Writing While Black

8/1/2013

A number of things have been said about my plays over the course of my ten year writing career. This morning, I sit in deep contemplation of the following:

"You don't really write Black plays. I mean, there are Black people in them, but the play's aren't really about them being black."

"If you weren't sitting here talking about your process, I wouldn't know if this play had been written by a Black person or a White person."

Both sentiments were said in an attempt to praise the work, the writing, the characters, and the experience had in reading or viewing my work. I know this, because my facial expression in response to such statements have always led the speaker to clarify their meaning.

In 1959, in a radio interview with social historian Studs Terkel, playwright Lorraine Hansberry faced a similar response to her play, A RAISIN IN THE SUN, and she explains:

STUDS TERKEL: I'm sure you've been told a number of times, "This is not really a Negro play. It could be about anybody."
LORRAINE HANSBERRY: [Sighs.] Invariably. I know what they're trying to say: it is not the traditional "Negro Play." It isn't a protest play. It isn't something that hits you over the head. What they're trying to say is something very good; that they believe the characters transcend category. Unfortunately, they couldn't be more wrong.

I believe one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay great attention to the specific. Not only is this a play about a Negro family, specifically and definitely, culturally. It's not even a New York family or a Southern Negro family. It is specifically South Side Chicago. That kind of care, that kind of attention to detail, to the extent that people believe them, accept them. They can become anybody. But it is definitely a Negro play before it is anything else.

So, I ask you:

Who determines the cultural specificity of a play? Is it the writer? Or is it the reader, director or audience member who related so deeply and passionately with the work that they saw themselves in it?
What happens when the universal, the "anybody" erases cultural specificity? Particularly in a world where the universal more often than not defaults to white?

8 Comments

MBW

8/1/2013 04:17:21 am

To your question of who determines the cultural specificity of the play....it's a combination of the writer and the viewer/reader....with a dash of director/actors thrown in. Everybody has their own lens through which they will view a play.

I'll also venture a few guesses about some reasons that black writers are often pigeon-holed by a largely white theatre community:

1) The issue of race has been so dominant in our society at large that many people just assume that a play by a black writer will address it in some way.....especially since theatre is so predominantly "white". Many see it as the elephant in the room that must be addressed and they are surprised when it's not addressed.

2) In a more benign way (but still no less limiting), I think many white theatre artists are drawn to stories of social justice and struggle...stories that are more commonly part of the "black experience" in the US...because their own lives have largely NOT been marked by such challenges. So stories of struggle and dealing with the issue of race are appealing to many white artists precisely because those plays have a certain political/social voice that white artists either can't (or don't feel allowed to) use in the plays they write.

Full disclosure: I am a white male and will admit to some of this myself...Like many people I am personally drawn to stories that are outside of my own personal experiences. This is why I rarely choose to work on plays that are set in the living rooms of middle class/upper class white people...I just don't find it interesting because that is what I already know.

But this is also why I can relate to the desire expressed by many black writers to not to be pigeon-holed because of my identity.

For example, I am also a gay man...but I am rarely drawn to direct the "gay plays" (Bent, Normal Heart, Angels in America, etc)...and am sometimes irritated when people, however well-intended, approach me about those kinds of plays.

I think there's another element to this: I think many progressive-minded whites want to stage so-called "black plays" because they somehow perceive that their mostly-white audiences "need" to see or hear those stories. But that also, in my opinion, ends up unintentionally reinforcing the idea that theatre is made predominantly for white audiences.

But we often forget that we also need our audiences to understand that black writers go beyond just August Wilson and Tyler Perry.

Jacqueline E. Lawton

8/2/2013 12:02:11 am

Thank you for this powerful and thoughtful comment, and for taking the time to address this issues with such excellent points.

Traci link

8/1/2013 06:42:11 am

I believe the writer determines the cultural specificity. The writer creates the setting, time period, characters, circumstances, and climate from which the director, designers, and actors work. The latter group can expound on the former elements but they must stay true to the text. You cannot deny what's on the page. At the same time, I don't take issue, although some do, with all black casts of Streetcar or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as long as the creative team can make that choice and stay true to the work.

As for the audience, while members may have to disconnect from cultural specificity to put themselves in the circumstances of the piece or to relate, it still doesn't change what the writer has written or what is on stage. To use your example, no matter who is reading or experiencing A Raisin in the Sun, the Youngers are still a black family living on the south side of Chicago. Part of why they experience what they do in the play is because they're black and live in a segregated city like Chicago in the 1950's.

