The First Black Actors on the Great White Way

In 1917, a landmark event shattered the conventions of American theater--the first Broadway production in which African Americans portrayed black characters in a serious drama, as opposed to minstrel shows or superficial comedies. Ridgely Torrence's Three Plays for a Negro Theater, which opened at Madison Square Complex's Garden Theatre, consisted of three experimental playlets--The Rider of Dreams, Granny Maumee and Simon, the Cyrenian. Among the all-black cast were well-known thespians like Inez Clough and Opal Cooper; audience members on opening night included W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson, plus influential critics like Heywood Broun and Alexander Woollcott. The drama drew critical raves, and its sympathetic portrayal of blacks as complex individuals struck a chord especially with black theatergoers. So why did Three Plays close after a brief run and lapse into obscurity? Most chroniclers blame the U.S. entry into WW I, one day after the play opened, but Curtis, a Purdue professor of history and American studies, places the blame with mainstream white audiences, who weren't ready or willing to seriously consider the play's implicit critique of racial inequality. The production's three white principals--Torrence, producer Emilie Hapgood and Harvard-trained director Robert Jones--saw themselves as members of a progressive avant-garde struggling to create a democratic, participatory theater, but Curtis finds their ideas tinged with racist condescension and deep ambivalence about advancing a black agenda for social justice. This meticulous, scholarly work concludes with a look at Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones (1920), one of the first plays to bring the distinguished achievements of black actors to the attention of mainstream audiences. Photos. (Dec.)