The Colored Museum
Dramaturgical Production Notebook

The textual lineage of a play covers its growth from other texts as well as any adaptations it may have.

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• "Black Plays"
• Black Musicals
• Blackface
• Footnotes

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"Black Plays"
When writing his play, George Wolfe commented, "People kept asking for a 'black' play. I kept asking, 'What's a "black" play. [sic] Four walls, a couch and a mama?' I can't exist within those old definitions."¹

The play Wolfe specifically was referring to was Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun. It takes place in the slums of Chicago, where the Younger family lives. The "Mama" of the play rented the slum with the intention of buying a home in a few years; unfortunately, she and her family remain stuck in the slums. The death of her husband, however, brings about a $10,000 insurance check to the family, which begs the question: How should the money be spent?

Walter Lee, the protagonist and son of Mama, wants to invest the money in a liquor store to make a quick fortune. His sister, Beneatha, wants to use the money to become a doctor. Mama, on the other hand, puts some of the money toward a house in a white neighborhood. Even though one of the racist neighbors tries to buy them out, they still end up moving to the new house. Walter Lee, who was entrusted to put the remainder of the money away, actually invests in his liquor store idea. Unfortunately, the person he invested with turned out to be a conman and ran away with the rest of the money.

Ruth, Walter's wife, faces a difficult situation in the play because she is pregnant with her second child. Travis, their first child, already has to sleep on the couch. Having another child is not just costly, but it also presents a problem with their current location. She contemplates having an abortion. This leads to a serious confrontation where Ruth tells Walter about her predicament. When Walter does not immediately try to convince her not to do it, Mama stands up and gives a strong monologue about how the Younger family is a family that gives children life rather than takes it away. Mama is a very Christian women with strong morals.

In A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry discusses race through the trials and tribulations of a family, which is heavily based in her own experience. In a theatrical sense, the play has been accepted into the canon. Because it was accepted into the canon, however, it became the prototype for a "black play." Because it uses the unity of place in its structure, it restricts the drama of a black family to the house in which they live. Of course, the location is very important; by forcing the audience to watch the struggles within the slum, they are unable to escape the compactness and crowdedness of the apartment.

Specifically, Wolfe responds to this play with "The Last-Mama-on-the-Couch Play." Obviously, given his comment above, he felt that the old definitions of a "black play" were frustrating. He pokes fun at the popular view of black drama in his own play and then later comments on this scene with images of blackface performance. These two are linked.

It is important to note that racial stereotypes go beyond people. If there is a stereotype for how a black person acts, there is probably a racial stereotype for how a black artist sings, dances, or acts as well. By challenging the popular forms of "black" performance or the popular "black" plays, Wolfe challenges those stereotypes and how they are linked to more overtly racist performance styles (eg--blackface).

Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf (1975) is a series of some twenty poems choreographed to music and dance which was written and produced in 1976.² The play itself was meant to speak to the power of black women surviving in the face of the challenges of being both black and a women in "a world that values neither." It's first performance was at the Public Theater, ten years before Wolfe wrote The Colored Museum.³ Although it is not as widely accepted as a part of the canon, it is clear that it has great popularity, and it probably had even greater popularity around the time of its inception. All of the seven parts of this play were acted by female actors.

Wolfe directly references A Raisin in the Sun's main character Walter Lee, but he also references the character Beau Wille from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. This character drops his two children from the fifth-story window of a building. This is also incorporated in "The Last-Mama-on-the-Couch Play."

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf also links to the idea of black musicals because it had much dancing and music in it. The incorporation of these two famous pieces of black culture were not meant to trash the past but to ridicule the continual reprocessing of past stereotypical images.⁴ Wolfe wanted a new look at black Americans, rather than just repeating the same old same old for the sake of being "cultured."

Black Musicals
Another important aspect of The Colored Museum is that it looks at the connection between black performance and musicals. Indeed, there is a lot of music in the show, ranging from the saucy Aunt Ethel song to Topsy's song about embracing madness. However, in "The Last-Mama-on-the-Couch Play", Wolfe references specifically two types of black American song: gospel and musical production.

Gospel music is often associated with black singers as well. Popular movies like Sister Act (1992) may contribute to this, but there is also a stereotype surrounding black people as Christians and choir singers. In "The Last-Mama-on-the-Couch Play," this is mocked when there is a call and response session between Mama and the other characters. When Mama is lamenting the loss of her son, she cries out, "Why couldn't he be born into a world better than this? Why couldn't he be born into...an all black musical?"

All-black musicals go back as far as 1896, when black American writers were not writing them. The Gold Bug is the first major black musical identified, which was written in 1896. The first one to play in a major Broadway theater was In Dahomey in 1903.⁵ Wolfe, although he produced and created black musicals himself, feels as if white Americans are conditioned to think of black performance as all-black musicals. This can be related to the situation with the more overt racism of blackface.

Blackface
Blackface performance (also known as minstrel shows and coon performance) was heavily associated with racism. White performers would use burnt cork or some other makeup to blacken their faces and "jump into Jim Crow." The first person to do this was Thomas Rice. Jim Crow became a stock character in minstrel shows, as did Jim Dandy and Zip Coon. These particular performances helped to popularize the belief that blacks were lazy and stupid; therefore, they were unworthy of being helped in society.

For over one hundred years, blackface was a very popular performance style. It helped to cement racist stereotypes and was also used in other parts of the world. The minstrel show was the first distinctly American theatrical form, and it was used as a lens through which white Americans saw (a distorted version of) black Americans. In the mid-1800s, it was at the center of the rising musical industry of America, and it spawned the modern black musical.⁶

Indeed, while minstrel shows and blackface were around, white Americans were taught to look at the shows as evidence of how "real" black Americans were. Because black Americans are being linked to specific kinds of performance (black musical performance for the most part), similar conclusions may be drawn from seeing repeat performances of the same kind. Wolfe believes that white Americans are conditioned to accept specific kinds of performances or plays as "black performances." While all-black musicals are not as overtly racist as blackface and minstrel shows, they do create and sometimes perpetuate stereotypes.

"The Last-Mama-on-the-Couch Play" also "spirals into a nightmarish indictment of the white audience's eternal relationship to black performers."⁷ By challenging the views of black performance, Wolfe comments on the connections between black musicals, minstrel shows, and stereotypes in performance that still permeate today's society.

Of course, there are also caricatures like Jim Crow that still exist today in black performance. While Lala specifically deals with Josophine Baker, the persona also rings true for popular artists such as Tina Turner. This caricature is perpetuated through various modes, but by constantly linking black artists with certain kinds of performance is one of the most effective ways of doing this.

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Footnotes
1. Gerard, "'Colored Museum' is Author's Exorcism"
2. Lee, "Performance Review: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf"
3. Lee, "Performance Review: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf"
4. Klien, "Yale Repertory Offers 'The Colored Museum'"
5. Black Broadway!
6. Black Broadway!
7. Rich, "Satire by George C. Wolfe"

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