The Colored Museum: Critical Introduction

Critical Introduction

George C. Wolfe's first widely accepted piece, The Colored Museum, uses Brechtian structure to create an atmosphere of question. By using alienation techniques, the play brings the audience to question the stereotypes presented in the play while the subtext of the play is revealed. The play is hypothetically not set in time nor place, but it is dated by the situations each of the characters are put in. The text is delicate in that the production needs to present alienation effects in order to achieve the goal of questioning, or else the audience may simply laugh at the reproduction of racial stereotypes as entertainment and not see past to the subtext.

The opening scene, "Git on Board" is a monologue by Miss Pat, the flight attendant. This scene in particular has been despised and praised. Some criticize it because it demeans the "black experience" by making the oppression of slavery, which is too horrible for humor, appear funny.¹ However, many critics have said that Miss Pat would be a lot funnier if she didn't appear right after the gruesome slide show portraying the horrors of slavery.² Specifically, this scene uses the alienation techniques of time jumping and directly addressing the audience as slaves. Besides providing a powerful introduction, the ride on the slave ship takes the audience through a very brief overview of black American history. There is a heavy importance that goes along with this review because while not everyone will understand all of the references, it creates a historical atmosphere with the entertainment value of Miss Pat's almost sports-like commentary. In previous productions, many critics, including the ones who felt as if the show was poorly written, feel like this is one of the best-written scenes, both in entertainment value and its value for the show overall. Furthermore, in this scene, the drums, which Miss Pat tells the audience not to play, become a gestus, or an encapsulation of important emotions and actions, for the rest of the show.

"Cooking with Aunt Ethel" presents a serious contrast to the first scene of the play, presenting an Aunt Jemima emulator. Wolfe exploits not only the empty iconography of Aunt Jemima -- who is famed for her pancake mixes³ -- but also the silliness of the popular cooking shows. While the first scene mocks slavery with tag lines such as Celebrity Slave Ship, "Cooking with Aunt Ethel" presents a serious song in a humorous manner. It also changes the look from a historical view of black Americans to a social and economic view. Aunt Ethel also directly addresses the audience and has the ability to mix different styles and tones into the song she is given. By being able to have a song that is not limited to one kind of style, it can show the diversity of black American music as well as hit home points made in the song more heavily.

This episode is quickly transformed into the likes of "Photo Session." Ebony Magazine was created in order to present a more positive view of black American culture. However, in this scene, the two models are presented as hollow and feeling a pain that "comes from feeling no pain at all." In order to escape the pain of their past, they must reject everything, including sex. This is a stark contrast to the glamour and smiles they present to the audience at their entrance. By having their "larger than life" selves projected on the screen next to them, they are belittled by the magazines they pose for. By mixing media and direct address to the audience, the scene is able to achieve alienation effect.

After the interesting modeling session, the audience meets a "Soldier with a Secret." Unlike the preceding scenes, the soldier scene is far more dark and twisted. The ironic fact is that Junie thinks that he has to kill his fellow soldiers before they become veterans and face more horrible futures at home than they would have to face at war. The effects of soldiers at war, particularly colored soldiers who received second-rate clothing and rations, were horrendous. This scene also lacks the humor present in other scenes, which points to the seriousness of the situation for black soldiers. Black soldiers, particularly in later wars such as World War I and World War II, started to become more political. The scene itself has been described as a "grim fantasy" of a black soldier.⁴ Again, the actor directly addresses the audience in an almost threatening way, for he tells the audience that he also knows the secret to their pain. His repeated "Pst" could also be considered a gestus, as he repeats it in particular places to emphasize his point.

