Narratives of Slavery

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British Theatre > Pre - 1807

Historical Notes > 1807 - 1832

By the time the Act abolishing the Transatlantic Slave Trade was passed, slavery and ‘black’ issues had become good heatre box office. That year, James Powell’s Christmas pantomime, Furibond, or Harlequin Negro (1807), celebrated the end of slavery. Alluding to links between human and wage slavery, Furibond associated the figure of Harlequin with notions of class, resistance (as an outsider) and blackness, and gave the character of Slave a positive role. It seems likely that the theatre of this period included several black performers, who appeared in plays such as Tom and Jerry (1823), an adaptation of a popular novel about life in London which featured black characters, but none was as famous as Ira Aldridge, an American of African descent, who made his British debut in 1825.

Historical Notes > 1833 - 1857

Theatres outside the patent system (which controlled who was allowed to perform ‘spoken drama’ and was finally ended in 1843) were growing in number and importance, and provided an outlet for debate on topical issues, including abolition of slavery. Aldridge, who was kept out of the capital’s patent theatres by a still powerful pro-slave lobby, played mostly in non-patent venues and appeared in several plays that dealt with slavery. He had Titus Andronicus rewritten to make the title role heroic and turned the lazy, drunk servant Mungo in The Padlock into a voice of resistance. He even ended some performances with a plea for the rights of all, regardless of colour, and also spoke of ‘the plight of the slave and his hope of freedom’, making explicit what had been implicit in the plays he performed. He was widely known for his anti-slavery views, and frequently appeared in Hull (Wilberforce’s home town), often trying out new, particularly ‘white’, roles there such as Lear, Macbeth, Shylock and Richard III. He sent large sums of money to America to help the fight against slavery. Other black actors who probably appeared in this period were James Hewlett and Paul Molyneaux, Americans of African descent, but their appearances in Britain have not been traced. Joseph Jenkins, born in Telga, sold and re-sold into slavery nine times before being brought to England by his master, gave Shakespeare recitations in the Eagle Saloon, north London, in the late 1840s, billed as Selim, an African Prince and the African Roscius in the style of Aldridge.

Historical Notes > 1858 - 1882

‘Uncle Tom’ mania swept Britain following the publication in Britain of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with figures from the story featuring in poems, on chinaware, as toys, and in cartoons as well as in the theatre. These figures came to stand for black stereotypes that endure to the present day. The use of Blackface Minstrels was in the ascendant, affecting all forms of popular entertainment, from melodrama to summer seaside shows and Uncle Tom adaptations. African American singers and musicians visited Britain in the wake of this phenomena, but actor Samuel Morgan Smith, who arrived in 1866, refused to play Mungo or any other comic black character, instead taking on only those characters ‘who were unfairly victimized or who suffered for a noble cause.’ He did, however, appear in Uncle Tom’s Cabin as George Harris, as well as in Oroonoko, The Slave as Gambia, The Revenge as Zanga, and, as Aldridge did, in ‘white’ roles like Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth and Shylock, Iago and Romeo.

Historical Notes > 1883 - 1907

During the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the African American influence remained strong, and music halls provided a source of work for black performers. The ‘cakewalk’ (a form of music and dance which originated among slaves in the Southern United States as a satirical parody of European ballroom dances) became a vogue in the 1890s in London and was added to the show In Dahomey in 1903 because of the expectation of the audience. This was the first major show to be created and performed by black artists and the first to introduce an African theme, however distorted its representation of Africa was. The cast was invited to Buckingham Palace as part of the ninth birthday celebrations for the future king Edward VII, after which the production was sold out. It ran for 250 performances on Shaftesbury Avenue before touring nationally.

Historical Notes > 1908 - 1932

Bermudan-born actor Ernest A Trimmingham, had his musical The Lily of Bermuda performed in Manchester in 1909, but its planned transfer to London was cancelled. Henry F Downing, sailor, novelist, playwright, and historian - born in New York City into a family of successful free African Americans who ran an oyster business - came to Britain and wrote plays that, although published, were never produced. In A New Coon in Town: A Farcical Comedy Made in England he deals with the consequences of slavery and colonialism and shows his Pan African sympathies by tackling the representation of Africa that can be found in shows such as In Dahomey. Musical entertainment dominated this period, with prominent performers such as Paul Robeson and Elizabeth Welch. When Robeson played Brutus Jones in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones in the West End in 1925, it was the first time a black actor had played a central role in a drama since the days of Ira Aldridge sixty years before. Robeson made another historic appearance when he played Othello in London in 1930.

Historical Notes > 1933 - 1957

Semi-professional or amateur theatre activity was important for black performers because of the barriers they faced in the commercial theatre. Una Marson’s At What a Price was performed in London by a cast drawn from different British colonies in 1933 under the auspices of the League of Coloured Peoples and went to the Scala Theatre in 1934. Also in 1934 Left Theatre presented They Shall Not Die, a play about racism in the US, with Orlando Martins from Nigeria in a key role. Paul Robeson appeared at Unity Theatre, where Martins, the Guyanese actor Robert Adams and Cheshire-born Ida Shepley played too. Robeson also performed in Stevedore and Toussaint L’Ouverture (written by the Trinidadian writer, historian and activist CLR James), supported by black performers from a variety of professional backgrounds. In 1944 Adams launched the Negro Repertory Theatre, but it seems to have only managed one production (O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun). After the war, Pauline Henriques and Edric Connor organised short-lived companies, while semi-professional theatrical activities continued in student centres and elsewhere involving pioneers such as Pearl Connor and Lloyd and Barry Reckord. In 1957 Errol John won a playwriting prize for Moon on a Rainbow Shawl which was staged the following year at the Royal Court.

