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Article: The crisis of Black theatre identity.
- Article from:
- African American Review
- Article date:
- December 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 African American Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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We done sold Africa for the price of tomatoes. We done sold ourselves to the white man in order to be like him. Look at the way you dressed ... that ain't African. That's the white man. We trying to be just like him. We done sold who we are in order to become someone else. We's imitation white men. (Toledo, in August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 417)
For the record, and in case the obvious has passed by unnoticed, as we enter the next millennium, Black Theatre is suffering an identity crisis, an inability to define its ideological purpose and performance practice. Unclarity has encouraged uncertainty, even an ambivalent indifference about whether or not the ...