Black Theatre: Ritual Performance In The African Diaspora

Barbara Ann Teer: From Holistic Training to Liberating Rituals

Lundeana M. Thomas Barbara Ann Teer: From Holistic Training to Liberating Rituals In 1965 noted African American poet and playwright Langston Hughes perceived “a very great need for a serious theatre in the Harlem Community . . . a theatre in which the drama and the folk arts of the Negro people might be presented before the very audiences out of whom this drama is born.”1 Hughes was not the first to recognize this need. According to James Hatch, “In 1926, W.E.B. Du Bois was to produce plays about, by, for and near Negroes. In 1965, LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka] demanded a theatre about, with, for, and only black people.”2 Ed Bullins, among others, also called for a national black theatre in Harlem. In 1968 one charismatic black female accepted Hughes’s challenge. Broadway actress Barbara Ann Teer, the founder, spiritual leader, and prime mover of the National Black Theatre of Harlem (NBT), burst upon the scene with the intention of creating “a black theory of acting and liberating.” Her proposal moved Hughes’s vision beyond just “a serious Harlem theatre” to a holistic training program from which would emerge new productions and new performers, in a permanent home that would perpetuate an African American theatre ideologically and financially separate from those of the white majority. Teer announced to her fellow African Americans We are a race of people with a dual cultural heritage. . . . We are American with an African Ancestry! . . . Our best and most realistic hope is to go back home, back to the community, and begin to build a “new theatre.” A theatre that is not Broadway-oriented, a theatre where you can “call the shots” as you see them, and not be afraid of losing your job. A theatre where you will be free to experiment and to create. A theatre where you can relax and be “colored.” (“Colored” in speech, movement, and behavior patters.) A theatre where you can stop denying and begin identifying.3 This declaration marked Teer’s departure from Broadway to Harlem during the height of her career and the formation of the National Black Theatre. In 1990 Teer saw her long-cherished goal become a reality in the form of a theatre complex bearing a new name: the National Black Theater’s Institute of Action Arts. History For African Americans, breaking with mainstream American tradition meant searching for relevance in theatre in African traditions. Above all it meant rejecting whitecontrolled theatres after many years of trying to fit in. In short, it meant facing the reality of society’s unfulfilled promises of assimilation and integration. Ed Bullins declared, “We don’t want to have a higher form of white art in black faces. We are working toward something entirely different and new that encompasses the soul and spirit of black people, and that represents the whole experience of our being here in this oppressive land. . . . (Anything less than this is unreal).”4 Not all blacks felt as strongly as Bullins, but most knew by the late 1960s that it was time to reclaim their own identity through the raising of black consciousness, and many worked to accomplish this task. In 1980 Teer explained, “Our [NBT’s] standard of art was designed to present black people in a way that supported and strengthened and nurtured who they were, because as a subculture in a dominant culture, we were not included. We inherited a legacy of ‘less-than-ness.’ . . . My processes were designed to give people a sense of wholeness, a sense of rightness with themselves. Once that was done, there was no longer a need for separation.”5 To cure the less-than-ness feelings in blacks, Teer offered a theatrical ideology and training. Her goal was to help correct feelings of inferiority not only for performers but also for every audience that came to see them. Although she was not a scholar of traditional Western theatre, Teer was very familiar with black history and the pain of living under the cultural hegemony of whites. It was this pain that she sought to alleviate through the formation of the National Black Theatre. In 1968, after Teer had directed Joseph Walker’s off-Broadway musical The Believers , she was approached by Zuri McKie, a black opera singer and cast member, who requested that Teer teach her acting. Teer agreed to teach but only to a group, and she began a workshop at the Martinique Theatre. The class later moved uptown to the...