of feminist critiques weakens her argument here. She reminds us that Jones saw little difference between the roles of the artist and the revolutionary, but does not connect this with the macho image of the male revolutionary in the 1960s. However, Sanders is interesting when she traces the influence upon Jones Book Reviews 459 of Anaud and situates The Slave as the pivotal point in Jones's canon, marking the fIrst of his theatre of cruelty plays. JonesiBaraka's later plays are less influential in transforming stage reality because of his movement towards Marxist-Leninism. believes Sanders, who sees his work as being furthered by Ed Bullins, who, already assuming ablack stage reality and black audience, tests the revolutionary mentality and rhetoric. Departing from Baraka, he shows his characters misusing freedom rather than being in bondage. With ghetto language and black music, the narrowing of the distance between actors and audience, and other innovations, Bullins's black stage reality generates values out of his characters' experience and portrays a world which "pursues self-understanding on its own terms, in its own language, and by its own standards" (p. 228). In attempting to show the range of these writers' works, Sanders often leaves little space for analysis in depth. As her approach is primarily a literary one, it is only with the later writers, when textuaUty demands it, that she gives much consideration to actual productions. This works against Richardson and Edmonds. Insufficient attention is paid to features such as Richardson'S use...