[Music]
hey there I'm Mike Rugnetta this is
crash course theater and today we're
going all the way from Broadway to off
Broadway which Urich reminds me is
actually not that far from Broadway
those MapQuest directions why are we
going to off Broadway at all
look mid-century Broadway is great it
has incisive social dramas and dancing
girls though not usually in the same
show but in the middle of the 20th
century Broadway only had 30 some
theaters which was not nearly enough for
producers to take a chance on all of
that
avant-garde goodness so today we'll look
at the history of off Broadway and the
genres styles and troupes that it
supported including the Black Arts
Movement lights up unless lights are too
normal for your weird show
[Music]
off-broadway theater had actually been
around for a long time before anyone
started calling at that if the natural
continuation of the Little Theater
movement that we explored in our
episodes on American moderns and the
Harlem Renaissance in New York that
meant theaters like the Provincetown
players the Washington Square players
the Neighborhood Playhouse and the crib
well players after World War two new
theaters and companies appeared and this
movement became known as off-broadway if
you want to get technical off-broadway
used to refer to theaters outside of the
broadway box a stretch that ran from
40th to 54th streets in manhattan and
that leaves a lot of city originally
most off-broadway theaters were located
in Greenwich Village often in the same
spaces that the little theaters had
occupied eventually off-broadway became
an Actors Equity designation concerning
theater size referring to theaters in
Manhattan that have between 100 and 499
seats but off-broadway is also a mindset
it's against shallow big-budget
entertainment and in favor of ensemble
driven non-commercial work but of course
plenty of off-broadway stuff ends up
transferring to Broadway and turns out
to be very commercial so I mean you know
you might be surprised to learn that
this bit about theater is complicated in
the early days a lot of off-broadway
theaters were interested in producing
the European avant-garde because America
was apparently not absurdist enough on
its own but off-broadway theaters also
helped to develop a new American
avant-garde and were supportive of works
by queer writers and writers of color
let's look at a few significant theaters
and troupes the living theatre Jose
Quintero circle in the square and Joe
Papps New York Shakespeare Festival and
Public Theater the living theater was
founded in 1947 by Judith Malina and
Julianne Beck they started out producing
Brecht and Cocteau and Pirandello but in
the late 1950s two began producing new
American work like Jack Gilbert the
connection an immersive play about drug
addicts and Kenneth H Browns the brig a
brutal play about a military prison the
living theater then relocated to Europe
this was partly because of an
unfortunate tax thing anarchists do not
like paying taxes
the company reinvented themselves as a
devised theatre company meaning a
company that creates its own original
works through rehearsal and exploration
arto was a big influence the living
theater created a bunch of pretty
shocking
occasionally nude and very participatory
pieces like paradise now and mysteries
and smaller pieces and brought them back
to New York
these shows are basically where all of
our cliches about experimental theater
come from long-hair loincloths naked
screaming naked rolling around on the
floor naked screaming and rolling around
on the floor with long hair but try to
remember that these things weren't
cliche is when the living theater did
them the Circle in the Square Theatre
was founded in Greenwich Village in 1951
by Jose Quintero the son of Panamanian
parents it was sort of a theater in
disguise because it was originally
housed in a former nightclub and
licensed as a cabaret space this meant
that the actors a bunch of whom lived on
site also had to serve drinks circling
the square made some gestures towards
the European avant-garde but under
Quintero spash in at direction it's best
known for cementing the legacy of
Tennessee Williams and rehabilitating
the work of Eugene O'Neill who had
fallen way out of favor the consummate
circle in the square work is probably
can Tarot's 1956 revival of O'Neill's
The Iceman Cometh which had pretty much
flopped the first time around it starred
Navy veteran almost I got an awesome
actor Jason Robards who at the time was
still driving taxis the New York Times
wrote that since circle in the square
had originally been a nightclub it was
the perfect place to house O'Neill's
waterfront dive it seems not like
something written but like something
that is happening wrote the critic so
take that broadway circle on the square
became known for an intense acting style
introducing audiences to influential
actors like Geraldine page Colleen
Dewhurst and George C Scott the theater
moved to the South Village in 1960 and
then in 1972 it moved surprise to
Broadway Joe Papp was born in Brooklyn
to yiddish-speaking parents after a
stint in the Navy and some time out in
California with former members of the
group theater he returned to New York
and began to stage free Shakespeare
plays in a Lower East Side Church
insisting that Shakespeare could and
should be for everyone in 1956 the parks
department gave him permission to use
the East River amphitheater Robert Moses
then the parks commissioner told him
that he would have to charge admission
fees but PAP refused Shakespeare should
be free for all the courts supported him
a permanent theater was built for him in
Central Park
it opened in 1962 and free Shakespeare
is still performed there every summer
show up early it gets crowded quick
in 1966 Pat moved into what had been the
Astor Library on Lafayette Street and
transformed it into the public theater
which you can still visit today it's
adjacent to another music theater and
nightclub venue called Joe's Pub some of
the public theaters hits include hair a
Chorus Line for colored girls who have
considered suicide when the rainbow is
enuf the normal hearts and yes Hamilton
