ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1968, Larry Neal put forth the above challenge at the end of his landmark essay “The Black Arts Movement”, published originally in The Drama Review (TDR 12, 4 [T40]) under the guest editorship of Ed Bullins, and reprinted in this volume. Neal called for the emergence of a “black aesthetic” fueled by writers “confront[ing] the contradictions arising out of the Black man’s experience in the racist West”, while “re-evaluating western aesthetics, the traditional role of the writer, and the social function of art”.1 A Sourcebook on AfricanAmerican Performance: Plays, People, Movements is an attempt to ask Neal’s question again thirty years later with a range of examples in African-American performance from the 1960s to the 1990s by including critical essays, previously published in TDR, on theatre on the professional stage, the revolutionary stage and the college stage; concert dance; community activism; step shows; and performance art. These previously published texts have been supplemented by newly commissioned essays by Ed Bullins, Barbara Lewis, Thomas DeFrantz, John O’Neal, Glenda Dicker/sun, James V.Hatch, Warren B.Burdine, Jr, and Eugene Nesmith. In addition, African-American performance is both presented, through the inclusion of the plays Sally’s Rape by Robbie McCauley and The America Play by Suzan-Lori Parks, and critiqued.