The play moves past the political and into the social with "The Gospel According to Miss Roj." The dank scenery lays out a pretext of a sinister scene similar to "The Soldier". However, Miss Roj is not only an entertaining character, she is one of the only characters in the show who knows her situation for what it is. She looks past her life at "the Bottomless Pit" and explains to the audience how people are just "maggots crawling over a dead piece of meat."⁵ While Miss Roj is often cited as a sassy and hysterical drag queen, she is oddly the most direct and insightful character of the show besides Topsy. She says, "Words flowin' instead of blood 'cause you know that don't work."⁶ Miss Roj tries to escape "a whole race of people being trashed and debased"⁷ by claiming that she is not "just your regular oppressed American Negro."⁸ However, despite her escape method, she knows that she isn't fully exempt from "being black." The layers of her character build heavily on queerness as race; the range of emotions for this particular scene is huge, from hysterical drunken laughter to abrupt soberness and reality. This scene, too, has gotten very drastic responses, for during one of the productions, the actor doing this role was twice attacked by blacks who came onstage from the audience.⁹ Not only is this a hard piece for the actor, it is also a hard piece for the audience. Direct address is used, but this scene also draws heavily on Miss Roj's gestus, the snap, which she repeats constantly throughout the scene as the be-all and end-all statement of her life. This can be repeated in the final scene along with the gestus of the drums.

After the harsh reality of the drag queen, "Hairpiece" rolls around. Heavily surrealistic and highly comical, two wigs discuss their cultural merits. By personifying the wigs, Wolfe points out the quietly-known fact that a black woman's choice of hairstyle is a political statement.¹⁰ Throughout the "cat fight" between the two wigs, the woman (who is the only unnamed character in this scene, oddly enough) is reduced to hysteria over her talking wigs. The parallels between the surrealism of talking wigs and the consideration black American women have to make each day are drawn with sharp, pointed lines. Unlike the other scenes, this one does not directly address the audience. By pulling the conversation in for a scene, it breaks the commonality that the other scene shares and forces the audience to watch the scene in a new way. By making people act out inanimate objects, Wolfe ingeniously engenders characters that produce a funny, yet still shocking, scene. Many describe this scene as being the most hilarious of the play.¹¹

Black performance is targeted by "The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play." Actors are free to have fun in this truly Brechtian piece. There are actors acting out this scene, who are in and of themselves actors trying to win an award from the narrator. They then break off into a dance of Broadway esteem which is commented on at the end of the scene by images of blackface performance. This scene in particular is potent because it specifically targets black performance as it relates to theater; it is meta-theatrical, humorous, and has been noted as the most entertaining scene of the play. It also is ironic, because while the narrator's opening line of having a play that will tear at the very heart of racist America is to parody A Raisin in the Sun and other "black" dramas, it also points to the fact that the scene actually does tear at the heart of racist America, which, after the enslavement period was over, grew out of coon performance and minstrel shows, which showed black Americans as lazy and sub-human. Some have gone so far as to call this scene the centerpiece of the show.¹² Regardless of the weight of the skit compared to the others, it has been, throughout the performance of The Colored Museum, one of the most celebrated scenes. This particular scene incorporates direct address, but not all of the characters use it, which makes a nice blend of layers. The alienation is especially powerful because after the "crazy dance scene," the slide show comments on the entertainment for which the audience is applauding.

Black American history is an important theme of the play. In "Symbiosis," a man attempts to trash his past because it is too painful to be black. The scene, while comic in some areas, comes off as oddly tragic and frightful, as the man is willing to kill (or try to kill) his younger self in order to survive in the "present climate." Symbiosis means "to live together," specifically in a beneficial relationship. So, the title itself is an ironic commentary on the scene. The fact that the two try to beat each other up or kill one another doesn't suggest that they coexist happily or well, yet they need to be together because there is no other way for them to survive. By attempting to even throw his younger self away, the man tries to completely trash his painful past. Yet, in the end, the kid grabs a hold of him again, reminding him that the past is not easily destroyed. In one sense, it gives the hope that even the past which people are conditioned to forget and remember in a different light can be reclaimed in something of its original form. On the other hand, it presents the issue of not being able to leave the past behind, which is a major theme especially tied in at the end of the play. By breaking the character into pieces -- his younger self and older self -- there is alienation, even though there is no direct address to the audience.

