Macelle Mahala’s rich study of contemporary African American theater institutions reveals how they reflect and shape the histories and cultural realities of their cities. Arguing that the community in which a play is staged is as important to the work’s meaning as the script or set, Mahala focuses on four cities’ “arts ecologies” to shed new light on the unique relationship between performance and place: Cleveland, home to the oldest continuously operating Black theater in the country; Pittsburgh, birthplace of the legendary playwright August Wilson; San Francisco, a metropolis currently experiencing displacement of its Black population; and Atlanta, a city with forty years of progressive Black leadership and reverse migration.
 
Black Theater, City Life looks at Karamu House Theatre, the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh Playwrights’ Theatre Company, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the African American Shakespeare Company, the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, and Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company to demonstrate how each organization articulates the cultural specificities, sociopolitical realities, and histories of African Americans. These companies have faced challenges that mirror the larger racial and economic disparities in arts funding and social practice in America, while their achievements exemplify such institutions’ vital role in enacting an artistic practice that reflects the cultural backgrounds of their local communities. Timely, significant, and deeply researched, this book spotlights the artistic and civic import of Black theaters in American cities.

“Mahala’s book moves beyond the microcosm of production history to the macrocosm of community, theater history, and American history. It is an informative contribution to historical scholarship on African American theater, and thus American theater.” —Sandra M. Mayo, coauthor of Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas— -

“In this smart, important, and necessary history of Black theater companies in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Oakland and San Francisco, and Atlanta, Macelle Mahala spotlights artists—including Langston Hughes, Nora Vaughn, Kenny Leon—whose ingenuity and commitment to telling the stories of Black folk transformed American theater over the past hundred years. Mahala, a gifted chronicler of American urban history, offers an absorbing and richly researched study of the communities and cities that have nurtured Black excellence.” —Harvey Young, coauthor of Black Theater Is Black Life: An Oral History of Chicago Theater and Dance, 1970-2010 (Northwestern, 2014)— -