IRR: Theatre: representations of slavery and the Black Character Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 15:15:08 +0100 Message-Id: WEBWATCH The Scottish Refugee Council has published research carried out by the Glasgow Centre for the Child and Society: 'This is a good place to live and think about the future...The needs and experiences of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Scotland'. Download the executive summary at: http://www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk/pub/UASC_Exec_Summary (pdf file, 216kb) The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) has published research conducted by the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute: 'Race relations 2006: a research study'. Download at: http://www.cre.gov.uk/downloads/racerelations2006final.pdf (pdf file, 456kb) The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) has published research conducted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr): 'The reception and integration of new migrant communities'. Download at: http://www.cre.gov.uk/downloads/newmigrantcommunitiesresearch.pdf (pdf file, 737kb) The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) has published its second factfile: 'Ethnic Minorities In Great Britain'. Download at: http://www.cre.gov.uk/downloads/factfile02_ethnic_minorities.pdf (pdf file, 152kb) The Charity Commission has published some questions and answers on the legal and regulatory framework for charities wishing to engage in campaigning and political activities. View the information at: http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/supportingcharities/campaignqa.asp The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman for England and Wales has published a report into the death of Bereket Yohannes: 'Circumstances surrounding the death of a man at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre on 19 January 2006'. Download at: http://www.ppo.gov.uk/download/fatal-incident-reports/a16806-male-detainee.pdf (pdf file, 440kb) The Border and Immigration Agency of the Home Office has published: 'Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules - HC398'. View the information at: http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/lawandpolicy/immigrationrules/statementofchangehc398 Or view the Explanatory Memorandum at: http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/lawandpolicy/immigrationrules/explanatorymemorandumhc398 The House of Lords and House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights has published: 'The Treatment of Asylum Seekers: Tenth Report of Session 2006-07 Volume I - Report and formal minutes'. Download at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200607/jtselect/jtrights/81/81i.pdf (pdf file, 752kb) The House of Lords and House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights has published: 'The Treatment of Asylum Seekers: Tenth Report of Session 2006-07 Volume II - Oral and written evidence'. Download at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200607/jtselect/jtrights/81/81ii.pdf (pdf file, 3.4mb) The House of Lords and House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights has published: 'Legislative Scrutiny: Fourth Progress Report Eleventh Report of Session 2006-07'. Download at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200607/jtselect/jtrights/83/83.pdf (pdf file, 560kb) The Communities and Local Government department has published: 'Preventing violent extremism - Winning hearts and mind'. Download at: http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/401/PreventingviolentextremismWinningheartsandminds_id1509401.pdf (pdf file, 232kb) The Communities and Local Government department has published: 'Preventing violent extremism, Pathfinder fund 2007/08: Case studies'. Download at: http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/404/PreventingViolentExtremismPathfinderFund20072008Casestudies_id1509404.pdf (pdf file, 384kb) The Communities and Local Government department has published: 'The Role of Muslim Identity Politics in Radicalisation: (a study in progress)' Download at: http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/393/TheRoleofMuslimIdentityPoliticesinRadicalisationastudyinprogress_id1509393.pdf (pdf file, 248kb) Self Help News, The Editorial Team for the Afrikan And Diaspora Institute (ADI) has published a report on the Black Self-Help Movement Response to the Gun Crime Debate in Britain: 'Urban Children and Young People: ''Gun Babies of Our Making'''. Download at: http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf/gun_babies.pdf (pdf file, 1.7mb) NEW WEBSITES The Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees has launched its new website. View the website at: http://www.gctwr.co.uk FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 DISLOSURES Under the Freedom of Information Act the Home Office has released information on: 'A month-by-month breakdown of the numbers of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults recorded at HMP and YOI Reading during the past 12 months'. View the information at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/freedom-of-information/released-information/foi-archive-offender-management/5826-prisoner-assaults-hmp-yoi?view=Standard&pubID=456047 r e v i e w u n i t e d k i n g d o m - - > >> Theatre: representations of slavery and the Black Character > By Amanda Sebestyen 5 April 2007, 10:00am How fitting for a book on