Insert [Chitlin Circuit] Here: Teaching an Inclusive African

American Theatre Course

Rashida Z. Shaw

Theatre Topics, Volume 19, Number 1, March 2009, pp. 67-76 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tt.0.0053

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/260776

[ Access provided at 27 Mar 2022 10:48 GMT from Universidad de Granada ]

 Insert [Chitlin Circuit] Here: Teaching an
Inclusive African American Theatre Course

Rashida Z. Shaw

David Krasner: Do you teach . . . the Chitlin Circuit, and should black theater courses discuss this theater
that is truly—or perhaps—“by, for, and about black people”? Why or why not?

Margaret Wilkerson: I would applaud it. I’ve taught a little bit about [Chitlin Circuit plays], because I’m
intrigued with the fact that they are so popular. Whenever something is that popular
with a developing black audience, we who are in black theater and are attentive to it
need not look down our noses at it but try to understand their standpoint.1

The above exchange between David Krasner and Margaret Wilkerson took place during a
roundtable panel discussion on the “state” of African American Theater at the 1997 Association for
Theatre in Higher Education Conference (ATHE). Twelve years later, the contemporary narratives of
African American urban life contained within the gospel musical theatre productions of the Chitlin
Circuit have grown in popularity. There are more productions. Circuit routes have been extended.
Recordings of plays are widely available in VHS and DVD formats, and the plays themselves have
been successfully adapted into network television shows and major Hollywood films. These devel-
opments necessitate a reconsideration of Krasner’s question. If, as Wilkerson replied, the plays and
productions of the Chitlin Circuit should be addressed in African American theatre courses, then
the question becomes, how and in what ways are they to be incorporated? Stated differently, how do
we create inclusive African American theatre courses that take into account not only what we have
established as the plays, playwrights, and critical perspectives that are fundamental to the discipline,
but also those plays and performances, like those of the Chitlin Circuit, that seemingly fall outside
of our purview? In this essay, I offer my upper-division undergraduate course, “African American
Musicals in Theatre and Film,” as a model of an inclusive approach to teaching African American
theatre as it considers the ways in which the contemporary Chitlin Circuit participates in the history
and development of African American musicals since the late 1930s.

A Forgotten Substitution

In his famous 1996 keynote address titled “The Ground on Which I Stand”2 at the Theatre
Communications Group’s eleventh biannual conference, playwright August Wilson seemed to assert
that black theatre could be divided into two categories: 1) theatre, in Du Boisian terms3—that is
“by us,” “for us,” and “about us”; and 2) theatre that is created for the entertainment of whites.
Wilson stated:

There are and have always been two distinct and parallel traditions in black art. That is art that is
conceived and designed to entertain white society and art that feeds the spirit and celebrates the
life of Black America by designing its strategies for survival and prosperity. . . . This entertainment
for whites consisted of whatever the slave imagined or knew that his master wanted to see and
hear. This tradition has its present counterpart in the crossover artists that slant their material

67
68 Rashida Z. Shaw

for white consumption. The second tradition occurred when the African in the confines of the
slave quarters sought to invest his spirit with the strength of his ancestors by conceiving in his
art, in his song and dance, a world in which he was the spiritual center and his existence was a
manifest act of the creator from whom life flowed. He then could create art that was functional
and furnished him with a spiritual temperament necessary for his survival as property and the
dehumanizing status that was attendant to that.4

Wilson positioned his work “squarely” within the category of the “second tradition.”5 He used
his address as a platform to demand funding for the support and development of black theatres
that would cater to the work of black artists, proclaiming: “We do not need colorblind casting. We
need some theatres to develop our playwrights. We need those misguided financial resources to be
put to a better use. We cannot develop our playwrights with the meager resources at our disposal.”6
Furthermore, he condemned the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) system for having only one
member theatre dedicated to the production of black plays and performance—the now unaffiliated
Crossroads Theatre of New Brunswick—out of its total membership of sixty-six theatres,7 and criti-
cized the “assimilation[ist]” objectives of colorblind casting as well as the biased and disproportion-
ate funding allocations that privilege the work of white artists over those produced by minorities.8
While many praised Wilson for shedding light on a history of discrimination and privilege within
the American professional-theatre system, others, like Henry Louis Gates Jr., considered Wilson’s
claims to be particularly ironic considering the fact that Wilson was and, arguably, remains “the
most celebrated American playwright . . . [and] certainly the most accomplished black playwright
in this nation’s history.”9