This leads to your second question. My answer to that is that when cultural specificity is erased despite the evidence of it in order for a piece to have universality, we have a problem artistically, professionally, and socially. Artistically, erasing cultural specificity dishonors the work and denies the complexity of the world the writer has created and the world in which we live. It stifles creativity. Professionally, when erasing cultural specificity in favor of universality that defaults to the white "anybody", it means that if a piece doesn't do this the chances of the work being well received and successful are significantly decreased despite the actual merit of the work. I have seen black plays reviewed by white reviewers which most are and the play receive poor reviews because the white reviewer didn't find the story relatable or relevant. Poor reviews can have a trickle down effect that lead to poor audience attendance which means poor ticket sells which decreases the chances of whether or not that play will be produced again or if it's on Broadway whether or not it will close. Socially, we have a problem because our ability to relate to each other should not be contingent upon pretending that we aren't different or pretending that skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, economics, etc don't color a person's experience. In my opinion, that thinking shows a lack of acceptance, compassion, and again creativity. The universality should come from an openness and ability to feel what another is feeling despite our differences. And, to acknowledge that those differences have affected the characters' experiences in the play and world. Erasing cultural specificity and disregarding it's usefulness in understanding one another shows we have a lack of true empathy. When we lose our ability to empathize, honor our differences, and relate to people as they are, we lose a bit of our humanity.

8/2/2013 12:04:04 am

Thank you for addressing this complex issue in such a meaningful, thoughtful and detailed way. Your response resonates deeply with me.

Chas Belov link

8/1/2013 07:39:40 pm

Speaking as a White gay male playwright who loves August Wilson plays because of their specificity, not in spite of it, I find those comments you've been getting strange. One issue I'd guess is that we still have so few Black, Asian, Latino/a, Indigenous American stories on stage that playwrights from those ethnicities are expected to carry on a certain trope, whether it be protest, angst or whatever. I love diversity in my theatre, and I love that all playwrights, not just White playwrights feel empowered to write diverse plays. We would have a very impoverished theatre if ethnic minority playwrights were restricted to one type of theatre.

@Traci: As for erasure, that way lies boredom. It is not that an all-Black Death of a Salesman would be wrong, it's that an all-Black Death of a Salesman that didn't take into account that it's an all-Black Death of a Salesman would be wrong; it's all in the subtext/acting. Who is Willy Loman's boss trying to please by not giving Willy a break and what does it say about them?

At the same time, an all-White Raisin in the Sun would just be WRONG!

8/2/2013 12:07:23 am

Thank you for sharing this! I hear that you're asking for social awareness and racial consciousness when making casting decision. This is smart and necessary.

Rosemary McLaughlin

8/2/2013 06:37:03 am

Thanks, Jacqueline, for this blog & a chance for discussion.
When I was a kid, I saw O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night as a play about an Irish-American family. Some of the characters could have been members of my own Irish-American family. Years later at the Public Theatre when Geraldine Fitzgerald directed an amazing all-black production of it it struck me not only what a brilliant, universal play it is but how similarly Irish and African-Americans use laughter to deal with conflict, oppression, struggle, relatives.Yes, it was a production that got the jokes in Long Day's Journey (they're there, I swear!) without diminishing its profound sorrow. (Alice Childress points out this kindred sense of struggle to great & hilarious effect in Trouble in Mind, when an African-American actress bonds with an elderly Irish porter.)

All of which is to say I think the artist, naturally, determines the cultural context, but not to the exclusion of what the audience member, or given director, may determine. I'm reminded of Susan Sontag directing Godot in Sarajevo when it was under siege. Universal, yes, and speaking so directly, it seemed, to the tragic absurdity of that conflict.

Looking forward to more conversation!

8/7/2013 03:06:13 pm

These are really great points! It reminds me of the beautiful work that director Timothy Douglas did on Horton Foote's Trip to Bountiful for the Cleveland Play House and Round House Theatre co-production. He cast the family as African American. I had the great fortune to work as dramaturg. I've always appreciated the play as a Texan, but when reading it through the lens of the black family, I felt deep, powerful and lasting connection to it. Cultural specificity cannot be overlooked or erased.

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