Contemporary African American Theater

Afrocentricity in the Works of Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, and Charles Fuller

Nilgun Anadolu-Okur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780815328728
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136614231
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Black Arts Movement was sparked by the Civil Rights movement and the urge to produce and revitalize functional, realistic, and holistic symbols to express African American creativity. When Larry Neal began his quest for a new dramatic form to epitomize African American self-determination he laid the foundation upon which his friends and compatriots-Amiri Baraka and Charles Fuller-would build. Expressing their individual protests through their writings, these artists soon united in their attack against Eurocentrism, which traditionally minimized or neglected the roles played by Africans and African Americans on the world stage.  Their writings signaled a radical change in the form and content of African American writing, particularly drama.
In this insightful examination of African American cultural history, the author explores the heart of the dramatic imagination of African Americans during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The analysis of the works of these three important dramatists reveals the roots of an Afrocentric approach to the theater, and introduces a new methodology for exploring Afrocentrism that is particularly suited to classes in African American drama and literature.?

I

The Critical Tradition in Drama

I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?

—Langston Hughes, “Tired”

An emerging theoretical approach in American literary and dramatic criticism which finds its origin in the African cultural context is Afrocentricity. As expounded in the works of Molefi Kete Asante and the Temple School, Afrocentric critical theory centers its argument on the perspective of the critic as well as the perspective of the playwright. Thus, to examine the text of a play it is necessary first to “locate” the playwright. In order to accomplish this task one has to look carefully into the resources and material utilized by the author, as well as the ways and methods employed. However, one cannot locate the playwright without first locating one's self. In other words, the critic who analyzes Ed Bullins's Goin' Buffalo, for example, must bring to the work an understanding of the dimensions of the critical method. To apply Eurocentric methods to the writings of Ed Bullins or Charles Fuller would be like trying to apply African percussive elements to Korean folk music. By the standards of African percussionists, one could wrongly determine that Korean music is underdeveloped rhythmically. By evaluating Korean folk music using the standards and objectives of Korean instrumental and storytelling elements, however, one would succeed in making a proper assessment of the music.

Whatever “objective” or “universal” aspects exist in music are necessarily the result of the examination of numerous systems of aesthetics, rather than the application of one system to the musical creations of different countries and varied cultures. As in music, all literary genres need to be analyzed according to their own cultural contexts; this requires separate evaluative standards. African-centered theory assumes that critics who pass critical judgment on African American creative works have an understanding of the African American culture. How is one to assess a play where there is an entire room on the stage covered with kente if one does not understand kente or its royal heritage?

I do not argue that the various Eurocentric critical methods— particularly those which take Greece and Rome as anterior cultures— are totally useless in understanding African American drama. Moreover, I contend that European drama has left its mark upon American drama, which from time to time has affected African American drama as well. However, the truth of the matter is European drama tradition and its theoretical construct fail to deal with the collective interaction of the exigencies found in African American culture. Therefore, a critical method that is akin to the culture itself can provide a more valuable platform for the evaluation and understanding of African American drama.

Beyond establishing a theoretical methodology for African American drama, such a method also speaks to the question of values in relation to African American historical consciousness. Accordingly, the theory suggests that if a playwright centers herself or himself in the motifs, images, and icons (concrete and abstract) of the African culture, the product will most likely be an agent for a holistic approach to the issues of self-esteem, confidence, and cultural appreciation. In this instance, then, drama expands beyond the concept of “drama for art's sake,” and evolves into a new entity centered around “drama for the sake of community consciousness.” Amiri Baraka and Charles Fuller (as playwrights) and Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, and Molefi Kete Asante (as theoreticians), maintain the same position; that is, they call for defining black experience rather than allowing it to be defined by others. Thus, consciousness-raising remains a vital force in their writings, correlating to the didacticism found in the Black Arts movement. To explain the relationship between art and people, in his essay titled “Black Cultural Nationalism” Maulana Karenga said: “For no one is any more than the context to which he owes his existence, and if an artist owes his existence to the Afroamerican context, then he also owes his art to that context and therefore must be held accountable to the people of that context.”¹

Lately most intellectual and scholarly debates in the arena of African American studies center around arguments for and against the cogency of African agency as maintained by Afrocentrists. Naturally, the discussion has now been extended to all spheres of African American experience, including the artistic and aesthetic disciplines. In this milieu, drama and theater play a critical role in the assessment of the impact and influence of the Black Arts movement on the development of an African-centered idea. I submit that a framework should be erected for examining the extent to which the Black Arts movement of the sixties and seventies, and to a larger extent Africological approaches in the eighties and nineties, assisted the major playwrights in evoking new elements in African American drama. These major playwrights included the two lead theoreticians of the Black Arts movement: Neal in Philadelphia and Baraka in Newark and Harlem. Another Philadelphia native, Charles Fuller, must also be acknowledged as a forerunner of the African-centered approach to drama.

Interestingly, the Afrocentric idea came into prominence long after the Black Arts and Black Power movements, having followed the Ronald Reagan and George Bush eras. During this later period the majority of African Americans were in pursuit of a democratic spirit that would renew their faith and improve their status in society, a status worsened in many respects since the civil rights era. The interesting question is whether writers of this era were paving the way for the development of a new theory in the form of an African-centered approach to the arts and aesthetics. This approach was the fundamental base in the 1990s for the advancement of an explicitly workable theory towards what Neal, Baraka, and Fuller individually attempted to portray in their original creations during the early 1970s and 1980s.