Gates brought widespread attention to the Chitlin Circuit in a 1997 essay published in the
New Yorker that was ostensibly written to label playwright August Wilson a hypocrite. For Gates,
Wilson failed to consider the impact or implications of the circuit in his arguments: “In the course
of much high-minded hand-wringing, practically the only possibility not broached was that a black
theatre for the masses already existed—just not of an order that anybody in the world of serious
theatre had in mind.”10 As Gates pointed out, Wilson’s binary conception of African American the-
atre, and his call for accessible and flourishing black theatres, neglected the existence of the Chitlin
Circuit. The significance of this absence lay in the fact that the circuit, an arguable off-shoot of the
“second tradition,” had been entertaining tens of thousands of African American audiences on a
regular basis—and doing so outside of the domain of LORT. Gates directed his readers toward the
historical origins of the Chitlin Circuit, beginning with an explanation of the culinary association
of its first word (chitlin): the still-eaten delicacy developed by African Americans when pig intestines
were one of the few leftover parts made available to them during the years of legalized slavery. He
also traced its development from the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), a segregated
network of touring African American vaudeville entertainment that began in the 1910s and included
the Southern Consolidated Circuit (SCC).11

As Joseph Roach reminds us, “performances so often carry within them the memory of oth-
erwise forgotten substitutions—those that were rejected and, even more invisibly, those that have
succeeded,”12 and the performances of the Chitlin Circuit are no exception. Today’s manifestation,
also referred to as Gospel Musicals, Gospel Plays, Urban Musicals, or, more recently, Urban Theatre,
is a distant cousin to its vaudevillian predecessor. Substitutions and lineages abound, the once short-
running, turn-of-the-century variety acts that included minstrelsy, circus acts, melodrama, comedy,
and song-and-dance routines13 have been replaced by two-hour-long African American relationship
dramas, set in seemingly familiar inner-cities and made complete by updated versions of twenty-
first-century comedy, melodrama, biblical citations, religious morals, and R&B and gospel musical
numbers. Successful circuit playwrights have become multimillionaires; actors earn a steady paycheck
on year-long national tours; characters have become household names; and audiences across the
country line up to pay, on average, $55 to $75 to see a show.
 Teaching an Inclusive African American Theatre Course 69

For those scholars interested in African American theatre, particularly in its contemporary
manifestations, Gates’s essay uncovered a treasure trove of unexamined material. His ethnographic
foray into the world of the circuit captured the sights, sounds, and energy contained within these
theatrical events and turned attention toward a popular, independent, and crowd-pleasing African
American theatrical enterprise that, I argue, urges us to reconsider the relationship between black
theatre and black audiences as well as the varying representations of African American life, culture,
and society that have historically appeared across American theatre stages. How can we not include
this African American cultural phenomenon in our courses? As the following discussion of my
undergraduate theatre course demonstrates, Gates’s discovery directs us toward not only the forgot-
ten substitutions, but also the promising intersections and insightful revelations that can be made in
collaboration with our students when the Chitlin Circuit is included within existing theatre-studies
curricula.

