Welcome to February – Black History Month
This month is dedicated to black history in the wider world.
Since we are a theater collective, in this post I want to emphasize the length of time blacks have been involved in American theater and how pivotal their contributions have been. There would not be an American theater, even if it is not as diverse as it should be, without those contributions.
Some examples are:
- The first published black play was William Wells Brown’s The Escape, published in 1858.
- The first known play written by a black man was King Shotaway in 1823. Sadly no script seems to have survived (although the first black playwright may have been the Roman Publius Terentius Afer, known to us as Terence, writing around 170 BC. Whether he was black or not history can’t decide.)
- The first black theater company, The African Grove, was founded in NYC in 1821, on Bleecker and Mercer.
- The first show with an all black cast was Clorindy in 1898.
- The first full length Broadway musical written and performed by blacks was Dahomey in 1903.
- The oldest, continuously-operated black theater is Karamu House in Cleveland, founded in 1915.
What About the TONY Awards?
The River Niger won the Tony award for best play in 1974.
The first Tony award for best featured actress in a musical ever given went to Jaunita Hall in 1950, a black actress.
The breathtakingly talented Audra McDonald has the most Tony’s EVER as an actress on Broadway.
The list goes on and on.
If you are interested in more examples. Please look at our social media. We will be posting a different milestone in black theater history every day this month.
And as always, don’t forget to make a donation so we can continue doing what we do!