To build upon the idea of stereotypes in black performance, Wolfe attacks the image of the ultimate artist diva in "Lala's Opening". He fragments the character of Lala into her current self -- which she has made to be a French super star -- and her younger self, the child she thought she left dead in the backwaters of Mississippi. There has been some debate as to whether the little girl is actual the child of Lala or her inner child, but the script specifically states, "The Little Girl and Lala are in two isolated pools of light, and mirror each other's moves until Lala reaches past her reflection and the Little Girl comes to Lala..."¹³ By describing the two characters as "reflections," it makes a powerful argument that the little girl is actually Lala's inner child. Regardless, Lala's character is unveiled when she is confronted with the past she has thrown away. By showing how a woman developed an alter ego that is "sophisticated" and French to become successful, Wolfe dissects the image of popular stars and reveals the guts and history that sometimes people try to throw away. While the character is literally split in two selves, critics have said that Lala's personality is also divided between her new self and former self.¹⁴ The dichotomy of her personality, then, is visually realized when the little girl comes on stage and Lala embraces her.

Perhaps one of the hardest scenes in the play, "Permutations" is about conceiving a race of people who are unlike any other. After having sexual relations with "all the good stuff folks never shoulda thrown away,"¹⁵ the young Jean lays an egg. The symbolism of laying a white egg that'll eventually break is potent, and the people who are going to fly from it are extraordinary. However, the scene has the challenge of being very hard to process in both a written text and in a show. Will the audience receive the symbolism of the white egg breaking? Will they understand the connection to the man who was comprised of good things that shouldn't have been thrown away? The oddness of the scene, even for The Colored Museum, could throw off the audience. It is very important to incorporate the drums -- which are listed in this scene -- into it to tie the scene back into the show with commonality.

Finally, the play concludes with "Party," the ultimate wrap up scene. Literally, Topsy spells out Wolfe's version of black American culture. "My power is in my madness. And my colored contradictions."¹⁶ The gestus of the drums and the snap from "Miss Roj" are incorporated into this scene, and several of the important lines of the play are included again before the show closes. The final form of alienation is presented when, with all the actors frozen in character in the museum, a recording of Miss Pat reminds people to claim any baggage or risk having it trashed. Not only does this reincorporate a line from earlier in the play which seemed to be more of a bad airline joke, but it also presents final statement that can force the audience to process the subtext of the play.

By using alienation effects and the Brechtian style of Epic Theatre, which uses non-linear plot development and fragmented scenes, Wolfe created an atmosphere of question for the audience to immerse themselves in. The biggest challenge of The Colored Museum is presented the production in a way that keeps that atmosphere going especially for the audience of the particular theater in question. Wolfe has provided a great text, but now it needs a lively production full of momentum in order to keep it rolling.

There are issues, of course, with The Colored Museum. Not all black Americans hail it as a great piece of theater. Obviously, pleasing everyone is not possible, but some circles believe that the play is anti-black.¹⁷ For this reason, it is a delicate play because without the appropriate mechanisms it can be dissolved into an anti-black performance piece or a comedy that laughs at black stereotypes without providing commentary on them. However, The Colored Museum is the first piece of its kind for black American theater in structure and in theme. Wolfe defied the old norms of the so-called "black play," which he commented on as "Four walls, a couch and a mama."¹⁸ Thus, The Colored Museum came into creation.

Footnotes
1. Holden, "Where the Laughs are: Comedy is King on City Stages"
2. Rich, "Satire by George C. Wolfe"
3. Aunt Jemima
4. Heller, "No-Holds-Barred Blasts off at Karamu"
5. Wolfe, 17.
6. Wolfe, 16.
7. Wolfe, 17.
8. Wolfe, 14.
9. Kroll, "Zapping Black Stereotypes"
10. Billington, "The comic as curator"
11. Zimmerman, "'Colored Museum' pulls no punches at SJ Stage"
12. Heller, "No-Holds-Barred Blasts off at Karamu"
13. Wolfe, 45.
14. Richards, "'Colored': Crazy & Conflicted; 'Museum' Lampoons the Black Experience"
15. Wolfe, 45.
16. Wolfe, 53.
17. Hare, "Clemson Players Present 'The Colored Museum'"
18. Gerard, "'Colored Museum' is Author's Exorcism"

For more information on these footnotes, please see the Critical Bibliography and the Contextual Bibliography.

© Kylie 'drago' McCormick, Mount Holyoke College '08.
Information last updated May 14, 2006. Page last updated 3 October 2009.

The Colored Museum Dramaturgical Production Notebook
Home Critical Introduction Production History Textual Lineage Script Preparation Playwright Chronology Contextual Chronology Media Promotion Critical Reception Critical Bibliography Contextual Bibliography	Critical Introduction
	George C. Wolfe's first widely accepted piece, The Colored Museum, uses Brechtian structure to create an atmosphere of question. By using alienation techniques, the play brings the audience to question the stereotypes presented in the play while the subtext of the play is revealed. The play is hypothetically not set in time nor place, but it is dated by the situations each of the characters are put in. The text is delicate in that the production needs to present alienation effects in order to achieve the goal of questioning, or else the audience may simply laugh at the reproduction of racial stereotypes as entertainment and not see past to the subtext. The opening scene, "Git on Board" is a monologue by Miss Pat, the flight attendant. This scene in particular has been despised and praised. Some criticize it because it demeans the "black experience" by making the oppression of slavery, which is too horrible for humor, appear funny.¹ However, many critics have said that Miss Pat would be a lot funnier if she didn't appear right after the gruesome slide show portraying the horrors of slavery.² Specifically, this scene uses the alienation techniques of time jumping and directly addressing the audience as slaves. Besides providing a powerful introduction, the ride on the slave ship takes the audience through a very brief overview of black American history. There is a heavy importance that goes along with this review because while not everyone will understand all of the references, it creates a historical atmosphere with the entertainment value of Miss Pat's almost sports-like commentary. In previous productions, many critics, including the ones who felt as if the show was poorly written, feel like this is one of the best-written scenes, both in entertainment value and its value for the show overall. Furthermore, in this scene, the drums, which Miss Pat tells the audience not to play, become a gestus, or an encapsulation of important emotions and actions, for the rest of the show. "Cooking with Aunt Ethel" presents a serious contrast to the first scene of the play, presenting an Aunt Jemima emulator. Wolfe exploits not only the empty iconography of Aunt Jemima -- who is famed for her pancake mixes³ -- but also the silliness of the popular cooking shows. While the first scene mocks slavery with tag lines such as Celebrity Slave Ship, "Cooking with Aunt Ethel" presents a serious song in a humorous manner. It also changes the look from a historical view of black Americans to a social and economic view. Aunt Ethel also directly addresses the audience and has the ability to mix different styles and tones into the song she is given. By being able to have a song that is not limited to one kind of style, it can show the diversity of black American music as well as hit home points made in the song more heavily. This episode is quickly transformed into the likes of "Photo Session." Ebony Magazine was created in order to present a more positive view of black American culture. However, in this scene, the two models are presented as hollow and feeling a pain that "comes from feeling no pain at all." In order to escape the pain of their past, they must reject everything, including sex. This is a stark contrast to the glamour and smiles they present to the audience at their entrance. By having their "larger than life" selves projected on the screen next to them, they are belittled by the magazines they pose for. By mixing media and direct address to the audience, the scene is able to achieve alienation effect. After the interesting modeling session, the audience meets a "Soldier with a Secret." Unlike the preceding scenes, the soldier scene is far more dark and twisted. The ironic fact is that Junie thinks that he has to kill his fellow soldiers before they become veterans and face more horrible futures at home than they would have to face at war. The effects of soldiers at war, particularly colored soldiers who received second-rate clothing and rations, were horrendous. This scene also lacks the humor present in other scenes, which points to the seriousness of the situation for black soldiers. Black soldiers, particularly in later wars such as World War I and World War II, started to become more political. The scene itself has been described as a "grim fantasy" of a black soldier.⁴ Again, the actor directly addresses the audience in an almost threatening way, for he tells the audience that he also knows the secret to their pain. His repeated "Pst" could also be considered a gestus, as he repeats it in particular places to emphasize his point. The play moves past the political and into the social with "The Gospel According to Miss Roj." The dank scenery lays out a pretext of a sinister scene similar to "The Soldier". However, Miss Roj is not only an entertaining character, she is one of the only characters in the show who knows her situation for what it is. She looks past her life at "the Bottomless Pit" and explains to the audience how people are just "maggots crawling over a dead piece of meat."