Enter the Circuit

In the autumn of 2007, I included the Chitlin Circuit in my African American theatre course,
“African American Musicals in Theatre and Film.” The eleven-week class, taught on Northwestern
University’s quarter system, was listed as part of an “American theatre and drama—1940s to the
present” sequence. Seventeen students enrolled, most of whom were theatre majors ranging (in year)
from sophomores to seniors. Racially, the class attracted a diverse group of students: eleven whites,
five African Americans, and one Asian American. My course description read as follows:

This course is a survey of African American Musicals within theatre and film, roughly from the
1940s to the present. We use George Gershwin’s 1935 production of Porgy and Bess as the entry
point of our analysis and end with the 2006 film release of Dreamgirls. Using Broadway, Hol-
lywood, the contemporary Chitlin Circuit, and regional theatres across the country as sites of
investigation, we trace the development of African American musicals as they traverse different
social, cultural, and aesthetic boundaries. Our investigation is divided into four units of study:
(1) Black “Folk” Musicals, (2) Musical Adaptations, (3) Black Musicals for Black Audiences,
and (4) Commodification?—“Blackness” on Stage and Screen. In each unit, our analysis of an
African American musical is supplemented by a review of secondary and theoretical texts. As
we consider how these texts and performances participate in conversations about race, racism,
gender, class, and issues of representation, we simultaneously examine the ways in which they
are framed around historical, social, cultural, and/or political themes.

Our framing questions for the course were:

• How do musicals differ from “straight” plays beyond the obvious inclusion of music?
• How would we describe the appeal of musicals?
• What makes a musical “black”?
• In what ways are a play’s content, meaning, and modes of performance complicated when
it is adapted into a musical?
• How has the reality of African American life and culture been “mimetically” presented within
the genre of musicals since the 1940s?
• In what ways do African American musicals cater to different audiences?

I originally conceived the course as one that would focus solely on musicals within theatre, not
musicals within theatre and film. However, as I began to develop the syllabus, I realized that a course
on musicals needed to account for the specific and unique elements in musicals that are different
from those found within most standard dramas. Therefore, sending my students to the bookstore
to purchase a play-text and a course packet alone would not suffice; whenever possible, it would be
70 Rashida Z. Shaw

necessary for them to hear the songs, see the choreography, and at best become familiar with the
varying conventions of musicals as they operate in concert with one another during performance.
As a result, I expanded our inquiry to include filmic and made-for-television movie adaptations
of black Broadway musicals and one contemporary hip-hop film musical whose performance and
narrative conventions we would be able to trace back to the earlier Hollywood musicals discussed
in the course.

As Stacy Wolf advised, context must be emphasized within a course on musicals, because
“[m]usical theatre converses with its time. As a popular commercial form it necessarily reflects and
speaks to and from the culture; as a highly collaborative form it encompasses the work of many
artists.”14 Thus our multiple and varying case studies enabled us to work through questions regard-
ing the conditions of production, performance, criticism, and reception that are particular to each
musical, and how these in turn impacted the changing dynamics of African American musicals
and the representations therein. Cabin in the Sky, Carmen Jones, The Wiz, and Dreamgirls gave us
an entrée into the changing progression of African American musicals in Hollywood. The 1993
televised BBC production of Porgy and Bess, directed by Trevor Nunn, the 1985 recorded produc-
tion of Lee Breur’s The Gospel at Colonus, and the DVDs of two Chitlin Circuit plays produced and
directed by David Talbert and Tyler Perry, respectively, provided us with information about specific
theatrical productions. The play-texts, librettos, and available music recordings of Purlie and Raisin
enabled us to make comparisons with the original dramatic texts of Ossie Davis’s Purlie Victorious
and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Finally, MTV’s 2002 made-for-television, hip-hop
movie adaptation of Carmen Jones, titled Carmen: A Hip Hopera, and the 2006 Universal Pictures
movie musical Idlewild, which stars the hip-hop artists of the group Outkast, allowed us to briefly
consider, among other things, the ways in which some contemporary revisions of African American
musicals have been influenced by the editing techniques, stylization, and representations commonly
found in music videos.

