Teaching The Colored Museum and Its Doubles: Black Queer Theatrical Aesthetics in Bootycandy and Ain't No Mo'

abstract:George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum is one of the most significant experimental theatre texts of the post-Civil Rights era. The play's impact on the contemporary dramaturgical imagination is perhaps best measured by and reflected in the various works it has inspired in recent years. For several contemporary Black playwrights, Wolfe's complex structure, characterization, and plotting have served as vital springboards for crafting their own formally and thematically inventive scripts. Teaching Robert O'Hara's Bootycandy (2011) and Jordan E. Cooper's Ain't No Mo' (2019) in conversation with Wolfe's foundational play proves particularly generative for contemplating the ways a spirit of experimentation continues to vitalize Black cultural production in the twenty-first century. This article reflects on my pedagogical approach to analyzing The Colored Museum and its contemporary doubles with students, highlighting some of the insights that doing so has revealed about the artistic and ideological sensibilities suffusing post-Civil Rights African-American drama and theatre. I focus on the nuanced conversations about Black queer theatrical aesthetics that exploring Wolfe, O'Hara, and Cooper's plays enables and engenders in the classroom. I also demonstrate how teaching these plays creates rich opportunities to introduce students to some of the key concepts and ideas animating queer studies while also enriching their understanding of African American dramatic literature as a crucial site of knowledge production and aesthetic and cultural disruption.