The Golden Age of Howard University Theatre 1940-1970

L.Roi Boyd, III

The Howard University Players of Howard University in Washington, D.C. is an illustrious university theatre troupe that possesses a rich history as much as many of the facets of Black Arts in America. The troupe has molded television and film stars, playwrights and scholars in the area of African American theatre. The vital period of the players can be found within a period of vast change within the historical 20th century framework. As a historically Black college, Howard of course did not possess that title in the first half of the 20th century where it was simply a Black college. Founded by General O.O. Howard, a Union general of the Civil War and a commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the original intent was to create an institution for theological education for the freedmen of the south. From its beginning’s Howard was aiming toward university status. President Andrew Johnson declared Howard to be “a University for the education of youth in the liberal arts and sciences. By 1868, the college consisted of the school of liberal arts and Medicine. In 1928, the university received a annual federal subsidy for construction, maintenance and upkeep (Howard.edu). African Americans were now able to afford an education and Howard was one of the top places to reach for in addition to Fisk, Tuskegee, Tougaloo, and Bowie.

Howard graduated several doctors, lawyers teachers, and ministers and it had achieved a strong reputation in the Black community by the turn of the 20th century. The college of liberal arts was the recommended place to study for an African American who wished to practice or teach in the field. Zora Neale Hurston and May Miller were well known writers who came from the department of English within the school of liberal arts in the 20th century, but theatrical arts was not yet considered to be an important area for study. American theatre, in the first part of the 20th century was undergoing a period of discovering itself. With the new innovations in acting performance introduced to the students of the American Laboratory Theatre, whose students will later form the Group Theatre, and with the rise of realistic playwrights in the form of Clifford Odets and Eugene O’Neill, America at this time, was forming an individual theatre identity breaking away from the past practice of depending on Europe for its dramatic culture.

The English department at Howard offered courses in public speaking. By 1870 there had been oratorical contests for students. Public speaking was an extracurricular activity and students received no credit. By 1874, students finally received credit for public speaking. In 1907, the English department held recitation performances of Shakespeare for public performance. This would lead to intensive study of Oratory led by Coralie Franklin Cook, who was a graduate of the National School of Oratory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two years later, Ernest Evertt, a professor of English formed the theatre troupe that became precursor to the Howard Players. Known simply as the “College Dramatic Club”, the troupe performed annually at the Howard Theatre (not affiliated with the university)(Ibid). The Howard was a D.C. area theatre that was a part of the T.O.B.A. circuit, a vaudeville circuit that catered to African American audiences, later to be known as the “Chitlin’ Circuit.” The College Dramatic Club was so successful financially; they were able to procure a fine clock and donated it to the Andrew Carnegie building on campus for its 1910 dedication.

Everett’s work set the stage for greater things to come. After World War I, the popularity of theatre on campus rose quite enthusiastically. As the university noticed the response from the student body with the success of the College Dramatic Club and the dedication of the students who performed in and ran the group, courses in theatre arts were offered. Professor T. Montgomery Gregory was brought in as the head of the newly formed Department of Speech. Gregory’s theatre courses were the first courses to be taught with students receiving credit for the first time. Gregory then changed the name of the troupe to “The Howard Players.” Gregory established a business office, dressing rooms, and a scenic workshop (Ibid).

The 1920’s was a golden age in Black Arts with the Harlem Renaissance. Black Theatre was also forming its own identity from the poetics of the pre-eminent Black leader at the time, W.E.B. DuBois, who wrote in the August 1916 issue of The Crisis,

With this new paradigm embraced by the recipients of the new Black artistic awakening, Howard followed suit with specializing in content that dealt mostly with the Black experience. Many of these plays were written by students. The first significant and historical achievement from the players was the March 1922 performance of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones with the original emperor, Charles Gilpin (Krasner, African American Review, 483).