Correspondingly, our critical inquiries, theoretical applications, and epochal access points were
as varied as our case studies. Exemplary of this was our three-week unit, “Black Musicals for Black
Audiences,” in which I inserted the Chitlin Circuit alongside Langston Hughes’s 1963 Broadway
musical production Tambourines to Glory, one of three musicals that Hughes developed with black
audiences in mind. His previous musicals Simply Heavenly (1957 production) and Black Nativity
(1961 production) were produced Off-Broadway with varying success. Tambourines’ story begins
when a money-scheming character named Laura convinces a very pious Essie to start a ministry on
the streets of Harlem. The pair eventually gain enough followers to move into a storefront church, and
throughout the course of the musical, the audience becomes well-acquainted with the various street
characters who frequent their church—hustlers, saints, sinners, fake prophets, and devout believers,
to name a few—all of whom are trying to make a way out of “no way.” In the end, good overcomes
evil and God prevails. The last scene of the musical ends in testimonies and a riveting song sung by
all cast members, with lyrics that redirect us back to the title of the play: “Shake it to the glory of
God! Tambourines! Tambourines! Tambourines! Tambourines to Glory!” As Allen Woll notes, this
conscious inclusion of gospel music was a first not only for Broadway, but also for Hughes:

Although Black Nativity had incorporated gospel music in the telling of the story of Christ,
Hughes argued that Tambourines to Glory was the first musical to use gospel music “as an actual
part of the play itself.” The former show simulated a church service, while Hughes’ new creation
integrated gospel music into its dramatic structure.15

Despite its innovations, the play was not received well and lasted only a few weeks on Broadway.
Critics such as Martin Gottfried wondered if the venue was the problem, as Leslie Sanders notes in her
1991 article, “‘I’ve Wrestled with Them All My Life’: Langston Hughes’s Tambourines to Glory”:
 Teaching an Inclusive African American Theatre Course 71

warm, exuberant, modern Negro folk musical . . . deeply rooted in the ethnic patterns of the
Harlem Negro. And in that may lie the drawback of this musical for many non-Negroes. The
attitudes, humor and personal flavor of a particular group hold an enormous amount of warmth
and affection for its members . . . [but] often become uninteresting and foolish to outsiders.16

A New York Times review by Howard Taubman was not as diplomatic:

For this gospel singing play, . . . has the look of something slapped together. As drama it is
embarrassing; it cannot make up its mind to a point of view, and it shifts carelessly from comedy
to satire to melodrama to piety. Its characterization is as casual as a comic strip’s. And the story
drags foolishly and gets in the way of the singing.17

For the context of our unit and as a precursor to our discussion of the Chitlin Circuit, Hughes’s
musical, although performed before a Broadway audience, served as a fitting transition into the world
of the contemporary Chitlin Circuit. Students read the work of Woll and Sanders, among others,
and had access to many of the musical’s reviews. As we discussed in class, some of the criticisms
Tambourines received bore an eerie similarity to the criticisms aimed at today’s contemporary Chitlin
Circuit musicals; yet, instead of operating within the constraints of Broadway in a historical moment
when nonintegrated shows were uncommon,18 today’s Chitlin Circuit artists produce their work on
self-made routes, in nontraditional theatre spaces—large concert halls and convention centers—that
accommodate thousands of spectators, the majority black, in venues such as the Kodak Theatre in
Los Angeles, the Columbus Civic Center in Columbus, Georgia, and the Arie Crown Theatre in
Chicago. Our discussions and class presentations aimed at uncovering the ways in which Hughes’s
play failed to connect with a 1960s Broadway theatre audience, and, comparatively, how these touring
circuit musicals were attracting African American audiences nationally in record numbers.

In so doing, our class probed the similarities and differences across the unit’s case studies.
However, it was crucial to me that, by the end of the unit, students would be able to recognize the
variety within the circuit itself, along with the common elements of a contemporary circuit play:
comedy, gospel music, popular culture, black cultural practices, religion, preexisting secular narra-
tives, and celebrity actors. For this reason, I assigned Tyler Perry’s 2001 musical Diary of a Mad Black
Woman and David Talbert’s 2005 musical Love on Lay Away. Perry’s musical allowed us to explore
the playwright/producer/actor’s unique brand of musical presentation, as depicted in his narrative
forms, performance strategies, characters, and presentations of gender, including considerations
of his cross-dressing performance as an African American grandmother named Madea. We then
classified Talbert’s Love on Lay Away as a musical that centers on the relationship problems of an
African American couple: Monique, played by R&B singer Deborah Cox, and Anthony, played by
television actor Mel Jackson. Although this musical was similar to Perry’s in that it allowed us to
critique its representations of contemporary African American gender roles and the African American
family structure, Talbert’s differed in tone, representational type, and narrative content. Our circuit
examinations were supplemented by the critical articles of Warren Burdine, Michelle Wallace, the
afore-mentioned Gates essay, and theories advanced by Judith Butler and Marjorie Garber.

