This is Black History Month

Because we are a hip hop theater collective, each day on our Social Media, as we have for the last few years, we will post an event of importance in black theater history.

We post firsts, like the first black actor to play Othello, or the first black actor to win a Tony award in a particular category. Or like how the first actress to win best supporting actress in a musical was black.

We also do posts of major accomplishments in black theater, like the longest running black musical on Broadway, or the actor who has won the most Tony awards. Or the playwright who wrote a play documenting the black experience in each decade of the twentieth century.

And we are not, or at least we try not to be, New York-centric. We have posted about Karamu House, the first black theater in Ohio.

World Black Theater?

It’s been fun. I enjoy the research and learning more about the black theater experience.

But it has been pointed out to me that we are United States-centric. All of the posts have been about what has happened here.

Theater is part of the world culture. Black theater is part of the world culture.

So, we are reaching out to you.

• Help us put American black theater in context of world black theater.
• Teach us the things we don’t know.
• Post suggestions as comments on the blog, or as comments on our black theater social media posts of things we don’t know.

Help us celebrate Black Theater History Month.

Thank You!

Setting the Scene

Usually I don’t talk about a show unless we are doing it, or planning on doing it. This week I’m going to make an exception. I want to talk about the current Broadway production of To Kill a Mockingbird.

I’m not going to talk about how it’s different from the book or the movie, or how the two adaptations are different from each other. I’m not going to complain about how only two of the characters are black, or that none of them are Reverend Sykes, which is too bad – he has the best line in the book and the movie. (It’s the moment just after the verdict has come in, and Tom Robinson has been found guilty of a crime that everyone, including the jury, knows he didn’t commit. Atticus is making the long lonely walk out of the courtroom. Scout is in the balcony reserved for blacks. She feels a tap on her shoulder. She turns around and she sees that everyone is standing in respect. Reverend Sykes says, “Miss Jean-Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”)

This is a Hip Hop Play?

What I want to talk about is why it’s a hip hop play.

KRS-One once famously said, “Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.”

What is lived in the play is a man sentenced for a crime he’s physically, demonstrably incapable of committing, just because he’s black. This kind of story is seldom seen onstage. But it, and other experiences like it, are what gave rise to hip hop.

Hip hop is a response to experienced injustice. Telling this story is what makes To Kill A Mockingbird a hip hop play.