Embedded Files
“Events like this [Young Griots: New Works for the Stage] help us fulfill our role as the center of the Black dramatic narrative.
These plays demonstrate rigor, creativity, and a deep seriousness about the craft of storytelling.”
~ Dr. Khalid Y. Long, Associate Dean for Research and Creative Endeavors
Restorative Theatre Performance Project (Practice Based Research)
Restorative Theatre Performance Project (Practice Based Research)
Founded in 2024 by Professor Denise J. Hart, Restorative Theatre Performance Project (RTPP), is a collaborative performing arts-based research initiative that employs restorative practices to build bridges between arts, culture and science to engender social change.
Restorative practices have ancient roots in Indigenous cultures worldwide that focus on repairing harm. It employs the idea that a thriving community is interconnected and when harm occurs it does not simply affect those involved, but the entire community.
The arts are inherently multi-disciplinary and have always been used to incite change, thus, RTPP develops arts centric multi-disciplinary programming and provides reimagined performing arts training that utilize restorative practices to offer the arts community new paradigms for ways of thinking, knowing and being.
RTPP's restorative values methodology helps theatre leaders and practitioners move away from a culture that centers a punitive hierarchical power structure and move towards eradicating the perpetuation of harmful industry practices which remains pervasive in theatre audition, rehearsal and performance.
Denise is experienced in creating transformational trainings that support arts leaders, educators and practitioners, helping them learn from the past, create meaningful change and elevate organizational narrative and image.
How I Met My Cousin (Auto-ethonographic research)
How I Met My Cousin (Auto-ethonographic research)
How I Met My Cousin: The Genealogical Saga of the Bailey Family Tree tells the story of the rich legacy of freedom and justice in the life of Sue Bailey Thurman, founder of the Boston Museum of African American History.
An auto-ethnographic solo performance, curated, written and performed by Sue’s “family history” obsessed 3rd cousin, Professor Denise J. Hart, the play, a form of public scholarship, takes the audience on a journey through the highs and lows of African American genealogical research using documentary style narrative story telling. The world of the early 20th century and beyond come alive with a cornucopia of familiar and famous African Americans, both friends and colleagues who stood alongside Sue Bailey as they fostered a pathway for African Americans to thrive.
Commissioned by the Museum of African American History in Boston, my solo-play, How I Met My Cousin: The Genealogical Saga of the Bailey Family Tree will be presented during Juneteenth weekend in Boston along with an lecture in conversation with museum director Dr. Noelle Trent: A Blueprint for Freedom & Justice: The life and legacy of Sue Bailey Thurman
Sue Bailey
Sue Bailey Thurman - How Her Brother Was Saved From Being Lynched
Sue Bailey Thurman in Greece
Sue Elvie Bailey
Maude Bailey
Dorcas Bailey
Lizzie Woods
Nannie Burroughs, ca. 1900Courtesy Library of Congress (2005683660)
Mary McLeod Bethune
Jane E. Scruggs
Isaac G. Bailey Sr.
Isaac G. Bailey Sr. 1903 Letter - The Impact of Seeing John Bown's Monument
Isaac G. Bailey Sr.
Howard Players Theatre History Archive (Digital Humanities Research)
Howard Players Theatre History Archive (Digital Humanities Research)
Howard Players Theatre History Archive 1909-2019
Howard Players Theatre History Archive 1909-2019
Howard Players Theatre History Archive is a publicly accessible digital humanities research project that documents the Howard Players theatrical production from 2019-1909.
This research repository makes public for the first time a comprehensive digitized snapshot of the evolution of the Howard Players theatrical production spanning more than 100 years.
I started this research project in 2018 when I presented my preliminary research findings at the Black Theatre Network conference.
Book Chapter: Howard University Players (Theatre Criticism)
Book Chapter: Howard University Players (Theatre Criticism)
The Howard University Players: From Respectability Politics to Black Representation
The Howard University Players: From Respectability Politics to Black Representation
Status: Published
Press: Routledge Press, 2018
Hart is honored to have contributed her scholarly research in the 2018 Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance in the chapter, The Howard University Players: From respectability politics to Black representation.
ABSTRACT:
Howard, like many HBCUs, held fast to the belief that respectability politics, or the presentation of Eurocentric acceptable standards of appearance and behavior, would protect Black people from prejudices and systemic injustices. This chapter examines how the “respectability” framework shaped the plays produced by the Howard Players from 1919 to the mid-1960s; it also reviews how this paradigm of respectability shifted as a result of the Black Power movement of the 1960s into the 1970s.
