Unquestionably, Wilson remains in the grip of a sentimental separatism. (I’ll own that it has an emotional grip on me, too, just a rather attenuated one.) He says he has a lot of respect for the “do for self” philosophy of the Nation of Islam; in the early seventies, he was briefly a convert, though mostly in order to keep his Muslim wife company. He’s a man who views integration primarily as a destructive force—one that ruined once vital black institutions. He thinks back fondly to an era when we had our own dress shops and businesses, our own Negro Baseball League. This segregated, pre–Brown v. Board of Education era was, he’ll tell you, “black America at its strongest and most culturally self-sufficient.” From his perspective, separate-but-equal, far from being a perversion of social justice, is an ideal that we should aspire to.
Now, it’s one thing to hear this view espoused by Minister Louis Farrakhan and quite another to hear it advanced by August Wilson, a man as lionized as any writer of his generation. It represents a romantic attempt to retrieve an imaginary community in the wake of what seems to be a disintegration of the real one. One of the functions of literature is to bring back the dead, the absent, the train gone by; you might say that cultural nationalism is what happens when the genre of the elegy devolves into ideology, the way furniture might be kilned into charcoal.
Certainly the brutal reductionism of August Wilson’s polemics is in stark contrast to his richly textured dramatic oeuvre. Wilson first came to prominence in the mid-eighties, with his fourth play, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which the director Lloyd Richards was able to move from the Yale Repertory Theatre to the Cort Theatre on Broadway. There, his dramatic and verbal imagination galvanized critics, who heralded a major new presence on the American stage. With “Ma Rainey,” an ambitious, and still ongoing, cycle of plays came to public notice. Wilson’s aim is to explore black American life through plays set during each of the decades of the century; most are situated in a black working-class neighborhood of Pittsburgh. “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” (1986), for example, takes place in 1911, and deals with the sense of cultural loss that accompanied the Great Migration; “The Piano Lesson” (which received the Pulitzer in 1987), set during the Depression, uses a dispute over an inherited piano—once the possession of a slave owner—to show that the past is never quite past. In “Fences” (a 1990 Pulitzer), which opens in the year 1957, the grandiloquently embittered Troy Maxson is a former Negro League baseball player who now works as a garbage man; the trajectory of his own life has made a mockery of the supposed glories of integration.
Wilson’s 1990 play “Two Trains Running” takes place in a Pittsburgh luncheonette in the late sixties:
Wolf: I thought [the jukebox] was just fixed. Memphis, I thought you was gonna get you a new jukebox.
Memphis: I told Zanelli to bring me a new one. That what he say he gonna do. He been saying that for the last year.
If you’re black, you can’t rely on the Zanellis of the world, as the characters in the play learn to their detriment. But a great deal more than race politics is going on here. An unruly luxuriance of language—an ability to ease between trash talk and near-choral transport—is Wilson’s great gift; sometimes you wish he were less generous with that gift, for it can come at the expense of conventional dramaturgic virtues like pacing and the sense of closure. Even when he falters, however, Wilson’s work is demanding and complex—at the furthest remove from a cultural manifesto.
But if Wilson’s avowed cultural politics is difficult to square with his art, it comes with a venerable history of its own. In 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois, writing in his magazine The Crisis, took a dim view of “colored” productions of mainstream plays (they “miss the real path,” he warned) and called for a new Negro theatre, for which he laid down “four fundamental principles”:
The plays of a real Negro theatre must be: 1. About us. That is, they must have plots which reveal Negro life as it is. 2. By us. That is, they must be written by Negro authors who understand from birth and continual association just what it means to be a Negro today. 3. For us. That is, the theatre must cater primarily to Negro audiences and be supported and sustained by their entertainment and approval. 4. Near us. The theatre must be in a Negro neighborhood near the mass of ordinary Negro people.
