She wanted an all-Black group that performed Broadway plays, to combat the popular "racial stereotypes of African Americans as singers, dancers, and slapstick comedians.
[3] That same year Robert Levy, an American Jew, became involved with the Lafayette Players through the formation of the Quality Amusement Corporation, which managed both the theater and the acting troupe.
Some actors who were cast in the Lafayette Players: Edna Morton, Lawrence Chenault, Canada Lee, Rose McClendon, Oscar Micheaux, Lionel Monagas, Clarence Muse, and Charles S. Gilpin.
Du Bois saw a production of the Negro Players performing Ridgely Torrence's Three Plays for a Negro Theater in 1917, it influenced him to write, "The present spiritual production in the souls of Black folk is going to give American stage a drama that will lift it above silly songs and leg shows.
The Guild was admired for creating a substitute from the cheap musical comedy and melodramatic works that were taking over Harlem theaters.
Du Bois and Regina Anderson co-founded the Krigwa Players for the sole purpose of advancing African-American playwrights and practitioners.
[10] In the summer of 1926, the Krigwa Players Little Negro Theater had found a home at the public library on 135th street with Du Bois as chairman of the group.
The prizes would sometimes include providing space for training and rehearsals, and put on productions that were intended to uplift and educate the audiences.
The company included: William Jackson, Agnes Marsh, Charlie Taylor, Charles Randolph, and Frank Wilson, who directed.
[8] The Alhambra Players performed shows including: Norman Houston's The Panther, Why Women Cheat, The Temper, In the Underworld, The House of Lies, Mr.
Out of its ashes, emerged the Negro Experimental Theatre in 1929, founded by librarian Regina Anderson Andrews and teachers Dorothy Peterson.
Others who helped establish the organization were critic Theophilus Lewis, playwright Jessie Redmon Fauset, and teacher Harold Jackman.
These members included Du Bois and Anderson of course, as well as Jessie Fauset, an African-American playwright, essayist, and educator, and prominent actress for the Harlem Renaissance.
When HET inherited the same library basement where the Krigwa Players performed, they focused on reaching out to the community, and collaborating with other races, and set up educational programs.
In fact, according to A History of African American Theatre by Errol Hill and James V. Hatch, "HET also relied on white drama to fill its programs...Largely because they published their work."
The largest and most successful performance to come out of HET was Wade in the Water in 1929, starring prominent Harlem Renaissance actress Laura Bowman and teacher Dorothy Peterson.
The play is based around an old folk song that stemmed from the fragmented stanzas, rhymes, melodic phrases, and spirituals of African People in the American diaspora, According to African-American hymnologist Melva Wilson Costen.
The play itself tells the story of a slave woman ONA and her dying son, and their experience within the plantation culture that they live on.
NCP moved into West End theatre and this is where they present three productions: Seven Heaven written by Audtin Strong, starring Ida Anderson, Vere E. Johns, George Randol, and J. Homer Tutt, Crime by Samual Shipman and John Hymer, and The Gorilla by Harold Spence.
[8] After working in the war, Langston Hughes came back to American and told Louise Patterson about his idea of a people's theatre.
[17] With Louise Thompson Patterson's assistance, Hughes' goal was to create "a group of proficient actors who would present productions for labor organizations.
Also mentioned in its constitution was creating a permanent repertory group that performed pieces dealing with lives, the problems, and hopes of Blacks and their relation to the American society.
Hughes wrote most of the pieces that were performed there: The Slave, The Man Who Died At Twelve O'clock, or several skits that lampooned white caricatures of blacks: Em-Fueher Jones, Limitations of Life, and Little Eva's End.
The program was made up of two or three skits followed by the resistance piece, Don't You Want To Be Free?, which became the longest running play in Harlem at the time.
Other pieces that Hughes wrote included: Limitations of Life, The Em-Fuehrer Jones, Colonel Tom's Cabin, Hurrah, America!
Some pieces he did in collaboration with his staff, which included Hilary Phillips, Powell Lindsay, Dorothy Peterson, and Louis Douglas.
Here they performed productions such as: Don't You Want To Be Free?, Limitations of Life, Colonel Tom's Cabin (aka Little Eva's End), The Em-Fuehrer Jones, Hurrah, America!, Scarlet Sister Barry, and Young As We Is.