front cover of In Search of Our Warrior Mothers
In Search of Our Warrior Mothers
Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement
La Donna L. Forsgren
Northwestern University Press, 2018

The Black Arts Movement (1965–76) consisted of artists across the United States deeply concerned with the relationship between politics and the black aesthetic. In Search of Our Warrior Mothers examines the ways in which black women playwrights in the movement advanced feminist and womanist perspectives from within black nationalist discourses. La Donna L. Forsgren recuperates the careers, artistic theories, and dramatic contributions of four leading playwrights: Martie Evans-Charles, J.e. Franklin, Sonia Sanchez, and Barbara Ann Teer. Using original interviews, production recordings, playbills, and unpublished manuscripts, she investigates how these women, despite operating within a context that equated the collective well-being of black people with black male agency, created works that validated black women's aspirations for autonomy and explored women's roles in the struggle for black liberation.

In Search of Our Warrior Mothers demonstrates the powerful contributions of women to the creation, interpretation, and dissemination of black aesthetic theory, thus opening an interdisciplinary conversation at the intersections of theater, performance, feminist, and African American studies and identifying and critiquing the gaps and silences within these fields.

[more]
front cover of Sistuhs in the Struggle
Sistuhs in the Struggle
An Oral History of Black Arts Movement Theater and Performance
La Donna L. Forsgren
Northwestern University Press, 2020

Outstanding Academic Title, CHOICE

The first oral history to fully explore the contributions of black women intellectuals to the Black Arts Movement, Sistuhs in the Struggle reclaims a vital yet under-researched chapter in African American, women’s, and theater history. This groundbreaking study documents how black women theater artists and activists—many of whom worked behind the scenes as directors, designers, producers, stage managers, and artistic directors—disseminated the black aesthetic and emboldened their communities.

Drawing on nearly thirty original interviews with well-known artists such as Ntozake Shange and Sonia Sanchez as well as less-studied figures including distinguished lighting designer Shirley Prendergast, dancer and choreographer Halifu Osumare, and three-time Tony-nominated writer and composer Micki Grant, La Donna L. Forsgren centers black women’s cultural work as a crucial component of civil rights and black power activism. Sistuhs in the Struggle is an essential collection for theater scholars, historians, and students interested in learning how black women’s art and activism both advanced and critiqued the ethos of the Black Arts and Black Power movements.

[more]
front cover of Theatre History Studies 2017, Vol. 36
Theatre History Studies 2017, Vol. 36
Edited by Sara Freeman
University of Alabama Press, 2017
A peer-reviewed journal of theatre history and scholarship published annually since 1981 by the Mid-American Theatre Conference.

Theatre History Studies is devoted to research in all areas of theatre studies, with special interest in archival research, historical documentation, and historiography. Many issues feature a special section curated around a special theme or topic; for 2017 that special section focus on histories of new writing for the theatre.

Featured in THEATRE HISTORY STUDIES 2017, VOLUME 36
  • “Resisting Arlecchino’s Mask: The Case of Marcello Moretti” by Gabrielle Houle
  • “Making Space for Performance: Theatrical-Architectural Nationalism in Postindependence Ghana” by David Afriyie Donkor
  • “Preparing Boys for War: J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan Enlists in World War I’s ‘Great Adventure’” by Laura Ferdinand Feldmeyer
  • “Not Just Rock ‘n’ Roll: Chicago Theatre, 1984–1990” by Julie Jackson
  • “New Writing and Theatre History” by Sara Freeman
  • “New Plays in New Tongues: Bilingualism and Immigration at the New Italian Theatre in France” by Matthew McMahan
  • “The Waterloo Summer of the Prince of Wales’s Theatre: New Writing, Old Friends, and Early Realism in the Victorian Theatre” by Shannon Epplett
  • “Chekhov’s Three Sisters: A Proto-Poststructuralist Experiment” by Sarah Wyman
  • “Historicizing Shakesfear and Translating Shakespeare Anew” by Lezlie C. Cross
  • “A New Noble Kinsmen: The Play On! Project and Making New Plays Out of Old” by Martine Kei Green-Rogers and Alex N. Vermillion
  • “Making New Theatre Together: The First Writers’ Group at the Royal Court Theatre and Its Legacy Within the Young Writers’ Programme” by Nicholas Holden
  • “New Writing in a Populist Context: A Play,a Pie, and a Pint” by Deana Nichols
  • “American Playwriting and the Now New” by Todd London
  • The Robert A. Schanke Award-Winning Essay: “Black Folk’s Theatre to Black Lives Matter: The Black Revolution on Campus” by La Donna L. Forsgren
[more]

Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter