ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the series especially with regard to its performance as an extension of a historical Black Little Theater movement, establishment/recovery of the genre and staging black feminist theory/pedagogy in the United States’ Middle Georgia region. Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Safe is an oft cited lynching play by the most prolific black feminist playwright in the anti-lynching play genre. Johnson’s play effectively foregrounds Liza’s non-normative performance of womanhood and motherhood. First, Johnson presents Liza as a young woman who thinks critically about the ways her rights and those of black people are abused and exploited. When Safe opens, Liza is seated at a sewing machine creating “flannel belly bands” and night gowns in preparation for her newborn’s birth. In this way, Johnson frames Liza as a traditional mother who prepares for childbirth in a manner reflecting Victorian era values.
