A Theatre of a History: Major Themes in Early African-American Theater and their Relations with the History
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https://doi.org/10.46291/IJOSPERvol7iss4pp1023-1039Keywords:
African-American Theater, Slavery, Black Nationalism, Harlem, Colonization, Equity, JusticeAbstract
Although it is not the first literary type that comes to mind related to African-American literature, the drama has become an important form of black self-expression. The black theater, modernized with time and adapted to the popular formats of the era, has achieved rapid development in the after-slavery period. The Harlem Renaissance was especially a booming era in this respect. This genre sometimes appears as a reinterpretation of the classics like Shakespeare's works with a black point of view, but most often it appears as exclusive works, belonging to, and produced for black people. Black Nationalism, mentioned in this case, is a theme frequently used in theatrical works. Besides, subjects such as slavery, which blacks have suffered from for many years; their search for rights due to the unfair practices they have endured; the utopia of a new beginning as free blacks in another country; and the lives of historical personalities that have marked the blacks' struggle for freedom, are also among the themes that the black theater has used most frequently. In this study, the relationship between the history and the theater of blacks in America will be analyzed by exemplifying and discussing major themes used in the early African-American Theatre.
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