Theatre

As the author indicates in her essays, theatre is her means of communicating her vision for African American culture and society, and of inspiring her fellow African Americans to take a more past-centric view of the present. In other words, theatre is the means she uses to bring the past into the present.

African-American History

The author contends that many general aspects and specific events in African American history have been downplayed, ignored, or wiped from the consciousness of those who live in America, particularly African Americans. Her plays, she suggests, are a means of bringing awareness of that history into contemporary experience.

The Emancipation Proclamation

In September of 1862, American President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that all slaves in states still fighting the Civil War (essentially the Southern States) were free. The Proclamation defined the war as a battle against slavery, and was in many ways the early...