Rövid leírás:

The book examines how early twentieth century Black theatre artists depicted national mythologies of the United States. White-authored pageants and plays written for the 1932 Bicentennial celebration of George Washington?s birthday relegated Black Americans to the periphery through racist stereotyping.

Hosszú leírás:

The book examines how early twentieth century Black theatre artists depicted national mythologies of the United States.

White-authored pageants and plays written for the 1932 Bicentennial celebration of George Washington?s birthday relegated Black Americans to the periphery through racist stereotyping. Black activists Mary Church Terrell and W. E. B. Du Bois seized the opportunity to place Black people at center stage and to revise contemporary views of Washington and of Black achievement. Terrell?s The Pageant-Play of Phyllis Wheatley and Du Bois?s George Washington and Black Folk dramatize how the achievements of Black men and women fit into the US origin story. The book combines O?Malley?s edited versions of these two scripts with a scholarly monograph contextualizing them within the larger Bicentennial event. This edition will be the first time that Terrell?s pageant, a biography of the life of the enslaved African poet Phillis Wheatley, has ever been published. Du Bois?s pageant is a transgressive revision of the Washington myth.

This interdisciplinary book will be a valuable resource for college and university courses in American theatre and performance studies, Black Studies, and Women?s Studies, as it includes the scripts themselves, the book is particularly useful in theatre or literature classes in these subject areas.

Tartalomjegyzék:

PART ONE: Historical Background & Critical Analyses

Chapter 1: Washington Conscious: The George Washington Bicentennial of 1932

Chapter 2: Idealizing Washington: Portrayals of an Enslaver

Chapter 3: Black Voices and the Bicentennial: Performances By and For Black Citizens

Chapter 4: Visions of Washington in DC: Three White-Authored Bicentennial Performances

Chapter 5: Terrell Chooses Wheatley: The Creation of the Wheatley Pageant-Play  

Chapter 6: The Trials of Mary Church Terrell: The Production of the Wheatley Pageant-Play

Chapter 7: Du Bois and the Bicentennial Crisis: George Washington and Black Folk

Chapter 8: Conclusion

PART TWO: Edited Script    

Chapter 9: Historical Pageant-Play Based on the Life of Phyllis Wheatley by Mary Church Terrell