which rumor has it is very good paps
legacy is really important he insisted
on staging the classics with diverse
casts he championed queer writers and
writers of color and he demanded that
theater could and should be available to
everyone
theater he said is a social force not
just entertainment off-broadway also
helped foster the Black Arts Movement
the cultural wing of the Black Power
movement the Black Arts Movement has its
roots far from Broadway mostly with the
free southern theatre which toured plays
like Waiting for Godot around the deep
south but the Black Arts Movement was
specifically about encouraging African
American artists and suggesting that
their work was part of a tradition
separate from the cultural work of white
artists the movement allied itself with
post-colonial independence movements in
Africa and around the world one of the
movements leaders was the poet and
playwright
amiri baraka who began his career as
Leroy Jones his 1965 poem black art
written after the assassination of
Malcolm X became a manifesto for the
movement in one section he wrote we want
a black poem and a black world let the
world be a black poem and let all black
people speak this poem silently or loud
BRAC his most famous play is probably
Dutchman which opened it off Broadway's
Cherry Lane Theatre
1964 it's set on a subway car where Lula
a white woman meets clay a black man
Lula mocks clay and tempts him finally
goading him into admitting the anger he
feels towards white people even though
he says that he would never act on that
anger Lula then stabs a clay and with
the help of the other passengers she
throws his dead body out of the car she
then waits for the next black man the
most important playwright to emerge from
the Black Arts Movement and one of the
greatest living American playwrights is
Adrienne Kennedy let's take a look at
her breakthrough play funny house of a
Negro which opened off-broadway in 1964
at the East End theatre funny house is
another word for a carnival fun house or
a mad house and the play explores the
devastating effects of racism on a young
woman it filters the style of the
European avant-garde through the spirit
of the Black Arts Movement help us out
thought bubble funny house of a Negro is
set in the bedroom of a young
african-american woman named Sarah but
it's also immediately clear that we're
inside Sarah's mind you can feel this
even in the stage directions in the
middle of the stage and a strong white
light while the rest of the stage is an
unnatural blackness the action is often
interrupted by a harsh frightening
knocking at the door the sound of
Sarah's father trying to come in after a
prologue in which a woman in a white
nightgown crosses the stage carrying a
bald head in her arms the play begins
with a conversation between Queen
Victoria and the Duchess of Habsburg
about whiteness the woman in the
nightgown interrupts she's Sarah's
mother distraught she says she should
never have let a black man touch her
the scene shifts to Sarah's landlady who
tells us that Sarah's father killed
himself when patrice lumumba
the Congolese independence leader was
assassinated and that Sarah hasn't left
her room since also Sarah's hair is
falling out Sarah says that the landlady
is wrong she killed her father clubbing
him with a black skull but we later
learned that he may have actually left
the family and married a white woman the
Duchess has a conversation with a
character named Raymond the proprietor
of the funny house they talk about how
Sarah's mother is in an asylum how her
hair has all fallen out and how Sarah
is the product of rape patrice lumumba
gives a speech and then the duchess
talks with jesus the scene changes to a
jungle and the characters reappear
haloed and screaming the scene returns
to Sara's room and sara is discovered
hanged
thanks duffel that was upsetting and
hallucinatory but it's supposed to be
upsetting and hallucinatory the plays
about one woman wrestling with identity
in a racialized world but it's also
about how black artists and
intellectuals fight to find their own
voices in a world in which almost all of
the models and precedents or white
Adrienne Kennedy's voice is distinct her
precise surreal style is built on
personal anguish and experience and is
deeply concerned with what it means to
be a woman of color in a white world her
work also expands the boundaries of what
theatre can do and finds a new stage
language for stories previously unseen
in the American theatre she's still
writing today and is widely revered as a
mentor figure by young african-american
playwrights
by the 1960s there was a problem
off-broadway had gotten fancy work had
become increasingly commercial and costs
were higher and that's how we get off
off-broadway like off-broadway this was
a more or less spontaneous movement and
it kicked off in for downtown spaces
Cafe Chino Theatre Genesis Judson poets
theatre and La MaMa
Cafe Chino run by Joe Chino was
literally a coffeehouse but it gave
playwrights especially queer playwrights
space to try out their work the Judson
poets theater was run by al Carmine's an
assistant minister out of the Judson
Memorial Church it became a space for
art world happenings and experimental
dance theater Genesis was housed in
another Church st. Mark's Church in the
Bowery which was later the home of
Richard Foreman's ontological
hysterically etre run by Ralph Cooke
theatre Genesis encouraged poets and
playwrights
to improvise with their actors Lamanna
was founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart a
former swimsuit designer exuberant and
welcoming she supported many New York
artists and later provided residences to
several European companies La MaMa
is still going today funnily enough I've
worked it shows in all three of these
places
I also sat next to Lou Reed at La MaMa
once thanks for watching next time York
and I are gonna be poor and downtrodden
more so than usual when we explore poor
theater and the fear of the oppressed
but until then wait can we even afford a
curtain okay
budget curtain crash course theater is
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