ABSTRACT
The contractions and tensions between the hyper-visibility of Black bodies and the necessity to mask the intellectual labor they at times conduct undergird Black performance practices today. Performance is the site where we make and break cultural norms, transform, and reform ourselves at the individual, interpersonal, institutional, and societal level. The history of theatre improvisation has been largely written as the invention and provenance of White male artists. Scholars including Anthony Frost and Ralph Yarrow acknowledge unscripted play is integrated into performance practices across the globe, but emphasize the history of professional American theatre improvisation originates in Europe. By the late 1960s–early 1970s as the Civil Rights and Black Power movements reached their heights, however, many Black women realized that men in their communities defined liberation narrowly as the “expanse of Black men’s agency.”.