With World War II, America saw racism first hand outside of her country. Upon return she knew that she had to change her ways. Something in the air was looming, and it was integration. People knew that at some point it had to come, but at what cost? Artistically there were changes, swing music died out and morphed into a new modern jazz sound known as “Be-Bop” and now a new device called television was taken the place of radio for primary entertainment for Americans. Black Americans had enough of Segregation and they were beginning to test the limits to see how far they can go to eradicate the unjust laws. All of this affected the cultural climate at Howard University. The theatre department had undergone some changes as well. These changes will articulate the changing times and aid in their shift. The 1940’s will see a new Howard Theatre. The administration hired three professors who will lay the seed to a department that will conceive and cultivate talent that will change the theatre and electronic media world as we know it today. These professors were, Dr. Anne Cook, James Butcher, and Owen Dodson. An impressive theatre pedagogy resume that includes Spellman College and Hampton University, and one of the first Black women to receive a PhD in Theatre from the Yale School of Drama, Cook was brought to Howard lay the foundation in building upon Gregory’s theatre department. T. Montogomery Gregory’s theatre was merely an offshoot of the Speech department. Under Gregory, one could not “major” in theatre. Cook was now brought in to create a Theatre major with the help of actor, director, James W. Butcher. In 1947, a young man by the name of Owen Dodson was hired as an associate professor of English. Within his first year, he agonized over his new assignment because all of the courses that were given to him to teach were public speaking courses. Sensing his restlessness, Cook brought him in to complete the masterpiece of the Howard Theatre faculty. This group will contribute some of the greatest talent of the African American Theatre, some of the greatest thought provoking works during a turbulent period in our nation’s history and under little resources.

Butcher took it upon himself to renovate the second floor of Spaulding Hall, which was then used as the shooting gallery for the ROTC. Butcher’s task was to make it into a theatre. There was a stage but because of its narrow size, the space allowed no place for the actors to pass behind the scenery-if there were to be any scenery given the space. There were windows present that could enable an actor to come up from the dressing room on stage left. They would have to exit, climb a ladder, cross the roof, climb down into another window, and then enter from stage right (Hatch, 145). Spaulding was now going to be the new theatre building. There was no air conditioning in Spaulding Hall, there was only one dressing room on the first floor, one telephone for all offices, three pipes holding all the lights and they were controlled from a tiny booth located over the offices at the entrance of the theatre. The house could pack 200 wooden office chairs (Ibid). This was an ideal work environment for Owen Dodson because he knew he could produce his best work where he was restricted. Dodson was the best known “star” out of this faculty. A published poet and playwright, Dodson was a leading figure in the Black Intelligentsia following the Harlem Renaissance. With professional and academic experience under his belt (he previously taught at Spellman College) Dodson brought the Howard Players to new heights and experiences. He was the first director to produce what has become known as some of the most classic and rebellious pieces in literature and in African American dramatic literature. One of the first plays he directed with the Howard students was the first performance of Albert Camus’ Malentendu (Hatch, 165). In 1954, he was the first director to stage James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner, the first performance of the play was at Howard with the Howard Players(Howard.edu/English). A year earlier, Dodson directed Shakespeare’s Richard III with a young lady from the English department who played Elizabeth. Her name? Toni Morrison; Butcher played the title role(Hatch, 186). Howard was the first Black Theatre program to take part in non-traditional casting with Dodson’s production of Death of A Salesmen using White actors to portray Willy and Linda Loman and Black actors to portray their sons Biff and Happy. In 1949 he brought the Howard Players to Norway to perform a performance of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. This cemented the Howard Players as a formidable troupe to be reckoned with. He was invited as a special guest to the Johnson White House in 1964.

In 1951, Dodson became head of Acting and later head of the theatre department, his largest responsibility was aiding in the completion of a new university theatre. The Howard Players evolved from Spaulding Hall into a newly constructed space named after the formidable Black actor who was the first Black actor to portray Othello in the Western Hemisphere, Ira Aldridge. During his time he also oversaw the construction of the new Fine Arts building that contained a little theatre that housed 314 seats. He was not pleased with its outcome, complaining that he was not properly consulted and later encountered design errors that hindered his later work. In 1964, Dodson staged two plays that were caused ire for the turbulent sixties. They were, Ted Shine’s Sho Is Hot In The Cotton Patch and LeRoi Jones’ Dutchman. The theatre sold out with these performances but by the decade’s end, he and the others of the pristine faculty could not adapt to the changing times. Dodson was a rebel for his time but now as he was aging he was no longer content with rebelling in the matter he did. Dodson rebelled at Howard in form, in how plays were presented, in regards to nontraditional casting and using Black actors to perform classical text and breaking barriers in the like of taking his students to Europe and creating quality theatre in small, modest circumstances. With the changing tides in America’s youth, his brand of revolution segued into a new militant revolution as the outcome of the Civil Rights movement in America. In May of 1967, LeRoi Jones (now named Amiri Baraka) shouted from the steps of the Department of Religion,

Dodson, was not pleased when he heard this. He did not favor the Black power movement, Dodson felt racism, at that time, was for White people and did not want Howard, let alone Howard Theatre to follow along with this trend. He refused to allow racial anger get the best of him and set an example for the university and his students that all people should be treated equally regardless of Howard’s place as a African American institution. To show this, he was the first to hire a White professor, Marian McMichaels, into the Theatre department and in a production of Hamlet, he casted an East Indian woman as Gertrude. With bouts of depression, alcoholism, and poor health, Dodson resigned in 1969, leaving an incredible legacy to Howard Theatre.