As I hoped, the similarities and differences among these Chitlin Circuit formats led to pro-
ductive conversations, particularly during class presentations. Students were instructed to prepare
and execute one group presentation on the film/play and assigned reading of any week during the
quarter in an assignment titled “Scene Analysis Presentations.” This assignment worked as follows:
if a group was presenting during the week of Carmen Jones, for example, their scene analysis needed
to refer to points or arguments made within the assigned reading of that week: Jeff Smith’s article
“Black Faces, White Voices: The Politics of Dubbing in Carmen Jones”; James Baldwin’s article “Car-
men Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough”; and Patricia Hill Collins’s chapter “Mammies, Matriarchs,
and Other Controlling Images.” In the weeks prior to their presentation, students used the online
discussion board located on Blackboard (Northwestern’s course-management site) to communicate
72 Rashida Z. Shaw

with one another regarding the form and content of their presentation. Blackboard enabled me to
track the development of presentations and provide feedback and suggestions when necessary. Stu-
dents decided on their presentation format(s) from the following range of choices: PowerPoint, oral
reports, lectures, or reenactments. The course took place in one of the university’s “smart classrooms”
that provided students with access to DVD, VHS, the Internet, and, if necessary, laptop equipment.
As a requirement, the content within each fifteen-minute presentation needed to be equally divided
among group members. Students were also instructed to hand in at the same time a one-page write-
up/outline of their group’s presentation.19 Five-to-ten additional minutes were allocated for questions
from their peers and/or a larger discussion.

I discovered that these presentations allowed students to not only present the course reading
to their peers, but that they also motivated them to work as a team to highlight the scenes and issues
that they deemed important. For example, during the Tyler Perry week, student presenters framed
their presentation around August Wilson’s (previously cited) statements on African American the-
atre and queried the gender and race representations in Diary of a Mad Black Woman. Diary’s plot
centers on the characters Helen and Charles Jr., who are married and approaching their twenty-year
anniversary. Helen is a stay-at-home wife and Charles Jr. runs his own law firm. Their story is one
of marital pain, spousal abuse, suffering, spiritual healing, and eventual compromise. Analyzing
a three-minute clip from the movie, the students made stimulating connections to the assigned
reading of the week. Using Michele Wallace’s article “The Search for a ‘Good Enough’ Mammy:
Multiculturalism, Popular Culture, and Psychoanalysis,” they questioned whether theatrical and
filmic representations are indicative of the culture(s) they are purported to represent. They also
revealed the ways in which Perry’s characters represented particular social, gendered, and classed
categories. Using their reading of an excerpt from Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender, they investigated
the ways in which gender norms and regulations appeared in their selected scene. Finally, utilizing
Butler’s theories and an excerpt from Marjorie Garber’s Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural
Anxiety on cross-dressing in African American performance, they studied Perry’s construction and
performance of his character Madea in light of its overt comedic presentation, and hypothesized
about the ways in which this character may have been received by African American Chitlin Circuit
theatre audiences in 2001.