What would such a theatre look like? Wilson, of course, directs us to what may seem the most plausible candidate: the dramatic art of the Black Power era. That moment and milieu bring to mind a radicalized, leather-clad generation forging its art in the streets, writing plays fueled by the masses’ righteous rage: revolutionary art by the people and for the people. That’s certainly how the illuminati liked to represent their project. Baraka’s manifesto for “The Revolutionary Theatre” provides a representative précis: “What we show must cause the blood to rush, so that pre-revolutionary temperaments will be bathed in this blood, and it will cause their deepest souls to move, and they will find themselves tensed and clenched, even ready to die. . . . We will scream and cry, murder, run through the streets in agony, if it means some soul will be moved.”
Theatre, precisely because of its supposed potential to mobilize the masses, was always at the forefront of the Black Arts movement. Still, it’s a funny thing about cultural movements: as a rule, they consist of a handful of people. (The Aesthetic, the Constructivist, the Futurist movements were devoted largely to declaring themselves, self-consciously, to be movements.) And by the late sixties, it was clear that the vitality of Black Arts drama had come to center upon two New York–based theatres: the Negro Ensemble Company (N.E.C.), based downtown, under the direction of Douglas Turner Ward; and the New Lafayette Theatre, based in Harlem, under the direction of Robert Macbeth. Here was the full flowering of genuine black theatre in this country—the kind that would raise consciousness and temperatures, that promised to make us whole.
“Populist modernism,” in a phrase coined by the literary scholar Werner Sollors, characterized the regnant ethos of that time and place—its aspiration to an art of high seriousness that would engage the energies of the masses. But between the ideals of modernism and those of populism, one or the other had to give. OyamO—who, like many more senior luminaries of the Black Arts scene (Baraka and Ed Bullins among them), was affiliated with the blacker and artier New Lafayette—recalls that the Harlem theatre’s high-flown airs were accompanied by paltry audiences. “There was a condescending attitude toward this community, buttressed by the fact that it was getting five hundred grand from the Ford Foundation every year,” he recalls. And the N.E.C. was similarly provided for. This isn’t to say that worthy and important work wasn’t created in these theatres; it was. But these companies do provide a textbook example of how quickly beneficence becomes entitlement, and patronage a paycheck.
And so the dirty little secret of the Black Arts movement was that it was a project promoted and sustained largely by the Ford Foundation. Liberal-minded Medicis made it; in the fullness of time, they left it to unmake itself. Ed Bullins, one of the principals of the New Lafayette, remembers how that particular temple—a magnificent structure on 137th Street, which the Ford had converted from a movie house with the help of some tony theatrical architects—was destroyed. He describes a meeting between a visiting program officer from the Ford Foundation and the theatre’s board. The visitor noticed that there were no women on the board, and he asked about their absence. Bullins both laughs and groans when he recalls, “And then some great mind from Harlem, an actor, spoke up and said, ‘Oh, no, we don’t need any women on the board, because every thirty days women go through their period and they get evil.’ Then and there, I saw one million dollars start sprouting wings and flapping away through the door.”
These days, of course, all nonprofit theatre is starved for cash. And yet black theatres are already out there, as someone like Larry Leon Hamlin could tell you. Hamlin is the artistic director for the National Black Theatre Festival, and by his count there are perhaps two hundred and fifty regional black theatres in this count
ry, about forty of which are reasonably active. Of course, most of Wilson’s own plays gestated at places like the Huntington Theatre Company or the Yale Rep before they were launched on the Great White Way. I asked Wilson about this apparent contradiction. He explained that the Negro Ensemble Company had fallen into decline by the early eighties: “It was not doing work of the quality that we deserve, and there’s no theatre that’s since stepped into the breach.” Wilson can sound as if he were boycotting black theatres for artistic reasons, which is why some people in the black-theatre world can’t decide whether he’s their savior or their slayer. “I do good work,” he says, his point being that his plays deserve the best conditions he can secure for them. And among white theatres, he says, “the rush is now on to do anything that’s black. Largely through my plays, what the theatres have found out is that they had this white audience that was starving to get a little understanding of what was happening with the black population, because they very seldom come into contact with them, so they’re curious. The white theatres have discovered that there is a market for that.”
