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• Macbeth in Harlem: Black Theater in America From The Beginning to Raisin in the Sun by Clifford Mason
• Cheryl Black

As indicated by its subtitle, Clifford Mason’s Macbeth in Harlem traces the history of Black theatre in the United States from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the appearance of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun in 1959. Mason, who once described this book on X as a “fighting history of Black Theatre,” is committed to exposing the obstacles confronting the artists he writes about. It is a story that unfolds against a context of virulent anti-Black racism, enslavement, and de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination. While it is a story that ends before the momentous political achievements of a reinvigorated civil rights movement in the 1960s, Mason’s text still resonates [End Page 116] in the twenty-first-century US, the era in which a new civil rights movement has emerged to persuade the nation and the world that Black Lives Matter and in which a coalition of theatre artists of color issued the “We See You, White American Theater” (WSYWAT) manifesto to demand an end to systemic racism within the industry.

Mason employs two controlling ideas throughout the narrative. Although the Federal Theatre Project’s Black-cast production of Macbeth is discussed, “Macbeth in Harlem” also serves as a metaphor for a kind of inclusion and recognition sought by Black theatre artists within US cultural life. The second recurring theme—evoked in almost every chapter to describe the nature of Black theatre artists’ “progress”—is the myth of Sisyphus, who continually pushes a boulder up a steep hill only to have it roll back down just as he approaches the top. Taking Orson Welles’s exoticized “voodoo Macbeth” as a progressive benchmark may seem problematic, but as a metaphor for wide-ranging inclusivity and increased representation, it is reasonably apt. Mason’s Sisyphean metaphor seems even more apt and in keeping with recent WSYWAT activism to combat systemic racism within the theatre that persists despite increased representation by Black playwrights and performers.

The book is organized chronologically and composed of a brief introduction and six chapters, each surveying a particular timespan. Macbeth in Harlem is narrower in scope than Errol Hill and James Hatch’s comprehensive history of African American theatre published in 2003, though considerably broader than much recent scholarship in the field. For a relatively slim volume, it is remarkably detailed, yet also remarkably succinct in expression, an attribute that makes it particularly suitable for one-semester history undergraduate classes (with the hope that a second semester would then focus on Black theatre from A Raisin in the Sun to the present).

Mason’s concept of Black theatre encompasses any theatrical performance that portrays Black characters or features Black performers in significant roles. This perspective gives considerable attention to white-authored works, from those deemed noteworthy because of their pernicious impact to those Mason credits with progressive and truthful portrayals of Black life and artistry. The former group includes, among others, blackface minstrelsy performances, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), The Octoroon (1859), and The Green Pastures (1930), all infamous for their perpetuation of false, dehumanizing, and degrading “realities,” such as the “demeaned servile,” “the forgiving,” the “unintelligible,” idiotic, and self-denigrating Black characters (57, 59, 63, 66). Mason’s analyses of mid-twentieth-century revivals of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Octoroon are particularly illuminating (and make one long to know what Mason thinks of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s recent riff on the latter).

Progressive exemplars include: the Federal Theatre Project’s Macbeth (1936) and the Mercury Theatre’s Faustus (1937), which revealed Black actors’ mastery of “classic” work; the Theatre Union’s Stevedore (1934), which featured Black laborers’ militant resistance to exploitation; and the Theatre Guild’s They Shall Not Die (1934), which dramatized the trial of the Scottsboro Boys, who were falsely accused of rape. Mason devotes thoughtful attention to Edward Sheldon’s The Nigger (1909...

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  哈莱姆区的麦克白：美国黑人戏剧从起源到阳光下的葡萄干 作者：克利福德·梅森
•  谢丽尔·布莱克

正如其副标题所示，克利福德·梅森的《哈莱姆区的麦克白》追溯了美国黑人戏剧从 19 世纪初的萌芽到 1959 年洛林·汉斯伯里的《阳光下的葡萄干》的出现的历史。梅森曾描述过这本书。 on X 是一部“黑色戏剧的战斗史”，致力于揭露他所写的艺术家所面临的障碍。这个故事是在恶毒的反黑人种族主义、奴役以及法律上和事实上的种族隔离和歧视的背景下展开的。虽然这个故事在 20 世纪 60 年代复兴的民权运动取得重大政治成就之前就结束了，但梅森的文字仍然在 21 世纪的美国产生共鸣 [第 116 页完]，在这个时代，新民权运动已经兴起。为了说服全国和世界“黑人的命也是命”，有色人种戏剧艺术家联盟发布了“我们看到你，美国白人剧院”（WSYWAT）宣言，要求结束行业内的系统性种族主义。

梅森在整个叙述中采用了两种控制思想。尽管讨论了联邦剧院项目的黑人演员制作的《麦克白》，但《哈莱姆区的麦克白》也隐喻了黑人戏剧艺术家在美国文化生活中寻求的一种包容和认可。第二个反复出现的主题——几乎在每一章中都会被提及，以描述黑人戏剧艺术家的“进步”本质——是西西弗斯的神话，他不断地将一块巨石推上陡峭的山坡，但当他接近山的时候，巨石又滚了下来。顶部。将奥逊·威尔斯的异国情调的《巫毒麦克白》作为进步基准似乎有问题，但作为广泛包容性和增加代表性的隐喻，这是相当恰当的。梅森的西西弗斯式比喻似乎更贴切，也符合最近的 WSYWAT 激进主义，以打击剧院内的系统性种族主义，尽管黑人剧作家和表演者的代表性有所增加，但这种种族主义仍然存在。

本书按时间顺序组织，由简介和六章组成，每一章都考察了一个特定的时间跨度。 《哈莱姆区的麦克白》的范围比埃罗尔·希尔 (Errol Hill) 和詹姆斯·哈奇 (James Hatch) 2003 年出版的非裔美国戏剧综合史要窄，但比该领域最近的许多学术研究要广泛得多。对于一本相对薄薄的书来说，它非常详细，但在表达上也非常简洁，这一特性使其特别适合一学期的历史本科课程（希望第二学期将重点关注《葡萄干》中的黑人戏剧）太阳到现在）。

梅森的黑人戏剧概念涵盖了任何描绘黑人角色或由黑人演员扮演重要角色的戏剧表演。这种观点对白人创作的作品给予了相当大的关注，从那些因其有害影响而被认为值得注意的作品，到那些对黑人生活和艺术进行进步和真实描绘的梅森作品。前一类包括黑脸吟游诗人表演、《汤姆叔叔的小屋》（1852 年）、《八角形》（1859 年）和《绿色牧场》（1930 年），所有这些都因延续虚假、非人性和有辱人格的“现实”而臭名昭著，例如被称为“被贬低的奴隶”、“宽容者”、“难以理解”、愚蠢和自我贬低的黑人角色（57、59、63、66）。梅森对二十世纪中叶《汤姆叔叔的小屋》和《八爪鱼》的复兴的分析尤其具有启发性（并且让人很想知道梅森对布兰登·雅各布斯-詹金斯最近对后者的重复演绎有何看法）。

进步的范例包括：联邦剧院计划的《麦克白》（1936）和水星剧院的《浮士德》（1937），它们揭示了黑人演员对“经典”作品的掌握；剧院联盟的《装卸工人》（Stevedore，1934），描绘了黑人劳工对剥削的激进抵抗；戏剧协会的《他们不会死》（1934）戏剧化地讲述了对斯科茨伯勒男孩的审判，他们被错误地指控犯有强奸罪。梅森对爱德华·谢尔顿的《黑鬼》（1909 年）投入了深思熟虑的关注……