Contemporary Black Drama from "A Raisin in the Sun" to "No Place to be Somebody" ed. by Clinton F. Oliver and Stephanie Sills (review)

362 l\10DERN DRAMA December CONTEMPORARY BLACK DRAMA FROM "A RAISIN IN THE SUN" TO "NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY," edited by Clinton F. Oliver and Stephanie Sills. New York: Scribner's Sons, 1971. Perhaps no literary subject has been so influenced by the course of political events as has the field of "Black studies." In the face of the Black militant critique of American higher education, much of the curriculum stood exposed as either overtly or incipiently racist. Drama did not escape the charge, and an investigation of the standard anthologies used in courses in modern drama and American drama will reveal not a single play by a Black playwright. Despite the cover design of a Black man raising his fist before a red and black background (why not red, black and green?), this is not a revolutionary anthology in either the academic or the political sense. The criterion used in the selection of plays appears to have been a safe one-a critically acceptable, if not successful, New York production. Given the period that Oliver and Sills assign themselves, 1959-1969, the only well known writer who is not represented is Lonnie Elder, whose Ceremonies for Dark Old Men seems strangely absent. But included in the anthology are: Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Ossie Davis's Purlie Victorious , Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro, LeRoi jones's Dutchman, James Baldwin's Blues for Mister Charlie, Douglas Turner Ward's Happy Ending and Day of Absence, Ed Bullins's The Gentleman Caller} and Charles Cordone's No Place To Be Somebody. All of the plays are available either in other anthologies , four of them in Brasmer and Consolo's Black Drama, An Anthology, or in inexpensive paperback editions, but Oliver and Sills have given us for the first time something of the work of nearly all the major Black playwrights of the last decade in a single volume, thus it fills an important gap. The same cannot be said for the introductory essay by Professor Oliver. Since the anthology covers only the period from 1959-1969, it is largely irrelevant to have an introduction concerned with the very broad topic of "The Negro in the American Theatre." Only three pages of the 23 pages of the essay discuss the period covered in the anthology, and the essay is really only a chronological listing of plays, playwrights, openings, and actors. If there is a thesis, it is a vague one, and Professor Oliver's style is often turgid and sometimes openly awkward: "Immediately , however, there come to mind two generalizations which, in order to arrive at a proper perspective on our subject, have to be superimposed upon this original statement." For those who want or need an historical treatment of the Black man in the American theater, Doris E. Abramson's Negro Playwrights in the American Theatre, 1925-1959 is both more complete and better written. Unfortunately the stylistic deficiencies of the introductory essay are present as well in the introductions to the individual plays. In the introduction to Ed Bullins 's The Gentleman Caller we read: "Finally it should be noticed that at least one critic, Daphne Kraft of the Newark Evening News, sees the influence of Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice in The Gentleman Caller, in which Cleaver's attempt to correlate Marx's class struggle to black and white sex partnerships involves a satirical portrayal on Bullins's part of Madame as the ultrafeminine doll who hates her emasculated mate, tempts the gentleman caller, as the super-sexual menial, we should add, and is finally done in by her black Mammy, Cleaver's Practical Amazon." It is not necessary to search for sentences like that, they abound. I suggest that one skip the introductions but read the plays. MILES COINER Hampton Institute ...