The following week’s group presentation, on David Talbert’s Love on Lay Away—the last
musical in the unit—used it as a space to compare Talbert’s depiction of African Americans to that
of Perry’s. The students also referred to Warren Burdine’s discussion on the development and trajec-
tory of African American gospel musicals in his articles “The Gospel Musical and its Place in the
Black American Theatre” and “Let the Theatre Say ‘Amen,’” respectively, to support their critique
of Talbert’s use of gospel music, religious representations, and biblical/moral teachings. Explorations
such as these fostered the insight, vocabulary, and theoretical frameworks necessary to interrogate
constructions of culture and race in black musical performances, or what Patrick Johnson refers to
as the “sign[s]/sound[s] of ‘blackness.’”20

Reflections and Future Trajectories

As reconstructed here, my “African American Musicals in Theatre and Film” course is in no

way prescriptive of the manner in which the Chitlin Circuit should enter classrooms on African
American theatre or African diaspora theatre; however, I offer it as a model of inclusion. As instruc-
tors, scholars, and guides of these dynamic areas of drama and performance, our courses are often as
varied as are our individual research interests; so also are the multiple ways in which we can investi-
gate, problematize, and decode the circuit in its historical and contemporary materializations. The
reality is that many of our students have access to the circuit on their own—not only our African
American students who may go to the plays and watch the DVDs at home, but also our students
 Teaching an Inclusive African American Theatre Course 73

from varying backgrounds who engage with or know of the circuit’s film and television off-shoots.
Moreover, as evidenced by my course, our students are interested in and capable of critically engaging
with the material. I am pleased that the liveliest debates of the quarter were staged during this unit.
I watched as students drew alliances among themselves: those who were avid fans or sympathizers of
the circuit; those who considered these plays to be poor examples of theatre and/or musicals; and the
two or three students who preferred to remain neutral. Instead of being divisive, these allegiances set
the stage for close readings, critical interrogations, and thoughtful response and commentary during
our discussions. I should also add that these coalitions did not fall along racial lines.

For those of us who agree that the circuit is indeed part of the lineage of African American
theatre, should we not make efforts to put it into conversation with its own history, the history of
African American theatre in general, and the practices of its contemporary counterparts in Ameri-
can, African American, and African theatre? Or do we continue to ignore the circuit’s existence,
because we ourselves struggle to understand the phenomenon, resulting in unasked questions by
our students and limited examinations within the discipline? My own experience in teaching the
circuit has convinced me that the bewilderment and curiosity many of us feel toward its plays and
content can lead to productive inquiries. The somewhat daunting task of creating a syllabus that
incorporated the circuit necessitated that I ask new questions and resulted in the research and
presentation of new materials. I am additionally pleased that many of my students in this class and
others have selected these plays as case studies for their research papers on African American theatre.
It has also been encouraging to see the parallels students have made between Chitlin Circuit theatre
conventions and what they have learned in their study of Greek theatre, medieval passion plays,
and Shakespearean cross-dressing, for example. I believe, however, that the Chitlin Circuit serves
most useful in explorations of identity and culture in contemporary African American performance.
Harry Elam Jr. reminds us that “African American theatre and performance have been and remain
powerful sites for the creation, application, and even the subversion of notions of blackness and of
concepts of African American identity,”21 and the Chitlin Circuit is no exception.

Rashida Z. Shaw is a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama program
at Northwestern University. Her co-authored article on actress Lillian Gish was published in the
November 2006 issue of Theatre Survey, and her interviews with playwrights and actors of Chitlin
Circuit theatre have appeared in Time Out Chicago. She is currently completing her dissertation,
which examines Chitlin Circuit theatrical productions and the reception practices of attending Afri-
can American spectators in Chicago. Her research is supported by a Northwestern-funded Graduate
Research Grant and Teaching Fellowship.

Notes

1. Elam and Krasner, “African American Theater,” 339.

2. Wilson, “Ground on Which I Stand,” 493–503.

3. Du Bois, “Krigwa Players Little Negro Theater,” 134.

4. Wilson, “Ground on Which I Stand,” 495–96.

5. Ibid., 496.

6. Ibid., 499.
74 Rashida Z. Shaw

7. Ibid., 498; Wilson, “National Black Theatre Festival, 1997.”

8. Wilson, “Ground on Which I Stand,” 499.

9. Gates, “Dept. of Disputation,” 44.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., 49. For information on the history and preparation of chitlins, see Witt, Black Hunger ; for more
information on TOBA and the SCC, see Krasner, Beautiful Pageant, and Hill and Hatch, History of African
American Theatre.

