Black Theatre, City Life: African American Art Institutions and Urban Ecologies by Macelle Mahala (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Black Theatre, City Life: African American Art Institutions and Urban Ecologies by Macelle Mahala Khalid Y. Long Black Theatre, City Life: African American Art Institutions and Urban Ecologies. By Macelle Mahala. Northwestern University Press, 2022. Hardcover $99.95, Paper $34.95. 272 pages. 7 illustrations. Macelle Mahala’s Black Theatre, City Life: African American Art Institutions and Urban Ecologies is a critical study of African American performing arts institutions that provides a vital framework for scholars interested in the intersections of African American theatre history and urban city life. In this extension of her first book, Penumbra: The Premier Stage for African American Drama (2013), Mahala employs similar methodologies in Black Theatre, City Life, “drawing from oral interviews, traditional archival research, and productions site visits to engage with and write about the achievements of these important institutions” (3). In five chapters and an introduction, Mahala charts the history and endeavors of several Black performance institutions in four cities: Cleveland, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Atlanta. Significantly, the cities she examines are directly tied to urban geographical landscapes that have participated in developing a national African American identity throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This notion is highlighted in the concluding chapter, “Finding Joy, Creating Justice.” In addition to connecting Black theatre—past and present—to the Black Lives Matter movement and the call for equitable treatment in theatre issued by the We See You White American Theatre coalition, Mahala contends that “these institutions are not just presenters of history; they are makers and shapers of that history”; she writes further, “They have participated directly in civic and political movements. …These institutions have all been part of the political movements and operations of their cities” (197). Mahala is cognizant that she is among those leading the charge in situating Black theater companies at the center of academic discourse. While the monograph looks exclusively at Black theater in four cities, the study is quite comprehensive in that it examines over one hundred years of African American theatre history, thus exploring a wide range of vital periods such as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s as well as influential artists such as Langston Hughes and August Wilson. [End Page 88] Take, for example, chapter 1, “Karamu: A Hundred Years of Joyful Gathering in Cleveland.” One of the oldest and still operating African American theatre houses in the United States, this chapter chronicles Karamu House’s history throughout major moments of US (theatre) history, from the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century and the Federal Theatre Project of the 1930s to Karamu’s success under artistic director’s Terrence Spivey’s leadership from 2003 to 2016. Key highlights of the chapter include her examination of Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes’s relationship with Karamu as well as other Black theatre pioneers such as playwright and activist Shirley Graham Du Bois. Graham Du Bois, more readily known as an activist alongside her husband, W. E. B. Du Bois, saw three of her works produced at Karamu in 1930, 1940, and 1942, respectively. Accordingly, Graham Du Bois was considered just as gifted as Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston; however, she could not overcome prejudices directly tied to her race and gender. Readers might have benefited from further elaboration on this topic, which could have elevated the lingering theme of intersectionality. In a vital section of chapter 1, subtitled “Feminist and Womanist Theater,” Mahala closely examines two of Karamu’s company members, Margaret Ford-Taylor and Sarah May, both of whom directed works by Black women playwrights including P. J. Gibson and Ntozake Shange. This section could have benefited from a more critical analysis of what made this moment at Karamu an example of feminist/womanist theatre. Additionally, Mahala quotes white feminist theatre theorist Sue-Ellen Case where a Black feminist/womanist framework may have offered a more robust analysis. Chapter 2, “The Legacy of August Wilson: Black Theater in Pittsburgh,” takes up Wilson’s legacy and his association with several of Pittsburgh’s performing arts venues, explicitly Vernell Lillie’s Kuntu Repertory Theatre, Mark Clayton Southers’s Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, the August Wilson African...