The roots of the critical tradition probably go back to the mid-1600s when enslaved Africans in America first attempted to preserve their drums and other artistic/cultural artifacts despite being under attack and continuous scrutiny. Although Egyptian beginnings, as explained previously, are to be considered the ancestral origins of African American drama, for purposes of clarity and due to limitations of space I have chosen to examine more contemporary texts for analytical illumination on the works of individual playwrights.

Despite setbacks, severe impediments, lack of recognition, and discrimination against African American writers, these writers demonstrated unending resilience, vitality, and productivity throughout the centuries, even during the miasma of captivity. Alongside the over-arching “master narrative” of American literature, African American literature grew over the years in myriad forms and genres, reaching a stage whose impact surpasses in thematic scope most literatures of the world. In particular, it compares closely with those whose radical stance can be categorized as “leftist” or “protest” and that concentrate on a specific people's resistance to oppression, such as Argentinean, Algerian, and Turkish literatures. The Black Power movement of the sixties brought forth the archetypal paradigm for cultural nationalism and a kindling of black self-consciousness unmatched in energy by any development in African American socio-cultural history. Its impact on literature, art, and drama of the period is discussed in upcoming chapters.

In Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, and Atlanta, original voices and actions of resistance, definition, and reconstruction introduced a new impetus for reevaluation and redirection in the literary and artistic fields. Yet nowhere was the movement more profound in its call for authenticity than in Philadelphia. The city already lay on sacred ground, having been a historical site for the abolitionist movement, anti-slavery activities, and Underground Railroad operations. During the sixties, Philadelphia grew to embrace several charismatic men and women, among whom Neal reached prominence within the scope of the literary matrix developing at the time. Moreover, Neal is considered today as the direct precursor of African-centered perspectives—especially in relation to art, literature, and drama.

I am particularly concerned with the impact of the Black Arts movement on the development of African American drama and theater throughout the past thirty years. While giving due respect to the historical roots and trends which preceded the Black Arts movement of the sixties, it is my conviction that the avalanching force that gave birth to new ideas and trends in African American drama is the Black Arts movement as it was spearheaded by Neal and Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones). As a matter of fact, the conceptual impact created by the Black Arts movement has rapidly moved beyond the local peripheries of theater, drama, literature, and aesthetics. It has resulted in a proliferation of works in the 1990s which incorporate almost all areas of media industries, that is, visual and performing arts, fashion, music, philosophical theory, sociological method, literary criticism, and historical analysis. Moreover, the inclusion of Afrocentric terminology in rhetorical and communicative studies, and its popularity among some African Americans, has added a new dimension to the contemporary study of African American drama.

This study aims to explore the transition from the Black Arts movement to African-centered ideology. Simultaneously it examines the aggregate influence of both stances on contemporary African American theater. To this effect, the first part of this treatise defines the basic premises of the two movements and their precursors as they relate to the genre. The succeeding chapters are devoted to the African American dramatic tradition, individual playwrights, and their fundamental works as representative outposts of contemporary African American theater. In chapter four, which focuses mainly on Charles Fuller, the African-centered ideology and the possibility of developing an analytical framework for the evaluation of African American drama are discussed in-depth.

THE BLACK ARTIST AND
BLACK ARTS/BLACK THEATER MOVEMENTS

In her volume titled In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Alice Walker relates the story of an old woman in Mississippi—a freedom fighter—who was arrested and suffered injuries to her leg as a result of police brutality. Upon being told that the “Movement is dead,” she replied, “Like me, if it's dead, it shore ain't ready to lay down.” Walker adds, “Man only truly lives by knowing…. It is knowing the words of James Weldon Johnson's ‘Negro National Anthem’ and even remembering the tune. … The dull, frustrating work with our people is the work of the black revolutionary artist. It means, most of all, staying close enough to them to be there whenever they need you.”²Indeed, as the above anecdote reveals, Walker attributes a most important task to the black revolutionary artist and asserts that he or she must be a walking filing cabinet of poems and songs and stories, of people, of places, of deeds and misdeeds. She concludes her article by reaffirming her role as a writer: “The artist then is the voice of the people, but she is also The People.”³

Walker is not alone in her assertion that the artist is both the voice of the people and The People. Many black artists, writers, poets, critics, and musicians of the sixties era were voluntarily engaged in a struggle with the American nation that would determine the future of black arts and aesthetics. Those who believed in the shaman⁴ role of the artist voiced their opinions, and these writings came to be collected in two seminal anthologies, namely The Black Aesthetic and Black Fire ; these served as the inspirational manifestoes of their time. The following artists contributed to The Black Aesthetic in various ways. Hoyt Fuller, Julian Mayfield, Maulana Karenga,⁵ Addison Gayle Jr., John O'Neal and Darwin T. Turner wrote theoretical essays that explained the thrust of the Black Arts movement. Karenga introduced his Kawaida theor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• African American History and Culture
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Contemporary African American Theater
• Chapter 1 The Critical Tradition in Drama
• Chapter 2 Larry Neal
• Chapter 3 Amiri Baraka
• Chapter 4 Charles Fuller
• Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Index