Black (Play) Is. .. Black Play (Ain't): The Gumbo of Theatrical Blackness

In Marlon Riggs's brilliant and under-heralded film, Black Is . . . Black Ain't (1995), Riggs narrates part of the work from his hospital bed, IV drip dangling. Houston Baker, Jr. has called Riggs a black hero for his performance and, ostensibly, for the craft of his final project. A meditation on what Riggs had contemplated throughout his too-short life as to what might be "black" and what might not be, Black Is . . .Black Ain't confronts the arts of performance (film, dance, theatre, spoken word poetry) which exhibit limited and narrow definitions of blackness. Blackness, Riggs asserts, is a creolization, a virtual gumbo where the multiple ingredients work in tandem much more tastily than when they are separate. (Riggs does indeed make a pot of gumbo in the film.)

I am invoking Riggs's film work in the beginning of this essay on black theatre because I feel Riggs articulates a longing that I myself have felt. Is it possible in a theatre production to create a gumbo of theatrical blackness? By this, I mean: Has blackness on stage mixed up, played with, and disturbed what we, as a theatre-going audience, are comfortable with and expect of performed blackness? I am here speaking not exclusively of the lasting images of stereotyped blackness that we have cultivated on the American stage, particularly on the popular stage. Rather, I am thinking of how black actors and playwrights have, to continue with Riggs's gumbo metaphor, seasoned blackness on stage. The basic ingredients are the ways in which blackness has been played on the American stage—through stereotype, but, also, with innovation, playfulness, mastery. All are in the gumbo of theatrical blackness, palatable and challenging at the same time.

I have had some exciting theatre experiences in the past few years. For the purposes of this essay, I have now been thinking of some as possible examples of 1) black plays, and 2) the playing of (and, I would like to add, with) black. I have chosen two widely divergent performances. The first example that came to my mind of playing with black was Gloria Foster's portrayal of Mama Younger in the Williamstown Theatre Festival's summer 1999 production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Foster fused her famed classically trained voice and body to Mama's Chicago/Up South worn-out body frame. It was quite the wonder: Mama Younger met Lady Macbeth through Foster, and together they clasped their hands and wondered about the struggle of life. The acting moment I remember most strongly was at the conclusion of act one, scene one. Foster as Mama Younger has just slapped her daughter, Beneatha, played by Kimberly Elise. The agnostic Beneatha tried to deny the power of God, and her mother, horrified, physically reprimands her with the slap. Then, Foster goes to the window to water a tiny, sad-looking plant that has survived because of "spirit." She gives this short speech: "Well, I always wanted me a garden like I used to see sometimes at the back of the houses down home. This plant is close as I ever got to having one. Lord, ain't nothing as dreary as the view from this window on a dreary day, is there?"³⁸

My memory of Gloria Foster's rendering of these lines is that she contradicted the "down home" language of Mama Younger with her precise diction and grand carriage. Foster as Mama Younger watering the plant, if I had held my hands over my ears, had the look of Lady Macbeth attempting to wash her hands of blood. The movement and cadence of Mama Younger was infused with Foster's classical training, and what emerged from Foster was a bizarre, resistant performance.

Foster played the blackness of Mama Younger as a struggle with the simultaneous physicality of Western classical theatre training with the demands of...