Harlem

In Harlem in the 1920's many people, both African-American and white, attended vaudeville shows, dramas, and Broadway plays performed by African-Americans. The Harlem Renaissance reflected a desire to display the culture of African-Americans to the public.

The musical-comedy "Shuffle Along," which became a major Broadway hit, is often credited as starting the Harlem Renaissance.The show was written, produced, and starred in by African-Americans. It was written by Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Flournoy Miller, and Aubrey Lyles. It was the first musical-comedy to use a dramatic storyline. It played in New York for one year and then traveled for two years.

When segragation was abolished many theaters in the Harlem area flourished, especially the Lafayette theater. The African-American musical-comedies that showed there became popular very quickly. The first theater group of Harlem, the Lafayette Players, was founded at this theater in 1916 by Charles Gilpin. It was an African-American company, but it only performed plays written by whites because plays written by African-Americans were not yet in existance. It was a unique experience for African-Americans to see African-American actors playing roles that were serious instead of comedic. Other theater groups of the time included the Harlem Experimental Players, the Krigwa Players, the Negro Art Theater, the Utopia Players, and the Harlem Community Players. The groups were mostly small and amatuer.

Most African-Americans were entertained by the black dramas and vaudeville shows at this time. However, a group of black intellectuals felt the need for an authentic Negro theater and for awhile the Krigwa Players produced works reflecting this idea, and, in the latter part of the 1920s, their plays included such topics as lynching and the Underground Railroad. W.E.B. DuBois was one of their strongest promoters. He believed that African-American drama could only be "evoked by a Negro audience desiring to see its own life depicted by its own writers and actors." DuBois wrote that the African-American theater "must be: I. About us. That is, they must have plots which reveal Negro life as it is. II. By us. That is, they must be written by Negro authors who understand from birth and continual association just what it means to be a Negro today. III. For us. That is, the theater must cater primarily to Negro audiences and be supported and sustained