Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal

Kate Dossett is associate professor of history at the University of Leeds and the author of Bridging Race Divides: Black Nationalism, Feminism and Integration in the United States 1896–1935.
For more information about Kate Dossett, visit the Author Page.

“Theater productions from the 1930s by or about African Americans have often been marginalized, but Dossett . . . offers fresh insight into this subject.”--CHOICE

“A fascinating examination of the Black drama produced by the Federal Theatre Project (FTP)’s Negro Units in Harlem, Chicago, Hartford, and Seattle. . . . [Dossett] compellingly argues that Black drama created spaces, both literal and figurative, where Black Americans could express agency and enact visions for a new America.”—Journal of African American History

"Anyone who thinks they know the history of American theatre will have to read this book and think again. It's a revelation. The innovative force of black artists and theatre makers in this book will blow away any notion that radical theatre today needs to be invented. We already have a truly radical heritage to build on. Dossett shows us that our creative and intellectual life today is still shaped and informed by black theatre of the 1930s. Many of the plays discussed in this brilliant new book are not only fresh and visionary, but their sheer creative force is a challenge to the systems and ideologies that continue to oppress--and are as powerful and important as anything new being written for theatre today."--Naomi Wallace, author of One Flea Spare

"An interdisciplinary tour de force, Kate Dossett's trailblazing study of Black performance communities is a richly illuminating investigation into a revolutionary world. She works with Black theatre manuscripts not only to excavate but to examine the complicated, collaborative, and creative relationships experienced by playwrights, actors, directors, and audiences during the Federal Theatre era. In her powerful social, literary, cultural, and political history, she maps a myriad of Black acts of artistry, authorship, and activism to do hard-hitting justice to the pioneering ways in which Black performance communities 'imagined radical paths to the future.'"--Celeste-Marie Bernier, author of Characters of Blood: Black Heroism in the Transatlantic Imagination

"Dossett offers a nuanced, finely textured account of the black theatre manuscripts, productions, and communities. Her conception of the archive, innovative research method, and the care and insight with which she reads the many black performance texts she so painstakingly brings together is nothing short of remarkable."--Sonnet Retman, author of Real Folks: Race and Genre in the Great Depression