12. Roach, Cities of the Dead, 5.

13. For more information on vaudeville theatre, see Butsch, Making of American Audiences, and Snyder,
Vaudeville Circuit.

14. Wolf, “In Defense of Pleasure,” 51–60.

15. Woll, Black Musical Theatre, 239.

16. Sanders, “I’ve Wrestled with Them All My Life,” 65–66.

17. Taubman, “Theater,” 46.

18. Woll, Black Musical Theatre, 238.

19. Note that my reflections on the students’ group presentations that I refer to in the following paragraphs are
based on the notes I took during their presentations and my copies of their presentation outlines.

20. Johnson, “Performing Blackness Down Under,” 59.

21. Elam, “Device of Race,” 5–6.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. “Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough.” Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press,
1984. 46–54.

Burdine, Warren. “The Gospel Musical and Its Place in the Black American Theatre.” A Sourcebook of
African-American Performance: Plays, People, Movements. Ed. Annamarie Bean. New York: Routledge,
1999. 190–203.

———. “Let the Theatre Say ‘Amen.’” Black American Literature Forum 25.1 (1991): 73–82.

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Butsch, Richard. The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750–1990. New York:
Cambridge UP, 2001.
 Teaching an Inclusive African American Theatre Course 75

Collins, Patricia Hill. “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images.” Black Feminist Thought:
Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2000. 69–96.

Du Bois, W. E. B. “Krigwa Players Little Negro Theater.” Crisis 32.3 (1926): 134.

Elam, Harry J., Jr. “The Device of Race: An Introduction.” African American Performance and Theater
History: A Critical Reader. Ed. Harry J. Elam Jr. and David Krasner. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.
3–16.

———, and David Krasner. “African American Theater: The State of the Profession, Past, Present, and
Future.” African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader. Ed. Harry J. Elam Jr. and
David Krasner. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 331–44.

Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “Dept. of Disputation: The Chitlin Circuit.” New Yorker, 3 February 1997, 44–55.

The Gospel at Colonus by Lee Breuer and Bob Telson; directed by Lee Breuer; performed by Morgan Freeman
and Isabel Monk. Videocassette. Warner Reprise Video, 1985.

Hill, Errol, and James Hatch. A History of African American Theatre. New York: Cambridge UP, 2003.

Johnson, E. Patrick. “Performing Blackness Down Under: Gospel Music in Australia.” Black Cultural Traffic:
Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture. Ed. Harry J. Elam Jr. and Kennell Jackson. Ann
Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2005. 59–82.

Krasner, David. A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem
Renaissance, 1910–1927. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin; directed by Trevor
Nunn; performed by Willard White and Cynthia Haymon. Videocassette. EMI Classics, 1993.

Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia UP, 1996.

Sanders, Leslie Catherine. “‘I’ve Wrestled with Them All My Life’: Langston Hughes’s Tambourines to Glory.”
Black American Literature Forum 25.1 (1991): 63–72.

Smith, Jeff. “Black Faces, White Voices: The Politics of Dubbing in Carmen Jones.” The Velvet Light Trap 51
(spring 2003): 29–42.

Snyder, Robert W. “The Vaudeville Circuit: A Prehistory of the Mass Audience.” Audiencemaking: How the
Media Create the Audience. Ed. James S. Ettema and D. Charles Whitney. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
1994. 215–31.

Taubman, Howard. “Theater: ‘Tambourines.’ ‘Gospel Singing Play’ is at Little Theater.” New York Times, 4
November 1963, 46.

Wallace, Michelle. “The Search for the ‘Good Enough’ Mammy: Multiculturalism, Popular Culture, and
Psychoanalysis.” Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader. Ed. David Theo Goldberg. Cambridge: Blackwell,
1994. 259–68.
76 Rashida Z. Shaw

Wilson, August. “The Ground on Which I Stand.” Callaloo 20.3 (1998): 493–503.

———. “National Black Theatre Festival, 1997.” Callaloo 20.3 (1998): 483–92.

Witt, Doris. Black Hunger: Food and the Politics of U.S. Identity. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.

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