West End frequentation increased by 11% compared to pre-pale levels while Broadway attendance dropped by 17%. As they crumple with divergent new normal, the Duel theater capital Offer a study in contrast to recent racial justice efforts.
In the midst of the demonstrations of the pandemic and the simultaneous and simultaneous black life, Black Broadway flourished. The black playwright games won the Pulitzer Prize four years in a row. Slave game has become the most nominated piece in Tony of all time. And the black playwrights wrote each new piece – seven – which reopened Broadway. Chicken and cookies Only his debut in Broadway has done dozens of black theater professionals, including the director, 70% of the distribution and the first designer Sound Black Woman from Broadway.
But many black Broadway professionals have shared to gain importance only in chaos and danger. “It was a joke,” explains André de Shields, who recently resumed his woven performance of Tony of the Greek god Hermès in the West End Hadestown. “It was Broadway who was called allies without asking for forgiveness, without risking reputation, without the repair revolution. They should have invest in what is in our hearts, what we are in mind and all the secrets we have kept because they have never looked at us in our eyes. ”
Eventually, Slave game did not win any tones, which makes Tony's most losing game. These seven black parts were precipitated through overviews and underwent chronic cancellations linked to the trash, then sudden closures. Is not too proudA musical of temptations, saw his brut fall $ 797,835 in a single week. Thoughts of a colorful man Closed the next day after announcing a new cast.
“We must broaden the idea of what a black room can be,” said Reynaldo Piniella, one of these condemned Thespans, “without disinfecting the message, without the black reality of the spoon. Black Joy. Black prosperity. Black belonging. Why can't he Shakespeare in Aimé Césaire park. A storm Located in the Caribbean? In 2021, the New York Public Off-Broadway Public Theater, which manages Shakespeare in the park, set objectives to offer a living salary by 2023 and to make its staff, programming and a 70% non-Blancian.
Speaking before his death last year, Ron Simons, a legendary producer of Black Theater, was dull about Broadway: “They are all the same people and they all look white. They want to do the right thing, but they don't know how to speak or find people who are not white.
While the New York Black Theater has left a glass cliff in London, the glass ceiling has become a greenhouse. “We want to revel in joy as an act of resistance,” explains Carolyn Forsyth, executive director of Talawa, based in Croydon, the oldest black theater company in Great Britain. “Culture is our reason.”
Lynette Linton, whose production of ChangesA comedy of the Windrush generation of the 1970s, ended last month after a race at the National Theater, agrees. “The Black British Theater is not new. His bravery is not new. His creativity is not new. And its power is not new. He has always been here. What has changed is that now we can put a show like Changes – Written in 1978 – and celebrate a job that was not celebrated as he should have been in his time. »»
Consider the black queerness in Dark hourBlack dignity in the Death of England Trilogy, black jostling Wolves on the roadBlack romance in Let's go outor black story in The legends of them,, Solitary Londoners And Princess Essex.
For decades, Black British Theater was stuck in a cycle mentality – good years and bad years, a party and a famine. “I do not know if there is a word for what has changed in the British black theater,” explains Linton. “But I know this: this is the end of the cycle mentality.”
It is not only that many things have changed since 1965, when Laurence Olivier played Othello in blackface. Many things have also changed since 2013, when the National Theater opened its Black Plays archives, with work dating back to 1909. Or 2018, when the bottom of the Windrush scandal, the Black Ticket Project and the British Black Theater Awards, made their debut and Natasha Gordon's Immetemate Nine nightsOn a black British family that tries a Jamaican tradition of mourning, made them the first British black playwright in the West End. These moments of the 21st century were all accelerators of black excellence through British theater.
Broadway, on the other hand, stumbled. “Broadway is a representation of the place where America is located,” said Zhailon Levingston, who in 2021 became the youngest director of Broadway, at 27. “But we are going to see more original productions with the aim of America from London. What she does is to test where our American values are. ”
Much of Black Broadway's hope is pinned to Alicia Keys' Hell's Kitchen – Who won a Grammy in February – a black Gypsy With Audra McDonald, the new piece by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins AimA new Afro -Latin musical on Buena Vista Social Club – which dominated Tony's nominations last week with 10 headlines – and The jelly ballA queer black story of Cats Aiming a second round after the fence in September. Meanwhile, Denzel Washington Othello was swept away by criticisms while his tickets of almost $ 1,000 created a record record of $ 2.82 million per week. And a new musical by Louis Armstrong – with a nominated performance in Tony by James Monroe Iglehart – ended after only 151 shows, including the overviews.
Neither London nor New York regularly follows the race for theater professionals throughout the city, but beyond tent posts such as Hamilton And The Lion King This West End season has black tracks in dozens of productions, including Billy Porter CabaretVanessa Williams The Devil Porte Pradahalf of the distribution of I wish you (A musical on the ski trial of Gwyneth Paltrow), General Turgidson in Dr StrangeloveSidney Poitier potential Retrogradeand the renewals of Cat on a hot tin roof,, The grapes of anger,, Guy and dolls And A tram named desire. Even the iceberg in Titanic is black – and win an olive tree for that.
“London has now become the Boston of the American theater, the space where the story becomes explored and experienced to try something new,” explains Jonathan McCrory, artistic director of the National Black Theater in New York, citing the history of Boston's incubation (of the offer ( Hamiltonfor one). “The pipeline is London in America.”
In the Renaissance of Black Theater of London, a name resonates: James Baldwin, one of the many black American artists of the 21st century who fled the United States for Paris. “I did not know what was going to happen to me in France, but I knew what was going to happen to me in New York,” he joked. In the Baldwin model, is London now a new refuge for American or even global darkness?
Levingston sighs: “Baldwin is a reminder that you can leave America but America can never leave you.” When asked if he had considered life abroad, McCRORY also sighs: “I try to build my oasis here. I try to get out of the building on fire, to stop being a firefighter and starting to be a gardener. »»
Beyond the scene, there is the question of the public. In Broadway, they are 71% white, with the household income of theater on average $ 276,375. London figures are more elusive, but the public of the National Theater is 89% white.
And there is no shortage of British racism. Francesca Amewudah-Rivers received death threats last year for playing a black Juliet in front of Romeo by Tom Holland. Kwame Kwei-Armah, former artistic director of the young Vic, fought against the anxiety of fundraising funds according to which her scenes could become a “national black theater”. And the “Black Out” nights from last year favoring the entirely black public slowed criticism to Downing Street.
But in London, a progressive point without return seems to be at hand. “I really don't want to have this same conversation in 10 years,” says Linton. “And I hope at that time, the olive trees caught up with the Tonys to recognize black talents.”
Meanwhile, MCCRORY details the challenge of being strategically undervalued: “The system is not broken. The system works as it wanted to work. We fight a system that describes it as broken. But it is Broadway that grows against its nature as a good old boys' club. The question is: do we have patience for this trip?
