SOURCE: "Toward Creation of a Collective Form: The Plays of Ed Bullins," in Studies in American Drama, 1945-Present, Vol. 1, 1986, pp. 33-47.

In the following excerpt, Canaday traces Bullins's artistic development, asserting that his early works focus on feelings of alienation, while his later works concentrate on those of collectivity and community.

When Ed Bullins wrote the introduction to The Theme Is Blackness, a collection of his plays published in 1973, he made an important, frequently quoted statement about what he called the New Black Theatre as well as about contemporary black playwrights, many of them friends and col-leagues associated with him in the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem. The goal of that Black Theatre, encompassing all who write plays for it, is a continuity that "is achieved through creative struggle: ruthless dedication in creation of collective forms that will survive any single individual's life. … to inspire the creation of...