⁵ While Miss Roj is often cited as a sassy and hysterical drag queen, she is oddly the most direct and insightful character of the show besides Topsy. She says, "Words flowin' instead of blood 'cause you know that don't work."⁶ Miss Roj tries to escape "a whole race of people being trashed and debased"⁷ by claiming that she is not "just your regular oppressed American Negro."⁸ However, despite her escape method, she knows that she isn't fully exempt from "being black." The layers of her character build heavily on queerness as race; the range of emotions for this particular scene is huge, from hysterical drunken laughter to abrupt soberness and reality. This scene, too, has gotten very drastic responses, for during one of the productions, the actor doing this role was twice attacked by blacks who came onstage from the audience.⁹ Not only is this a hard piece for the actor, it is also a hard piece for the audience. Direct address is used, but this scene also draws heavily on Miss Roj's gestus, the snap, which she repeats constantly throughout the scene as the be-all and end-all statement of her life. This can be repeated in the final scene along with the gestus of the drums. After the harsh reality of the drag queen, "Hairpiece" rolls around. Heavily surrealistic and highly comical, two wigs discuss their cultural merits. By personifying the wigs, Wolfe points out the quietly-known fact that a black woman's choice of hairstyle is a political statement.¹⁰ Throughout the "cat fight" between the two wigs, the woman (who is the only unnamed character in this scene, oddly enough) is reduced to hysteria over her talking wigs. The parallels between the surrealism of talking wigs and the consideration black American women have to make each day are drawn with sharp, pointed lines. Unlike the other scenes, this one does not directly address the audience. By pulling the conversation in for a scene, it breaks the commonality that the other scene shares and forces the audience to watch the scene in a new way. By making people act out inanimate objects, Wolfe ingeniously engenders characters that produce a funny, yet still shocking, scene. Many describe this scene as being the most hilarious of the play.¹¹ Black performance is targeted by "The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play." Actors are free to have fun in this truly Brechtian piece. There are actors acting out this scene, who are in and of themselves actors trying to win an award from the narrator. They then break off into a dance of Broadway esteem which is commented on at the end of the scene by images of blackface performance. This scene in particular is potent because it specifically targets black performance as it relates to theater; it is meta-theatrical, humorous, and has been noted as the most entertaining scene of the play. It also is ironic, because while the narrator's opening line of having a play that will tear at the very heart of racist America is to parody A Raisin in the Sun and other "black" dramas, it also points to the fact that the scene actually does tear at the heart of racist America, which, after the enslavement period was over, grew out of coon performance and minstrel shows, which showed black Americans as lazy and sub-human. Some have gone so far as to call this scene the centerpiece of the show.¹² Regardless of the weight of the skit compared to the others, it has been, throughout the performance of The Colored Museum, one of the most celebrated scenes. This particular scene incorporates direct address, but not all of the characters use it, which makes a nice blend of layers. The alienation is especially powerful because after the "crazy dance scene," the slide show comments on the entertainment for which the audience is applauding. Black American history is an important theme of the play. In "Symbiosis," a man attempts to trash his past because it is too painful to be black. The scene, while comic in some areas, comes off as oddly tragic and frightful, as the man is willing to kill (or try to kill) his younger self in order to survive in the "present climate." Symbiosis means "to live together," specifically in a beneficial relationship. So, the title itself is an ironic commentary on the scene. The fact that the two try to beat each other up or kill one another doesn't suggest that they coexist happily or well, yet they need to be together because there is no other way for them to survive. By attempting to even throw his younger self away, the man tries to completely trash his painful past. Yet, in the end, the kid grabs a hold of him again, reminding him that the past is not easily destroyed. In one sense, it gives the hope that even the past which people are conditioned to forget and remember in a different light can be reclaimed in something of its original form. On the other hand, it presents the issue of not being able to leave the past behind, which is a major theme especially tied in at the end of the play. By breaking the character into pieces -- his younger self and older self -- there is alienation, even though there is no direct address to the audience. To build upon the idea of stereotypes in black performance, Wolfe attacks the image of the ultimate artist diva in "Lala's Opening". He fragments the character of Lala into her current self -- which she has made to be a French super star -- and her younger self, the child she thought she left dead in the backwaters of Mississippi. There has been some debate as to whether the little girl is actual the child of Lala or her inner child, but the script specifically states, "The Little Girl and Lala are in two isolated pools of light, and mirror each other's moves until Lala reaches past her reflection and the Little Girl comes to Lala..."