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Broadway - Source: Reuters
When US President Barack Obama took his wife, Michelle, to a
Broadway play by African American playwright August Wilson about a
black father's search for freedom, ticket sales for the production
spiked.
As the presidential visit cast a spotlight on Wilson's revival,
playwrights and theatre observers say both Obama's election and
more open theatres and audiences have helped bring more stories of
black culture to the New York stage this year.
Both on Broadway and off-Broadway, plays and musicals about black
culture or issues of race are being praised and more productions
are in the works.
"Now is the time to strike," said playwright Tracey Scott Wilson,
whose play The Good Negro about the civil rights movement had a
successful off-Broadway run this year.
The election of the first black US president is having an enormous
influence on culture and theatre, Wilson said.
"Obama is everywhere," she said. "This is a seismic
event."
Some plays shown off-Broadway include Ruined by New York playwright
Lynn Nottage, about rape in a Congolese brothel; Inked Baby by
Christina Anderson about environmental racism; and Carlyle Brown's
Pure Confidence, a drama set in the world of Civil War-era horse
racing.
On Broadway, Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, sold well; a
musical revival of Dreamgirls about a group of black musicians
opens in November; and a new musical, Memphis, that opens in
October looks at the roots of rock 'n' roll set against the
segregation polices of the 1950s US South.
And, in one of the most anticipated events, American playwright
David Mamet premieres a new play in the fall called Race.
Mamet, whose plays often address themes of masculinity, has not
said what the play is about, but a producer told The New York
Times, "I think the title speaks for itself."
Greater desire for black stories
"You can't underestimate the importance of Obama on this theatre
season," said Joe DiPietro, who wrote the book and lyrics for
Memphis.
Others said Obama had influenced the theatrical landscape but a
combination of factors had contributed to the current crop of
stories about black culture and experience.
"With Obama coming to office there is a desire to see work that is
more expansive and more inclusive," said Nottage, whose play won a
Pulitzer Prize this year.
"But it isn't just a reflection of him but also of the ... last
eight years that we have lived here - politically, socially and
economically," she said.
Carlyle Brown, who has been called one of the more significant
American playwrights to not regularly stage his plays in New York,
said one reason there were more such works was maybe a greater
acceptance on the part of the audience.
"Certainly the quality of writing by African American writers
nowadays is great and diverse and interesting," said the
63-year-old playwright.
Others, like theatre director Bartlett Sher, who directed Wilson's
play Joe Turner's Come and Gone, said stories by black writers were
now viewed as more mainstream.
"The opportunities for African American artists and their stories
and the place it has in our consciousness is all slowly and
fundamentally changing," he said.
"The African American story is the American story."
But times of hope and greater diversity can reverse, noted
Nottage.
"Sometimes there are moments of great optimism and changes and then
within a year it reverts back to the same old," she said.
"I hope it does keep moving toward greater inclusion."