When Dodson retired from Howard, three new faculty members came to take the place of Cook, Butcher and Dodson. All of them were Howard theatre alumni; they were Glenda Dickerson, Robert West, and Sam Wright, who recently received his terminal degree from the Yale School of Drama. A politically conscious dashiki wearing young man, Wright’s first area of business was to paint the entire Ira Aldridge theatre…BLACK. Not just for theatrical lighting, but to make a cultural and political statement.

The Golden age of Howard University theatre molded talents in the likes of Debbie Allen (Fame), Phylicia Rashad (The Cosby Show), Amiri Baraka, playwright Richard Wesley, Roxie Roker (The Jeffersons-and one of Dodson’s best students), Earle Hyman(The Cosby Show), and Black Theatre innovator Shauneille Perry. The seventies brought about a new mood, outlook and paradigm that could not lend itself to the innovations made during the time of the golden faculty of 1940-1969.

 

Bibliography

Brief History of Howard University. Howard.edu
<http://www.howard.edu/explore/history.htm>

English Department: Legends. College of Arts and Sciences Howard.edu
<http://www.coas.howard.edu/english/legends-dodson.html>

Krasner, David. Whose Role Is It Anyway?: Charles Gilpin and The Harlem Renaissance. African American Review, Vol.29, No. 3, Autumn 1995, p. 483.

Hatch, James V., Shine, Ted. Black Theatre USA: Plays By African Americans, The Early Period 1847-1938. The Free Press, New York, 1996.

Hatch, James V. Sorrow Is The Only Faithful One. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1993.

Hay, Samuel A. African American Theatre: A Historical And Critical Analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1994.

King, Woodie. The Impact of Race: Theatre and Culture. Applause, New York, 2003.

Peterson, Bernard L. Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People, 1816-1960. Greenwood Press, Westport, 2001.

Theatre Arts at Howard. Howard.edu
<:http://www.howard.edu/collegefinearts/Theatre/history.html>:

Taquiena Boston and Vera J. Katz on Owen Dodson. Washingtonart.com
<:http://washingtonart.com/beltway/dodson.html>

---

The Textuality of Iceberg Slim’s PIMP: The Story of My Life and THE MACK

L.Roi Boyd, III

The Pimp is a multi-faceted figure in the African American Community. He is revered; he is also reviled. He is a companion as well as a financial manager. “[The] pimp with the flashy clothes is in fact the celebrated figure in the black community (Dr. Jesse Rhines, Mackin’ Aint Easy).” With this anecdote in mind, we will take a look into textual perspective of what is known in the underground world as “the game”, the life of a pimp. In recent popular culture, the pimping lifestyle has been glamorized by the blaxploitation film genre and rap music. Much of this celebration is due to a groundbreaking novel published in 1969 by an ex-pimp named Robert Beck, known to the world as Iceberg Slim. In contemporary Black culture, the Grammy nominated recording artist Snoop Dogg set a standard of hip hop imagery and creedo through his 1994 music video “Doggy Dogg World” as he recreated the “Player’s Ball” scene from the 1973 film, The Mack. This film, became the quintessential movie on the life of “pimping” in both the genres of Blaxploitation film and Hip Hop music. Before we explore the textuality of our subjects, let’s take a look back into how “the game” became an African American standard of living and its development as a cultural stereotype.