¹³ By describing the two characters as "reflections," it makes a powerful argument that the little girl is actually Lala's inner child. Regardless, Lala's character is unveiled when she is confronted with the past she has thrown away. By showing how a woman developed an alter ego that is "sophisticated" and French to become successful, Wolfe dissects the image of popular stars and reveals the guts and history that sometimes people try to throw away. While the character is literally split in two selves, critics have said that Lala's personality is also divided between her new self and former self.¹⁴ The dichotomy of her personality, then, is visually realized when the little girl comes on stage and Lala embraces her. Perhaps one of the hardest scenes in the play, "Permutations" is about conceiving a race of people who are unlike any other. After having sexual relations with "all the good stuff folks never shoulda thrown away,"¹⁵ the young Jean lays an egg. The symbolism of laying a white egg that'll eventually break is potent, and the people who are going to fly from it are extraordinary. However, the scene has the challenge of being very hard to process in both a written text and in a show. Will the audience receive the symbolism of the white egg breaking? Will they understand the connection to the man who was comprised of good things that shouldn't have been thrown away? The oddness of the scene, even for The Colored Museum, could throw off the audience. It is very important to incorporate the drums -- which are listed in this scene -- into it to tie the scene back into the show with commonality. Finally, the play concludes with "Party," the ultimate wrap up scene. Literally, Topsy spells out Wolfe's version of black American culture. "My power is in my madness. And my colored contradictions."¹⁶ The gestus of the drums and the snap from "Miss Roj" are incorporated into this scene, and several of the important lines of the play are included again before the show closes. The final form of alienation is presented when, with all the actors frozen in character in the museum, a recording of Miss Pat reminds people to claim any baggage or risk having it trashed. Not only does this reincorporate a line from earlier in the play which seemed to be more of a bad airline joke, but it also presents final statement that can force the audience to process the subtext of the play. By using alienation effects and the Brechtian style of Epic Theatre, which uses non-linear plot development and fragmented scenes, Wolfe created an atmosphere of question for the audience to immerse themselves in. The biggest challenge of The Colored Museum is presented the production in a way that keeps that atmosphere going especially for the audience of the particular theater in question. Wolfe has provided a great text, but now it needs a lively production full of momentum in order to keep it rolling. There are issues, of course, with The Colored Museum. Not all black Americans hail it as a great piece of theater. Obviously, pleasing everyone is not possible, but some circles believe that the play is anti-black.¹⁷ For this reason, it is a delicate play because without the appropriate mechanisms it can be dissolved into an anti-black performance piece or a comedy that laughs at black stereotypes without providing commentary on them. However, The Colored Museum is the first piece of its kind for black American theater in structure and in theme. Wolfe defied the old norms of the so-called "black play," which he commented on as "Four walls, a couch and a mama."¹⁸ Thus, The Colored Museum came into creation. Footnotes 1. Holden, "Where the Laughs are: Comedy is King on City Stages" 2. Rich, "Satire by George C. Wolfe" 3. Aunt Jemima 4. Heller, "No-Holds-Barred Blasts off at Karamu" 5. Wolfe, 17. 6. Wolfe, 16. 7. Wolfe, 17. 8. Wolfe, 14. 9. Kroll, "Zapping Black Stereotypes" 10. Billington, "The comic as curator" 11. Zimmerman, "'Colored Museum' pulls no punches at SJ Stage" 12. Heller, "No-Holds-Barred Blasts off at Karamu" 13. Wolfe, 45. 14. Richards, "'Colored': Crazy & Conflicted; 'Museum' Lampoons the Black Experience" 15. Wolfe, 45. 16. Wolfe, 53. 17. Hare, "Clemson Players Present 'The Colored Museum'" 18. Gerard, "'Colored Museum' is Author's Exorcism" For more information on these footnotes, please see the Critical Bibliography and the Contextual Bibliography.
© Kylie 'drago' McCormick, Mount Holyoke College '08. Information last updated May 14, 2006. Page last updated 3 October 2009.

The Colored Museum Dramaturgical Production Notebook

The Colored Museum
Dramaturgical Production Notebook