With a wide range of entertaining productions to choose from, theater audiences are having a grand time on Broadway these days. Among myriad offerings are Broadway shows that reflect and represent the generations-old traditions of Black performers and theater professionals working in New York theater.
In February, that brotherhood and sisterhood of historic Black theatrical achievers add two new members — veteran film and stage actor Denzel Washington in Shakespeare’s “Othello,” and award-winning actress Phylicia Rashad making her directorial debut in the stage drama “Purpose.”
“A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical,” the jukebox musical chronicling the impact of the pioneering Black musician’s artistry and hit songs, has been on Broadway since November. Veteran actress Vanessa Williams is one of its producers.
These 21st-century contributions to theater are linked to the earliest instances of Blacks on Broadway that began in July 1898 with the premiere of “Clorindy: The Origin of the Cakewalk” at the Casino Theatre Roof Garden. Known as the “first Broadway musical to feature an all-Black cast,” the one-act show was produced by Edward Rice, the white manager of the venue.
Black composer Will Marion Cook wrote the music for the show, and respected Black poet and writer Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote the production’s lyrics and libretto (the text in the musical). The show starred entertainer Ernest Hogan, who became the first Black person to produce and star in a Broadway show — 1907’s “The Oyster Man.”
Dunbar and Cook returned to Broadway in 1903 with Jesse A. Shipp to produce “In Dahomey,” the first all-Black musical comedy on Broadway. The book for “In Dahomey” was written by Shipp, and Dunbar wrote the musical’s lyrics. The Black performing duo Williams and Walker (Bert Williams and George Walker), famous for their work in vaudeville theater, starred in the three-act show that was performed at the New York Theatre in 1903. The musical reopened at New York’s Grand Opera House in 1904 following a successful tour of Great Britain.
Actor Charles S. Gilpin — the first Black man to lead an integrated cast on Broadway by starring in 1919’s “Abraham Lincoln” — and other individuals also broke ground in Broadway theater. But early in the Harlem Renaissance, the all-Black musical “Shuffle Along” opened at the 63rd Street Music Hall in 1921, becoming the first hit Black Broadway show.
The book was written by the comedy team of Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, and the music and lyrics were created by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle.
“The success of ‘Shuffle Along’ ended more than a decade of systemic exclusion of Blacks from the Broadway stage,” wrote Philip Furia and Michael Lasser in their 2006 book “America’s Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley.”
The Blake and Sissle song “I’m Just Wild About Harry” — the most popular tune in “Shuffle Along” — was produced for a record label, was used in several Hollywood movies in the 1930s and also appeared in cartoons. It was revived in 1948 as the catchy campaign song for Democratic presidential candidate Harry Truman.
Close to a decade after “Shuffle Along,” “The Green Pastures” debuted in 1930 as the first Broadway drama with an all-black cast. Both Black and white critics enjoyed the stage production, and the subsequent film. Both versions showed parts of the Bible’s Old Testament from the point of view of a Southern Black youth during the Great Depression.
“The Green Pastures” playwright Marc Connelly won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play in 1931. In the Connelly stage version of “The Green Pastures,” actor Richard B. Harrison’s role of the “De Lawd” (God) was expanded, and Harrison gained notoriety — performing in more than 1,650 performances and acting in a tour that included theaters in the U.S. and Canada. Five years later, in 1935, Harrison was featured on the cover of TIME magazine.
For more information on the early days of Blacks on Broadway, visit bit.ly/NPR_ShuffleAlong, bit.ly/NMAAHC_ShuffleAlong and bit.ly/Playbill_InDahomey.
