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The African Grove Theater |
Excerpted from Francesca Royster, "Playing with (a) Difference: Early Black Shakespearean Actors, Blackface and Whiteface," Shakespeare in American Life exhibition catalog. Folger Shakespeare Library, 2007.
(Page 2 of 3) Performing Shakespeare meant, to some extent, not merely imitating but also commenting on that position. Often this commentary was performed through a break in highbrow style, what Brenda Dixon Gottschild identifies in her study of Africanist aesthetics as high-affect juxtaposition (the hot and the cool):
Mood, attitude, or movement breaks that omit the transitions and connective links valued in the European academic aesthetics are a key note of this principle. For example, a driving mood may overlap and coexist with a light and humorous tone, or imitative and abstract movements may be juxtaposed. The result may be surprise, irony, comedy, innuendo, double entendre, and finally, exhilaration.3
We can see this use of hot-and-cool affect in African Grove Theater actor Charles Taft's "improvement" of Richard III, described by Marvin McAllister:
Noah's September 1821 review of the premier Richard III production recalled how the dapper waiter immediately played to his crowd, especially the fawning "black ladies"' waving handkerchiefs on his entrance. To romance his public, Taft allegedly spoke these revised lines: "Now is the vinter of our discontent/ made glorious summer by de son of New York." Noah then noted, "Considerable applause ensued, although it was evident that the actor had not followed strictly the text of the author."…By calling himself a 'son of New York,' Taft highlighted the fact that he was a native New Yorker performing a much heralded role dominated by British imports. Taft's native status would have endeared him to New Yorkers, black or white, male and female, and elicited "considerable applause." Also one can read his textual alteration as an extreme act of hubris in that this 'son of New York,' not the 'sun of York,' transformed a discontented winter into summer through his glorious presence in Brown's makeshift theater.4
3 Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996), 15.
4 Marvin McAllister, White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown's African and American Theatre (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 55.
The African Company Presents Richard III. Arena Stage, 1992-93.
Arena Stage
Arena Stage