Hearing voices in the dark : deploying Black sonicity as a strategy in dramatic performance (2024)

This module explores how race is performed in theatre, art, and popular culture. Of particular interest are performances that trouble how we think or talk about race, especially as it intersects with other identity categories like gender, class, sexuality and disability. Why are race and structural racism such difficult topics to discuss, especially in the context of performance? What does it mean to label a performance racist, and how can we as artists develop anti-racist performance practices? The topics this seminar covers could include histories of blackface minstrelsy, debates over " colour-blind " casting, the politics of cultural appropriation, and anti-racist interventions.

Praxis Journal of Philosophy, 2013

This is an analysis of early African American Theater (AAT) and the origins of stereotyping the performance of blackness in the larger history of American Theater canon known as minstrelsy. In such an analysis of AAT, there are several questions to consider. At its impetus, through to its hey day and then its demise, was minstrelsy the manifestation of cultural domination; or, the celebration of an authentic peoples’ culture? The stigma of Blackface was one of the stylized symbols of both minstrelsy and blackness that became calcified in the cultural consciousness of America. In these performances of race, “blackface” was used by white entertainers to demystify, clown and degrade “blackness”. I contend that both forms of American minstrelsy—early whites in blackface and then later, African Americans, themselves, (forced to don burnt cork to gain entre to the American stage) were, simply, an example of early American cultural imperialism. Minstrelsy, as the first American Musical the...

Contemporary Theatre Review, 2018

The classical operatic canon is the result of centuries of cultural influences. In a post-civil rights movement society, musicians are challenged to reexamine their repertoire. Performers must understand their responsibility to balance the authenticity of a work with the offensive cultural norms that are reflected in it. In response to this awareness, we must asses whether censorship or alteration of a work is appropriate in the name of sensitivity or if works deemed distasteful should be purposely disseminated as a vehicle for education. Where can performers find the balance between racial awareness and the preservation of a musical canon? The key lies in an exploration of three culturally influenced components of a performance: composer, musicians, and audience. The first, composer, is a consideration of the context of the piece’s conception—who was the composer, what were her or his influences, and how familiar was she or he with the culture that is being presented? Secondly, the identity and background of the performers are extremely pertinent as they determine the credibility of the message conveyed in the performance. Finally, factors such as age, gender, geographic location, and race of an audience directly influences what kinds of culturally charged music can be performed and whether there can be an opportunity for education through the performance. By evaluating these three factors, performers can format a performance in a more enlightened and supportive manner.

The segregation index revealed that racial/ethnic and economic school segregation between schools has increased over the past three decades in large districts. Studies have highlighted the potential of performing arts to facilitate positive social and emotional development. However, they all had a gap in directly associating the performing arts with a decrease in racial prejudice. Therefore, this study's primary motivation was to address this gap, offering a clearer understanding of the relationship between engagement in the performing arts and the attenuation of racial biases. This study investigated the influence of performing arts on emerging adults' racial attitudes using the Quick Discrimination Index (QDI) as a measurement tool for racial prejudice. Recognizing the unique developmental stage of emerging adulthood, which is characterized by significant cognitive and emotional growth, this study probes how engagement in the performing arts impacts this demographic's racial biases. Adopting a quantitative approach, the study surveyed 44 college students from diverse backgrounds, focusing on their involvement in performing arts and their QDI scores. The QDI's Likert-type scale format provides a nuanced understanding of students' attitudes toward racial diversity and multiculturalism. Our findings revealed a statistically significant correlation between participation in performing arts classes and lower QDI scores, indicating reduced racial prejudice. This supports the hypothesis that performing arts can be an effective tool for promoting more empathetic and inclusive mindsets during the formative college years. The study acknowledges its limitations, including its reliance on self-reported data and initial demographic focus adjustments. These insights pave the way for designing educational and social interventions that leverage the power of performing arts to combat racial prejudice. This study contributes to the discourse on inclusive education and suggests the integration of performative arts and empathy education in school curricula as an effective strategy for fostering racial awareness and sensitivity.

After a long and glorious history, the Western arts are undergoing fundamental changes in their place in society, forms of presentation, even age-old ethic for existence. The world of entertainment, mass media and pop culture has caused a rift in the once-secure place the traditional and highly developed arts once held in the highest esteem by educated society. However, every term just used is in the process of redefinition, and a new reality is dawning. Is it better? Just different? Regrettable? Only time will tell.

Nine Black-identified people, three cis-gender men and six cis-gender women between the ages of 25-45 years old, participated in Mirrors of Blackness, an intentionally-created Black-centered space. The Mirrors of Blackness project examined Blackness through the context of love, relationships, beauty, and self-perception using applied theatre techniques and conventions. Participants were all American, most of African-American heritage, excluding two women, one of Afro/Indian Caribbean (Trinidadian) and the other has partial African (Cape Verdean) ancestry. All participants were in New York City, except one African-American woman who lived in Switzerland. The project was done over a single weekend in mid-March 2020. Three virtual sessions (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) were held using the teleconference platform Zoom. Initially, we planned for Mirrors of Blackness to be an in-person event in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the South Bronx. A week before the sessions, New York state enforced a mandatory quarantine, and the sessions became virtual. Sessions were designed and planned by Shanté Skyers and Kamrin Harbin, graduate candidates in the Master of Arts in Applied Theatre program at CUNY’s School of Professional Studies in New York City. Skyers’ research question was, “How can applied theatre be used to explore self-perceived ideas of Blackness?” This paper highlights how applied theatre could be used to understand how Black-identified people view and define Blackness, what influences their understanding of Blackness, and explores the intersection of Blackness and gender. The participants highlighted certain crucial elements that influenced their identities as Black people: The ‘Strong Black Woman’ trope, The ‘Hyper-Masculine Black Man,’ Skin Tone, and Sexual Orientation, to name a few. Many literature pieces were critical in completing this thesis, including texts rooted in applied theatre that amplify the purposes of Theatre of the Oppressed, Playbuilding, and Process Drama. Works used to analyze Skyers’ findings include Intersectionality Theory and Action Research methodology.

Visual Studies, 2012

What makes a musical performance authentic in a given style or tradition? Are lived experience and musical and cultural immersion sufficient inroads to musical authenticity? While a musical style may have definite origins in a particular ethnic community, can that community claim sole propriety of that music? If we do allow for the acquisition of ethnic musical competence by individuals outside of the given ethnic community, by what means can we authenticate their musical expression? What differentiates the process of musical “authenticization” by an out-group musician, the legitimate musical tribute and trade that makes genres vibrant and dynamic, from the more reprehensible act of musical appropriation and exploitation? Can a black musician have a Jewish soul?Don Byron is a black clarinetist, born and raised in the Bronx...

The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 2018

When encountering non-Asians masquerading as Asians in yellowface in twenty-first-century stage musical performances, I feel righteously angry, profoundly sad, and racially alienated. Yet musical theatre promises pleasure and enables the disavowal of complicity with systemic racist violence, as patrons, performers, and producers use their enjoyment to rationalize racial hierarchy. How does racial identity shape reactions to musicals? In turn, how do these reactions shore up and take down structural racism? This article theorizes “feeling yellow,” how Asian Americans are moved and made in response to representation. Though grounded in racial inequality and difference, feeling yellow ultimately wields the potential to generate new pleasures by using feminist queer of color critique to redistribute misery and form communities of fellow feeling.

Music & Letters, 2013

Theatre Research International, 2015