Drumbeats, Masks, and Metaphor

Book excerpt: Dixon's translation of Fabre's Le Theatre Noir Aux Etats-Unis assesses contemporary black theatre since 1945. Placing it in historical and cultural context as a platform for political statement, Fabre isolates two emerging strains: the militant theater of protest and the ethnic theater of black experience. She provides examples and analyzes obscure as well as well-known plays by militant writers such as Amiri Baraka, Douglas Turner Ward, Ted Shine, Ben Caldwell and Sonia Sanchez, who examine relations between blacks and whites and tell stories of victims, rebels and traitors and of rituals of vengeance. She also examines the theater of black experience embracing the rituals of daily life, the liturgy of the black church, traditional music and folklore, and the works of James Baldwin, Melvin Van Peeples, Ed Bullins and Edgar White, and predicts the future of black theater in the United States. ISBN 0-674-21678-4 : $20.00.