The fact that part of Wilson’s success owes to the appeal of ethnography is precisely what disturbs some black critics: they suspect that Wilson’s work is systematically overrated along those lines. “August is genuinely very gifted,” Margo Jefferson, one of those critics, says. “Whites who don’t know the world whereof he writes get a sense of vast, existential melodramas, sweeping pageants, and it’s very exciting, with his insistence always that these people onstage are the real and genuine black people. What happens with whites is that the race element is signaling them every minute, ‘You know nothing about this, you’re lucky to be here.’”
So if you’re looking for a theatre of black folk, by black folk, and for black folk—a genuinely sequestered cultural preserve—you’ll have to cross the extraordinary dramas of August Wilson off your list. Nor would the Black Arts scene, for all its grand aspirations, qualify: the revolution, it’s safe to say, will not be subsidized. You could be forgiven for wondering whether such a black popular theatre really exists. But it does, and, if populist modernism is your creed, it will probably turn your stomach. It’s called the Chitlin Circuit, and nobody says you have to like it. But everything in God’s creation has a reason, and the Chitlin Circuit is no exception. Perhaps OyamO brings us closest to comprehension when he despairingly observes an uncomfortable truth: “A lot of what they call highbrow, progressive, avant-garde theatre is boring the shit out of people.” Not to put too fine a point on it.
The setting now is the Sarah Vaughan Concert Hall—built in 1925 as a Masonic temple—on Broad Street, in downtown Newark. It’s a chilly, overcast Sunday afternoon, closing in on three o’clock, which is when the matinée performance of Adrian Williamson’s play “My Grandmother Prayed for Me” is supposed to begin. In every sense, we’re a long way from the Princeton campus, the site of the despond-drenched T.C.G. conference. On the sidewalk, patrons are eating grilled sausages and hot dogs. Older people make their way inside with the assistance of wheelchairs or walkers; younger ones strut about and survey one another appraisingly. There is much to appraise. These people are styling out, many of them having come from church: you see cloudlike tulle, hat-bands of the finest grosgrain ribbon, wool suits and pants in neon shades. Women have taken care to match their shoes and handbags; men sport Stetson and Dobbs hats, Kente-cloth cummerbunds and scarves. There’s a blue velvet fedora here, electric-blue trousers there, a Super-fly hat and overcoat on a man escorting his magenta-clad wife. Bodies are gleaming, moisturized and fragrant; cheeks are lightly powdered, eyes mascaraed. Broad Street is a poor substitute for a models’ runway, but it will have to do until the theatre doors open and swallow up this impromptu village. There are nearly three thousand seats in the hall; within several minutes, most of them are occupied.
The Chitlin Circuit dates back to the nineteen-twenties, when the Theater Owners Booking Association brought plays and other forms of entertainment to black audiences throughout the South and the Midwest. Though it had a reputation for lousy pay and demanding scheduling—its acronym, TOBA, was sometimes said to stand for “Tough on Black Asses”—it was the spawning ground for a good number of accomplished black actors, comics, and musicians. TOBA proper had gone into eclipse by the decade’s end, yet the tradition it began—that disparagingly named Chitlin Circuit—never entirely died out. Touring black companies would play anywhere—in a theatre if there was one (sometimes they booked space on weekends or late at night, when the boards would otherwise be vacant) or in a school auditorium if there wasn’t. Crisscrossing black America, the circuit established an empire of comedy and pathos, the sublime and the ridiculous: a movable feast that enabled blacks to patronize black entertainers. On the whole, these productions were for the moment, not for the ages. They were the kind of melodrama or farce—or as often both—in which nothing succeeded like excess. But the productions were for, by, and about black folks; and their audience wasn’t much inclined to check them against their Stanislavsky anyway.