It should be understood that “the game” (defined as “a series of activities and maneuvers to achieve a goal” and “criminal activities” (Smitherman, 141) has its beginnings as far back as Reconstruction. After the demise of the Civil War, many former slaves were looking for an identity. Many did not know of any other life beyond slavery. A number of female slaves who were having relations with the slave master before and during the war realized that if they were now going to continue this practice that there needed to be some sort of recompense for their service. More often than not, former male plantation associates (ex-slaves) would encourage these ladies to go back to the plantation to “see” the master and to make sure that he would give her some monetary compensation. The female would return to the male and give him a percentage if not the entire amount. “Now all those brothers used to be riding in town man with those really nice carriages that they weren’t driving for Masa-they were their carriages. And they were dressed in those nice outfits, Nobody really paid them that much attention because for years, prostitution wasn’t a bad thing. You look at the old movies and you see that the whorehouse was where the mayor, the sheriff, everybody in town met there every day and had drinks and enjoyed being there. When it became a known thing that Black men were actually getting a lot of money from this particular vice and they weren’t paying any taxes, that’s when it became a dreaded thing (Danny Brown, American Pimp).” This vice, along with drug dealing, racketeering and gangs were a part of the inner city life for African Americans. As a result, it contributed to the many stereotypes of the Black race.

In the 1999 documentary film, American Pimp, average Americans were surveyed as to what was the first thing that comes to mind when they think of a pimp. Many answers consisted as such:

“fellas who take care of the girl prostitutes…and take their money”, “sleezy guy with the big afro, gold medallion, big wad of cash in his pocket”, “with the hat and like long chain”, “essentially well endowed”, ““Huggy Bear” from Starsky and Hutch (American Pimp).”

These are the archetype perceptions of the pimp in America and while some of these perceptions have been developed and maintain by the media, many of these are in fact true. Being the criminal, underworld practice that it is, pimping was never brought into the forefront of society as a conversation piece until the publication of PIMP: The Story of My Life. Encouraged by his publisher to use his pimp name as his nom de plume, Iceberg Slim wrote a total of seven books before his death in 1992. His books dealt with the reality of Black street life taken from his experiences of the “seemingly bottomless brutality and viciousness” of the criminal underworld (Wikipedia). PIMP went on to sell 2 million copies at the height of the Black Arts movement. And though it was not considered a part of the artistic and academic artifacts of the movement, his work was consumed by young African Americans who were also reading Nikki Giovanni and Ishmael Reed. Two years later, the film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was released, opening the door to a new kind of cinema that would define the the new decade for African Americans; PIMP would act as the major influence as a textual element for this genre.

A new era in Black Film had dawned. A year later a movie called Superfly would explore “the life” even further, from the eyes of a drug dealer who is trying to “cop” one last score. Around this time, a convicted felon named Robert J. Poole, wrote on a roll of toilet paper, while in prison, a story about a young man who comes out of the penitentiary, convinced that the only way he is to achieve some sort of success in life is to become a pimp. The Mack then becomes the quintessential picture on the game of “pimpin’”.

In looking at the issues of race in PIMP and The Mack, I found some striking differentiations. For one thing, PIMP, which takes place from 1918 to 1960, hardly contains vicious conflicts between the anti-hero “Blood” (later to be christened “Iceberg Slim” by his friend in the 1940’s) and White society. This is striking in and of itself because this period of 42 years was a time of great suffering for the then known “Negro” race in America. There were of course instances when “Blood” was stopped by the police because of his criminal activity and later, after having close association with a grand pimp by the name of “Sweets”, “Blood” is then left alone by the police, through the understanding that “Blood” is Sweets’ son. One thing that is consistent here with The Mack is the corruption of the police. This is a thematic element in Blaxploitation that is played down in PIMP. Slim only refers to the corruption only when he feels he needs to. In this scenario, before “Blood” develops a close friendship with “Sweets”, Slim describes one of the few run-ins with the racist police.

While the police (one of the officers, he refers to as “Satan”), are roughing up “Blood”, help comes in the way of his friend “Top”:

This is not overdone as to make a point as in the films that deal with this theme after PIMP’s publication. Many of the Blaxploitation films were undoubtedly influenced by Slim’s work, the difference is, nearly all of them touch, with great extremity, the corruption of the inner city White police officers and how they themselves are involved in the underworld vices. We do not see much of this here in PIMP. Another element, crucial to how the stories are told are through the presence of a sidekick for the antihero. In The Mack, the antihero, Goldie, had his sidekick “Slim” portrayed by Richard Pryor… Now the name of the character can provide little doubt of the influence that Iceberg Slim’s book has had over Poole in the writing and crafting of this screenplay. PIMP, along with the oeuvre of Donald Goins had established themselves as popular reading material in prison. If Poole did create this treatment in jail, it can be safe to believe that there was some exposure to the work of Iceberg Slim. The linear approaches are definitely the similarities of each pimp’s “bottom woman” in both texts. The “bottom woman is the ”main woman”, close enough to be the pimp’s girlfriend (although the relationships that he has with the woman are emotionally platonic albeit sexual) , who acts in a way like an office manager, keeping tabs on the neighborhood when the pimp is away, keeping the pimp apprised of the law enforcement activity, and collecting money from the prostitutes. In the cases of these two texts, Lulu, Goldie’s bottom woman and “the runt” Blood’s bottom woman seem to be presented in a linear approach in that both characters reinforce the stereotype of the bottom woman staying ever faithful and dedicated to the pimp. Later, after the stress of seven years with “Blood” “the runt” rebels on “Blood” especially with the recruitment of Chris, who “the runt” realizes was out for her position. Chris is a light-skinned African American woman. Now in The Mack, we see something similar when we find Goldie romancing one of his women, Diane, in the Chinese restaurant while another woman of his, complains loudly:

The difference here is this is vocalized whereas in PIMP, this vocalization takes time to reach this point with “the runt.” What’s non-linear here is the conflict between “the runt” and Chris in PIMP is not entirely linear to the Black woman and Diane, who is White, in The Mack. The Black woman, without question, possesses a major hang up with Goldie being with the White female. This carries over into the following scene with the policemen outside the restaurant. The policemen who harass Goldie throughout the film are, Hank and Jed. They receive pay offs from the underworld to preserve their drug dealing territories and killing off rival detectives in their department; this is throughout the text and Hank and Jed repeatedly show their racism towards Goldie. In this particular case, it is when Goldie is having dinner with his White girlfriend. After he disciplines the Black Woman who made the racist comment to Diane, Goldie excuses himself outside only to find Hank and Jed. After Goldie comments to them about how he feels they are jealous of him, and how he believes they (the detectives) want to be like him, they assault, cuff him and put him in jail for a few hours. In The Mack, Goldie is up against a number of forces. He is up against Hank and Jed, he has a crime lord who is after him because as a solo criminal who is on the rise in the underworld, “Fats” fears that Goldie is amassing too much power, and then there is his brother, a Black militant who is dead set against Goldie’s lifestyle and morals. Another linear angle that both texts possess is the allegiance that both characters, regardless of their poor choices and lifestyle, have for their mothers and how the death of their mothers toward the end of the texts, illuminate them introspectively and encourage them to quit “the life.”

Goldie and Blood’s closeness to their mothers more than likely defy the stereotype and the battle between the Black woman and the White woman clearly adhere to both the stereotype of the Pimp family and American racial dynamics. These conflicts are found in all levels of everyday life, even in the corporate world. The scene that we do not find of any similarity in PIMP but we do find in The Mack is The Player’s Ball. This is a real annual ball that takes place in Chicago, Ill. every year. “It is an annual gathering of pimps that has been a November tradition since 1974. Every year, the award for "Pimp of the Year" is given out (Wikipedia).” This without question perpetuates stereotypes of gaudyness and lack of class and taste within the African American community. We see here in full view; the stereotypes that were listed earlier of the long fur coats, flashy hats, jewelry and clothing; yet one will find a large gathering of people in harmony enjoying themselves immensely.

Both the novel and the film contributed to the hindering of the racial issue; at the same time, there is nothing redeeming about this way of life. If any one text is conducive to questioning the stereotypes of this issue it is definitely PIMP. This is because of the time period when the book takes place. During and after the Black revolution, gaudyness took way in not only the pimp’s attire but in behavior. This gaudyness helped contribute the stereotype of flash and ignorance. Before the Black revolution, during the Civil Rights movement, a pimp’s manner was, more or less, of an understated elegance. Now in the book PIMP, another important complexity in juxtaposition with The Mack is the language. Iceberg Slim writes in slang. His books are difficult to read but by the end one will have a grasp for his voice and the language and the poetry of the street. The Mack does not possess that. The language here, for the film, was probably watered down so that it could be accessible to the audience. There is slang but not presented in a gratuitous form. The techniques available in both medium are ever present in that in their own way they are didactic in showing the target audience, young African Americans (particularly young African American men between the ages of 18-44) that this underworld, as mistakenly glamorous as it may be, is not the way to go and it is certainly not the way to live. Iceberg Slim wanted to provide a service to help youngsters to get out of the life or never have any exposure to it; for the most part he succeeded. The sad part is that with both PIMP and The Mack, these texts were so powerful, some young men went into the life for a career as a result of experiencing these texts.

© 2009 L.Roi Boyd, III All Rights Reserved