Historical Notes > 1958 - 1982

During the 1960s and 1970s an independent black theatre movement began to develop in Britain. The Connors, who ran a vital theatrical agency, were critical in the process, founding the Negro Theatre Workshop in 1963. Black community and art centres, such as the Keskidee Black Arts Centre, founded by Oscar Abrahams in 1971 in Islington, North London, gave opportunities to black artists to develop their talents, while fringe theatre venues and the ‘alternative theatre movement’ offered an outlet for new forms of dramatic expressions and non-European aesthetic canons. An interest in putting art and artists back into the social context and rooting creative activities into local communities became the hallmark of the 1970s. Black theatre companies started to emerge, including the Dark and Light Theatre Company (1972) founded by the Jamaican actor Frank Cousins and Manley Young, later renamed Black Theatre of Brixton under Norman Beaton, Jamal Ali and Rufus Collins; Temba Theatre Company (1972) founded by Alton Kumalo, a black South African, and Oscar James; the Black Theatre Workshop (1975) founded by Louis Mahoney, Taiwo Ajai and Mike Phillips; l’Ouverture Theatre Company (1976) founded by Ken Breinburg; Staunch Poets and Players (1979) founded by Don Kinch; the Black Theatre Co-operative founded in 1979 by Mustapha Matura and Charlie Hanson with the opening production of Matura’s Welcome Home Jacko, which was an instant success; and Dialogue Dance Company, founded in 1980 in the London borough of Lambeth.

Historical Notes > 1983 - 2007

The 1980s witnessed the unprecedented development of black theatre and dance companies, particularly women theatre groups (including Munirah Theatre Company and Theatre of Black Women). American imports like Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem For Coloured Girls Who have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf had a noticeable impact and women directors, such as Denise Wong, co-founder of the Black Mime Theatre Company in 1984 and Yvonne Brewster, co-founder of the Talawa Theatre Company in 1985 with Carmen Munroe, Mona Hammond and Inigo Espejel, contributed to the development of this area of work. Carib Theatre under co-founder Anton Phillips, initiated in 1983 the Black Theatre Seasons at the Arts Theatre in the West End of London, which were then continued by the Black Theatre Forum, an umbrella organisation of African, Caribbean and Asian theatre companies. The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Hackney Empire and Tricycle Theatre amongst other venues, contributed to nurturing new audiences for black performance, while an increasing number of black writers, directors, choreographers and actors made an entry in mainstream playhouses. Amongst the productions staged in such venues were The Coup by Mustapha Matura, produced by the Royal National Theatre in 1991 starring Norman Beaton in the leading role, and Oroonoko by Biyi Bandele produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1999. In 2007, as part of the commemorations for the bicentenary of the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a number of theatre, dance and carnival performances were staged across Britain, offering a re-examination of this part of British history and creative reinterpretations within the British cultural context of aesthetic canons that had African roots.

Timeline

• 1807 : Furibond, or Harlequin Negro : View Details of Production
• 1816 : The Slave, (also known as The Ethiopian, or the Quadroon of the Mango Grove) : View Details of Production
• 1831 : Obi: Three Fingered Jack : View Details of Production
• 1833 : Oroonoko : View Details of Production
• 1833 : The Padlock : View Details of Production
• 1835 : My Poll and My Partner Joe : View Details of Production
• 1852 : Slave Life! Or Uncle Tom's Cabin : View Details of Production
• 1862 : American Slavery or The Creole of St. Louis : View Details of Production
• 1900 : Uncle Tom's Cabin : View Details of Production
• 1903 : In Dahomey : View Details of Production
• 1925 : The Emperor Jones : View Details of Production
• 1936 : Toussaint L'Ouverture : View Details of Production
• 1939 : Colony : View Details of Production
• 1961 : The Blacks : View Details of Production
• 1966 : Legend of Lovers' Leap : View Details of Production
• 1971 : The Road of the Phoebe Snow : View Details of Production
• 1972 : The Slave : View Details of Production
• 1973 : The Emperor Jones : View Details of Production
• 1974 : 1834-1974: 140 Years of Emancipation : View Details of Production
• 1975 : Black Explosion : View Details of Production
• 1975 : Black Slaves White Chains : View Details of Production
• 1977 : Lament for Rastafari : View Details of Production
• 1977 : Toussaint or the Aristocracy of the Skin : View Details of Production
• 1985 : Pantomime : View Details of Production
• 1986 : An Echo in the Bone : View Details of Production
• 1986 : The Black Jacobins : View Details of Production
• 1986 : Giselle : View Details of Production
• 1987 : Indigo : View Details of Production
• 1987 : Mass Carib : View Details of Production
• 1987 : Tewodros : View Details of Production
• 1988 : A Rough Road to Freedom : View Details of Production
• 1989 : Abolition : View Details of Production
• 1989 : Mother Poem : View Details of Production
• 1989 : The Black Spirit : View Details of Production
• 1990 : Joe Turner's Come and Gone : View Details of Production
• 1990 : Ragamuffin : View Details of Production
• 1990 : Glory! : View Details of Production
• 1991 : The Coup : View Details of Production
• 1995 : Zumbi : View Details of Production
• 1996 : Dirty Reality II : View Details of Production
• 1997 : Flyin' West : View Details of Production
• 1999 : Oroonoko : View Details of Production
• 2006 : Gem of the Ocean : View Details of Production
• 2006 : Moj of the Antarctic : View Details of Production
• 2007 : An African Cargo : View Details of Production
• 2007 : Rough Crossings  : View Details of Production