• Source: Black Drama Anthology

Black Drama Anthology is a 1971 collection of plays solely written by Black American playwrights. The anthology was edited by Woodie King Jr, a Black American stage producer and Ron Milner, a Black American playwright. Writer Langston Hughes, Jazz musician Archie Shepp and writer Imamu Amiri Baraka appear in this collection, among others. Black Drama Anthology opens with a foreword by the editors King and Milner which outlines the motivations behind this collection, in which they write, "...recognizing all of this, and understanding that if we blacks are to have a theater in our own image, according to our own views, then we blacks will have to say which plays are in those images and of those views, we have here compiled an anthology of works by twenty-two of the best black playwrights...Twenty-three selections from an immensely rich field of talented black artists forging new, unique, and viable theater."




Themes


This collection explores an array of themes connected to Black American life. Many of the included works contain elements of social criticism and messages of anti-racism. All but one were written in the early 1970s a "a socially and politically dynamic moment in the nation's history and a renaissance decade for black theater."




Works Included in Anthology


Junkies are Full of (Shhh….) by Imamu Amiri Baraka
Bloodrites by Imamu Amiri Baraka
Junebug Graduates Tonight by Archie Shepp
The Corner by Ed Bullins
Who’s Got His Own by Ron Milner
Charades on East Fourth Street by Lonne Elder
Gabriel by Clifford Mason
Brotherhood by Douglas Turner Ward
The One by Oliver Pitcher
The Marriage by Donald Greaves
The Owl Killer by Philip Hayes Dean
Requiem for Brother X by William Wellington Mackey
Ododo by Joseph A. Walker
All White Caste by Ben Caldwell
Mother and Child by Langston Hughes
The Breakout by Charles (Oyamo) Gordon
Three X Love by Ron Zuber
A Medal for Willie by William Branch
Ladies in Waiting by Peter DeAnda
Black Cycle by Martie Charles
Strictly Matrimony by Errol Hill
Star of the Morning by Loften Mitchell
Toe Jam by Elaine Jackson




Reception


The collection was met with mixed review, primarily in the realm of critical scholarship.




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