A View from the Middle: Teaching Nineteenth-Century African American Theatre and Performance

As one stop on the road to the prized tenure-track job, working as a teaching assistant (TA) is almost a rite of passage in graduate school, along with comprehensive examinations and dissertation writing. The role of the TA is not the same as the professor or head lecturer. TAs work closely with a small number of students, engage them in in-depth discussions of central issues of a class, and directly respond to their concerns, especially when students may feel more comfortable speaking to their teaching assistant than their professor. In these ways, a TA acts as a vital bridge among the instructor, course material, and the students. It is this middle position that can become uncomfortable to occupy when a professor delivers a lecture on sensitive subjects, relating to race or gender, and leaves it to her TA to discuss them in-depth. This essay, based primarily on our experiences working as TAs for large lectures—classes with enrollments between 60 and 250 students at both public and private universities—explores the teaching assistant’s role in relation to the difficulties of leading discussion sections on antebellum African American theatre and performance, specifically minstrelsy.

In discussions, TAs may confront issues and questions not discussed in detail in academic studies of minstrelsy, from which professors often construct a teachable narrative. We suggest that preparation is the first step in dealing with student questions and preventing difficult classroom situations related to minstrelsy. Before lecture, we have found it crucial to discuss the minstrelsy lecture’s goals and central points with the professor, so that we address and emphasize these ideas in section. Understanding the professor’s framework also establishes a parameter for section discussions and allows the TA to plan activities that will best support the course’s goals. For example, students—especially nondrama majors taking the class to fulfill a university requirement—often question the importance of studying theatre in relation to race. As one student asked: “Why are we discussing theatre as if it affects slavery and free blacks? It is just a show.” This question, in one form or another, is asked frequently.

There are several ways to deal with this question. We suggest that minstrelsy’s place in the syllabus should dictate the TA’s course of action; the way the professor frames minstrelsy—for example, as a case study in musical theatre history or to discuss the development of black characters on the American stage—should guide the ways in which TAs address the aforementioned question. For instance, if the professor situates minstrelsy within the context of musical theatre history, we emphasize analyses of the role of music and dance in the form. We have brought in musical recordings such as The Early Minstrel Show or photocopies of sheet music to discussion sections; in this way, students engage and situate primary materials in the broader context provided by lectures. This makes it easier for TAs to ask students to consider how sheet music and its accompanying images fuelled perceptions of blacks outside of the theatre and created material resonances beyond the final curtain of a performance.

If, however, professors choose to emphasize minstrelsy’s role in the development of black characters in American theatre (and film), then a different approach to dealing with questions regarding the relation of theatre and race is required than that used to explore minstrelsy as musical theatre. In this situation, we have utilized small groups to start a broader dialogue about minstrelsy and black representation. After dividing the students into about six groups of four, we asked them to create a chart with multiple columns. In the first column, they placed black servant Zeke from Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion; in the second column, Uncle Tom from George Aiken’s stage adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and in the third, we assigned each group a different minstrel stereotype such as Sambo, Zip Coon, Mammy, or Uncle Ned. Working with their groups, the students wrote the answers to the following questions...