ABSTRACT
The first folklorist to understand the inextricable link between performance and folklore was the African-American folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960), who, in the 1920s, claimed that, “every phase of Negro life is highly dramatized. No matter how joyful or how sad the case there is sufficient poise for drama. Everything is acted out” (1981, 49). She understood the deep connection between African diaspora mimicry and parody and its manifestation in virtually all forms of folk expressions, and she concluded that the best way to transmit these characteristics was on the stage, rather than in print (Hill 1993, 295). She followed this idea through quite literally in her productions of Color Struck (1925) and The First One (1927), as well as in musical revues and concerts that, according to performance studies scholar Lynda Hill, “showcased the forms of folk expression she sought to introduce to the larger white public” (1993, 298). Hurston’s understanding of the “characteristics of negro expression” as constituting the drama of everyday life directed her interests to performer and audience interactions, to the audience’s assessment of the performance, and to her own role as a self-reflexive participant-observer (Davis 1998, 14-15). According to performance studies scholar and folklorist Mella Davis, Hurston used storytelling in such texts as Mules and Men to evoke the temporality and contingencies of performance. It would be nearly five decades before folklorists returned to performance as a critical concept applicable to folklore. Hurston’s work, Davis has pointed out, anticipated contemporary ethnography (Davis 1998, 15-16).