You don’t expect anything very fancy from something called the Chitlin Circuit. Wilson—by way of emphasizing the irreducible differences between blacks and whites—had told the T.C.G. members that “in our culinary history we had to make do with the . . . intestines of the pig rather than the loin and the ham and the bacon.” The intestines of the pig are the source of the delicacy known as chitlins; it’s a good example of how something that was originally eaten of necessity became, as is the way with acquired tastes, a thing actively enjoyed. The same might be said of the Chitlin Circuit, for the circuit is back in full flush, and has been for several years. Black audiences throughout the country flock to halls like the Beacon Theatre in New York, the Strand Theatre in Boston, and the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Those audiences are basically blue-collar and pink-collar, and not the type to attend traditional theatre, Larry Leon Hamlin adjudges. But, as the saying has it, they know what they like.
The people behind the shows tend not to vaporize about the “emancipatory potentialities” of their work, or about “forging organic links to the community”: they’d be out of business if black folks stopped turning up. Instead, they like to talk numbers. Terryl Calloway, who has worked as a New England promoter for some Chitlin Circuit productions, tells me about plays that have grossed twenty million dollars or more. “It’s no joke,” he says gravely.
“Good afternoon! Are you ready to have a good time?” This is the master of ceremonies warming up the Newark crowd. The play that ensues is a now standard combination of elements; that is, it’s basically a melodrama, with abundant comic relief and a handful of gospel songs interspersed.
So what have we turned out to see? It seems that Grandmother—stout of body and of spirit—is doing her best to raise her two grandsons; their mother, Samantha, having fallen into crack addiction and prostitution. (When we first see Samantha, she is trying to steal her mother’s television in order to pay for her habit.) The elder boy, Rashad, is devout and studious, but the younger one, Ein, has taken up with bad company; in fact, today is the day that he and his best friend, Stickey, are to be inducted into the Big Guns, a local gang headed by Slow Pimp. When Stickey is killed on the street by a member of a rival gang, Ein sets out, gun in hand, to avenge his death. What’s a grandmother to do? Well, pray, for one thing.
Artistically speaking, “My Grandmother Prayed for Me” makes “Good Times” look like Strindberg. The performances are loud and large; most of the gospel is blared by said grandmother with all the interpretative nuance of a car horn. So broad, so coarse, so over-the-top is this production that to render an aesthetic evaluation would seem a sort of category mistake, like asking Julia Child to taste-test chewing tobacco. But it deals with matters that are of immediate concern to the Newark audience, working-class and middle-class alike: gang violence, crack addiction, teen-age pregnancy, deadbeat dads. For this audience, these issues are not Times Op-Ed-page fodder; they’re the problems of every
day life, as real and close at hand as parking tickets and head colds. It’s also true that black America remains disproportionately religious. (Count on a black rap artist—“gangsta” or no—to thank Jesus in his liner notes.) So that’s part of it, too.
On my way to the Sarah Vaughan Concert Hall, I bumped into Amiri Baraka, who, when he learned my destination, gave me a gleaming smile and some brotherly advice: “You’re about to step into some deep doo-doo.” Maybe he’s right, and yet I find myself enjoying the spectacle as much as everybody else here. “You lost faith in the church, abandoned your kids, and I even heard you were prostituting,” the grandmother tells her daughter. “Let me tell you something. Them drugs ain’t nothing but a demon.” Samantha’s response: “Well, if they a demon, then I’m gon’ love hell.” People laugh, but they recognize the sound of a lost soul. So the two fabled institutions of the inner city, the pusher and the preacher, must battle for Samantha’s soul. There’s a similar exchange between the good son and the one going to the bad:
Rashad: Those boys you hang with ain’t nothing but a bunch of punks. All y’all do is run around these streets beating up on people, robbing people, our black folks at that. . . .
Ein: If we so-called punks, why we got everybody scared of us? I’ll tell you why—because we hardcore. We’ll smoke anybody that get in our way.
Rashad: Hardcore? . . . Ain’t a thing you out there doing hardcore. Let me tell you what hardcore is: hardcore is going to school, putting your nose in a book getting an education. Hardcore is going to church trying to live your life right for the Lord. Hardcore is going to work every day, busting your behind providing for a family. Look around you. Grandma provided all of this for us, and she pray for us every day. Now that’s hardcore.
The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader Page 72