Abstract
The above quote taken from my new play, Master Juba, describes the makeup process white performers used to become a blackface minstrel and thus grotesquely caricature black culture. It was one of the most popular forms of entertainment during the nineteenth century, yet race was not allowed to be mixed on stage, until black performers blacked up and imitated white minstrels imitating them. Historically, black people in theatre were not writers or directors, but on-stage spectacles shoring up the colonial imagination of the other. Like Morgan Smith, Ira Aldridge came to Europe to escape racism in the United States during the nineteenth century and played a number of Shakespeare’s leading male roles to popular acclaim. But he experienced similar discrimination in England and fled, eventually finding recognition and prominence in his tours of Western and Eastern Europe. His innovative contribution to the development of the Method School of Acting has still not been fully credited.2
Burn the cork in a saucer with alcohol. Once completely burnt, mash to a fine paste. Then rub a cake of cocoa butter lightly over the face, ears, and neck, then apply a broad streak of carmine to the lips carrying it well beyond the corners of the mouth, then take a little of the prepared burnt cork, moisten it with water, and rub it carefully on the face, ears, neck, and hands being careful to avoid touching the lips. Put on the wig, wipe the palms of the hands clean, and the makeup is completed.1
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Michael McMillan, Master Juba (National Maritime Museum/Pursued by a Bear — commission — unpublished playtext, 2004).
Yvonne Brewster, ‘Introduction’, in Black Plays: Two (London: Methuen, 1989).
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986)
and T. Golden (ed.), Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994).
Kimberly W. Benston, Performing Blackness: Enactments of African-American Modernism (London: Routledge, 2000).
Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), p. 401.
Edgar White, The Nine Night (London: Bush, 1983).
Caryl Phillips, Strange Fruit (London: Amber Lane Press, 1981), p. 7.
Edgar White, op. cit. Caryl Phillips quoted in Kwesi Owusu, The Struggle for Black Arts in Britain (London: Comedia, 1986), p. 97.
Edgar White, Lament for Rastafari and Other Plays (London: Boyars, 1983).
Onye Wambu, ‘Unholy Trinity’, Artrage, 13 (1986), p. 21.
Sol B. River, 48–98 (Zebra Crossing, Lyric Studio Hammersmith, Talawa Theatre, 1998), unpublished.
Mustapha Matura, Welcome Home Jacko (London: Methuen, 1980).
Errol Francis, ‘From Generation to Generation: “The Installation” Obaala Arts Collective’ (Birmingham: Ten 8, no: 22, 1986), p. 41.
Edward Said, ‘From Orientalism’, in Williams and Chrisman, op. cit, pp. 132–49.
Suzanne Scafe, Teaching Black Literature (London: Virago Press, 1989).
Kobena Mercer, ‘Diaspora culture and dialogic imagination,’ in, M. Cham and C. Watkins (eds), Blackframes: Critical perspectives on black independent cinema (London: 1998), p. 57.
Errol John, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (London: Faber, 1958).
Edward Kamau Braithwaite, History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (London: New Beacon Books, 1984).
For Una Marson, Pocomonia (1938)
see D. Jarrett-Macauley, The Life of Una Marson 1905–65 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998)
Mustapha Matura, Black Pieces (London: Calder & Boyars, 1972)
As Times Goes By (London: Calder & Boyars, 1972)
The Coup (New York: American Theatre Magazine, 1993)
The Playboy of the West Indies (New York: Broadway Play Publishing, 1996)
Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 79.
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins; first performed in 1936 and then in 1986, Riverside Theatre, London, unpublished in play form.
Amani Napthali, Ragamuffin (London: Oberon Books, 2002).
Sonia Boyce, She’s ain’t holding them up, She’s holding on, cited in Stuart Hall and David A. Bailey (eds), Critical Decade: Black British Photography in the 1980s (Birmingham: Ten 8, Photo Paperback, 2.3., 1992).
Winsome Pinnock, Leave Taking, in First Run (London: Hern, 1989).
Ntozake Shange, for coloured girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (London: Methuen, 1978).
For Theatre of Black Women, Silhouette, Pyeyucca and Chiaroscuro see Susan Croft, ‘Black Women Playwrights in Britain’, in Trevor R. Griffiths and Margaret Llewellyn-Jones (eds), British and Irish Women Dramatists Since 1958: A Critical Handbook (London: Open University Press, 1993), pp. 84–98; p. 79.
Jackie Kay, ‘Chiaroscuro’, in Jill Davis (ed.), Lesbian Plays (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 79.
Stuart Hall S. and David A. Bailey, ‘The Vertigo of Displacement: Shifts within Black Documentary Practices’, in Stuart Hall and David A. Bailey, op. cit.
bell hooks, ‘Performance Practice as a Site of Opposition’, in Catherine Ugwu (ed.), Let’s Get it On: The Politics of Black Performance (London: ICA/Bay Press, 1995), p. 221.
Shirley Tate, ‘Colour Matters, “Race” Matters’: African Caribbean Identity in the 20th Century’, in Mark Christian (ed.), Black Identities in the 20th Century: Expressions of the US and UK African Diaspora (London: Hansib Publications, 2002), pp. 195–212.
Tunde Ikoli, ‘Scrape off the Black’, in Yvonne Brewster (ed.), Black Plays: Three (London: Methuen, 1995).
See also David A. Bailey, Kobena Mercer and Catherine Ugwu (eds), Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference, and Desire (London: ICA, 1995).
For a description of Munroe’s performances see, Bailey, Mercer and Ugwu (eds), op. cit. p. 86.
For a discussion of Brecht and a translation of his writings on theatre see: John Willett (ed.), Brecht on Theatre (London: Methuen, 1964).
Stuart Hall and David A. Bailey, op. cit. p. 23.
Guillermo Gomez-Pena, ‘The Multicultural Paradigm: An Open Letter to the National Arts Community High Performance’, High Performance Quarterly Magazine, 47 (1989), p. 20.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2006 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McMillan, M. (2006). Texts of Cultural Practice: Black Theatre and Performance in the UK. In: Low, G., Wynne-Davies, M. (eds) A Black British Canon?. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625693_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625693_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-52156-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62569-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)