African Grove

At the start, Brown held performances of the African Grove in his back yard, where he offered food and drink, but also poetry and short drama pieces.

Small casts and smaller budgets required expedients such as that described by the reviewer George Odell, writing of an 1821 performance of Richard III: "A dapper, wooly haired waiter at the City Hotel personated the royal Plantagenet in robes made up from discarded merino curtains of the ballroom.

[1] When the Park Theatre—New York City's leading theater of the time— put on Richard III starring the English tragedian Junius Brutus Booth,[8] the African Company rented a hall next door for its own production of the same play the same night.

Theatrical competition was stiff; Stephen Price, owner of the Park, orchestrated (and paid for) a disturbance over the rival productions so that the police would shut down the African Grove.

The play depicted the involvement of Garifuna leader Joseph Chatoyer in the Second Carib War on the island of Saint Vincent.

[8] Produced by the African Company in 1823, Drama is believed to have been the first full-length play by a black American performed in the United States.

[8] Despite the frequent changes in location and its short period of productions, the African Grove Theatre was important as a venue for noted African-American actors, such as James Hewlett.