Howard Players 1950's. Front row: Owen Dodson, James Butcher, Anne Cook, John Lovell(Moorland Spingarn Research Center photo credit)
Article: Decolonizing the Curriculum (Theatre Criticism)
Article: Decolonizing the Curriculum (Theatre Criticism)
Decolonizing the Curriculum Through Black Power: Howard Players Theatre History 1969-1979
Decolonizing the Curriculum Through Black Power: Howard Players Theatre History 1969-1979
The following article/essay will fill the gap in the underrepresented research areas of the Howard Players contributions to Black Theatre curriculum.
Status: Work in Progress
On the heels of the post-Civil Rights movement Howard University, like other colleges and universities, was thrust into an upheaval that reflected student dissatisfaction, anger and disillusion. From 1968-69, With multiple protests erupting across Howard’s campus, the student demands across disciplines largely remained the same: that Howard University declare itself to be a “black” university as demonstrated through its curricular content. Decolonizing the Curriculum Through Black Power: Howard Players Theatre History 1969-1979 examines the cultural and political use of protest to shape educational curriculum and policy in the College of Fine Arts. It will uncover, historicize and contextualize the 1969 College of Fine Arts five-day student protest spurred by the resulting Black Power movement. It contextualizes the Howard Players drama student’s participation in the protest and their subsequent demands for the immediate creation of a black centric curriculum. The article offers new insights into the complexities of a “Black” university needing to create a black centric curriculum. It will highlight the drama students understanding that expansion of Black identity and cultural expression within the framework of their collegiate education was non-negotiable and that resistance would remain a necessity in the struggle to achieve advancement in the new era.
This research will be of significant value to scholars doing research on: Black Theatre, The Howard Players, Historic context of theatre in Washington DC, History of Howard University, Theatre History, Theatre in Higher Education, Civil Rights and Organized Protests on HBCU campus'.
TV Interview on WJLA (ABC7) Washington DC (Theatre Criticsm)
TV Interview on WJLA (ABC7) Washington DC (Theatre Criticsm)
A look back on the Howard Players: the oldest Black student acting group in the country
A look back on the Howard Players: the oldest Black student acting group in the country
by Robert Burton/ABC7Thursday, February 11th 2021
Click here to watch recorded segment.
WASHINGTON (ABC7) — In honor of Black History Month, ABC7 is putting the spotlight on the oldest Black student acting group in the country.
The Howard Players of Howard University were official established 114 years ago, 1907. However, the groundwork began year before that by Carlie Franklin Cook. Cook, a descendant of slaves, taught elocution at Howard in in the 1890’s.
Notable members of the acting group include Phylicia Rashad of The Cosby Show, Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison and Chadwick Boseman a.k.a. The Black Panther.
The Howard Players changed the game for black theatre as it was nearly nonexistent in the early 1900’s in Washington D.C.
Howard Professor of Theatre Arts Denise Hart told Good Morning Washington’s Robert Burton this group gave Black people a chance to see themselves on the stage.
“Once the Howard Players began to have seasons and produce, Black people of means, who had the finances and the desire could come and see theater produced for, by and about African Americans and black folk” says Hart.
“It gave an avenue for other people, not only Black people, to see the narrative, the stories centered around the Black experience”
Howard Players 1911THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR (comedy) written by William Shakespeare. Presented at the New Howard Theatre. March 2-3, 1911.(Moorland Spingarn Research Center photo credit)
Blackademics TV: PBS Television Lecture (Theatre Criticism)
Blackademics TV: PBS Television Lecture (Theatre Criticism)
2018 PBS Television Presentation
Excellence at Historically Black Colleges: Beyond Respectability Politics essay was presented at BlacademicsTV 2018 in front of a live audience and recorded at University of Austin at Texas.
In this essay I discuss the concept of black excellence and its historic relationship to respectability politics on the campus of HBCU's.
The episode is now part of Season 7, episode 7 which airs on Blackademics Television on national PBS stations.
Blackademics TV is a unique opportunity for me to utilize my expertise as a writer and my knowledge of public-focused dramaturgy. Public-focused dramaturgical efforts function to contextualize and offer frameworks for interpretation, critique and analysis.
Conference Presentation (Archival Research)
Conference Presentation (Archival Research)
Black Theatre Network Conference
Black Theatre Network Conference
Archival Research Presentation at the 2018 conference of my initial research for eventual lecture series and book focused on the Howard Players.
For the delivery of the presentation of my research at the 2018 Black Theatre Network Conference I utilized my expertise in public-focused dramaturgy. Public-focused dramaturgical efforts function to contextualize and offer frameworks for interpretation, critique and analysis.
I created and executed a slide presentation that moved the audience through select time periods in the 108 year production history oftentimes sharing information that had not been previously shared publicly.
I also posed questions to the audience inviting them to critique their perspectives on the evolution of black theatre, as well as shared the ongoing questions I seek to answer as I continue to conduct my research.
The Black Theatre Network conference is an annual conference which serve as a national forum for the exchange of ideas between professionals, educators and students of Black Theatre.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse