Project Background
Project Background
Embedded Files
Howard Players Theatre History Archive launched in 2024. However, I began researching this project in 2016. The research process accelerated in 2018 after I presented my preliminary research findings at the Black Theatre Network conference.
Howard Players Theatre History Archive is a publicly available digital humanities research archives project that chronicles and documents the hidden history and unique contribution to Black theatre made by the Howard Players from 1909-2019.
It builds on my 2018 research published by Routledge Press, The Howard University Players: From respectability politics to Black representation.
This research responds to the question "How does the Howard Players theatre history contribute to the evolution of Black Theatre and American theatre from 1909-2019?"
Project Launch 2024
It seeks to explore, and encourage exploration and interrogation of the challenges and accomplishments found in the genealogy of Black Theatre viewed through the lens of Black collegiate theatre.
This research is a resource for researchers, educators and the general public to study the history of Black Theatre. It provides scholars with a deeper understanding of the contributions of Black Theatre to American Theatre.
It's unique factor is the comprehensive digitized snapshot of different time periods and access to biographical information, photographs, playbills, other theatre ephemera, news, video, oral histories and documents related to Howard Players theatrical production from 1909-2019 that have not been brought together before as a single collection.
It will also feature specially curated articles and in person and digital projects on various aspects of Black Theatre.
Routledge Companion to African American Theatre & Performance (2018)
Routledge Companion to African American Theatre & Performance (2018)
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, Unknown, James Butcher (in 2nd row with hat on), Anne Cook, John Lovell(Moorland Spingarn Research Center photo credit)
TV Interview on WJLA (ABC7) Washington DC (2021)
TV Interview on WJLA (ABC7) Washington DC (2021)
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)
Black Theatre Network Conference Presentation (2018)
Black Theatre Network Conference Presentation (2018)
2018 Black Theatre Network Conference
2018 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.
Beyond Respectability Politics at Historically Black Colleges
Beyond Respectability Politics at Historically Black Colleges
2018 Blackademics Television Presentation
This 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.
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