ABSTRACT
From 1898 to the early 1960s, the commercially produced musicals and plays featuring predominantly black casts were, however inaccurately, thought to comprise what is known as the black theatre. The 1960s saw the birth of a network of institutional, not-for-profit black theatres in New York and other major cities. This network changed the face of what was considered to be the black theatre. Recently, however, a new force has arisen that has led the black theatre through yet another transformation. Gospel musicals, once viewed by theatre purists as song concerts palmed off as theatre onto a nondiscriminating audience, have surpassed the more venerated institutional theatres, if not in terms of aesthetic excellence, then surely in popular appeal with contemporary African-American audiences.
