Framing the Stage: Structures of Race, Imperial Oppression, and Performances of Blackness, 1770–1850

Abstract

The year 2012 marked a watershed moment regarding the staging, performance, and reception of Blackness and Black characters on the German stage. While the German repertoire is said to offer too few roles for Black actors to justify a permanent position, Black actors are at the same time not Black enough to play nonwhite characters. Later in 2012, American Pulitzer-winning Bruce Norris’ play Clybourne Park was scheduled to be performed at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and a white actress was cast in the role of an African-American woman. The acceptance of racial mimicry for depicting nonwhite people, the vestigial narratives and images about them, and their barring from working on white-dominated stages harken back to early modern performance “traditions.” Staging Slavery thus rests on the premise that the playhouse could be an arena of protest but also a venue for racist and imperialist exploitations of those who were colonized and enslaved.