Black Hamlet: A Script in Search of a Stage

Abstract

Abstract This article sets out the South African background to a previously unknown play by John Bright, the Hollywood scriptwriter, based on Wulf Sachs’s famous psycho-documentary Black Hamlet (1937) and written in conversation with him. The playscript appears as an Appendix to this number of English Studies in Africa. The aim is to provide pertinent information to enable international readers and theatre practitioners to assess the script’s historical value and theatrical potential. The article concentrates on the sociological and anthropological moment from which Wulf Sachs’s work emerged and its relevance for understanding the playscript John Bright wrote. Further literary-historical detail about the play’s discovery, focused mainly on America, is available in Wright (2021).