racism on the Victorian stage to be published in the week Britain tries to commemorate the bicentenary of outlawing the Atlantic slave trade! Freedom Day, with our classic national blend of self-congratulation and self-recrimination, gives a good entry point into the world of popular theatre in those next few decades: when West Indian slaves were still serving out their unpaid 'apprenticeships' to the plantocrats, and American slave ships were having their busiest years in the whole history of the trade. The stage century kicked off to a rousing chorus of 'Rule Britannia' - sung by a chorus of cork-faced white men in black woolly tights, as their slave shackles were struck off by a freedom-loving British Jack Tar. Ten years later (and 150 years before the Royal Shakespeare Company's then-daring 'colour-blind casting', with two further generations to go before Adrian Lester and David Oyelowo played Shakespearean leads), the great Black actor Ira Aldridge escaped segregated American theatres to play a full range of classical and modern roles right across Britain and continental Europe. Aldridge embodied Othello, Aphra Behn's betrayed slave-prince Oroonoko, and Karfa the scarifying rebel leader of 'Obi' (with his Obeah priestess mother, clearly based on memories of Cudjoe and Nanny whose Maroon guerrillas had humiliated the British army in Jamaica). Audiences were electrified and 'the African Roscius' had a career lasting 40 years. But the planter aristocracy, and later the scientific racists, effectively barred him from the Royal patent theatres of central London until his very last years. The venomous Carlylean nigger-hatred of contemporary reviews still takes the breath away. Then, as the high point of British Abolition faded and American plantation slavery seemed set to last for ever, came the moment where Prince Oroonoko was shuffled off the stage by Jim Crow. If anyone doubts the relevance of a 30-year close-up of theatre history, consider the career of Jim Crow and Zip Coon, both 'Black fun' characters imported by White American comic T.D.Rice in 1836. Crow gave his name to the iron laws of segregation that ruled the American South for a century after the end of plantation slavery, while his dandy sidekick Zip Coon gave us generations of 'coon songs' up till the Black and White Minstrel Show, and a name still used as a race-hate term by British fascists within my lifetime. How did it all begin, with a dance craze? In 1836, wrote staggered onlookers, 'the crowing mania spread like wildfire; the king and queen, and all the ministers, danced like mad to it' (so far no change then: the Queen Mother was wowing the Royal Family with her Ali G stomp 150 years later) , 'and the small beggar-boys of the street were "jumping Jim Crow" in the public crossing places by day and by nights'. Rice may have picked up his Jim Crow shuffle from bits of the African-derived plantation cakewalk, later to be reworked brilliantly by Black performers from Sisseretta Jones to Bill Bojangles Robinson to Michael Jackson. For a London audience far from actual Black people, however, the effects were disastrous. Black skin to most Victorian theatregoers became ineradicably funny. When a play took the town by storm, it would run at several different theatres, not only with different casts but differing scripts. By looking at these constant re-writes, Hazel Waters traces the changes of taste and feelings of these urban audiences as slave stereotypes crowded onstage. In December 1852, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was being played at eleven theatres across the city . With each new script Tom's stubborn faith becomes more childlike (not allegiance to an inner God but to a godly 'Massa'). Sam and Andy - the plantation rude boys who in Stowe's novel use their clowning to mask other slaves' escape - become boastful, cowardly, lovelorn buffoons. Remembering my childhood reading of a Classics Illustrated comic-book foregrounding saintly White Little Eva and tearful Tom - a startling contrast to the rebel narrative I encountered reading the novel as an adult - I can see how the scenario had mutated through all these re-enactments in Victorian theatre. This history ends on a note of pain, partly echoing the exclusion of Ira Aldridge and the possibilities for Black humanity that he represented. I have long admired Hazel Waters' writing for the touch of poetry it brings to the analytical journal Race and Class which she co-edits with the magisterial A. Sivanandan. Every page of this first book of hers, Racism on the Victorian Stage is packed with insights and consequently pockmarked with my marginal scribblings. Ask your library to buy a copy, or plague the publisher to issue a paperback. ---- FOOTNOTE Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representations of Slavery and the Black Character by Hazel Waters, Cambridge University Press, £50. The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors. IRR is not responsible for the content of external websites. Inclusion of a link does not constitute an endorsement. Please contact us (/contact/index.html) if you come across a broken link. > RELATED LINKS Order Racism on the Victorian stage (http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521862620) by Hazel Waters Read an IRR News Story on the book launch: Slavery and racism on the British stage (http://www.irr.org.uk/2007/march/ha000025.html) IRR is not responsible for the content of external websites. Inclusion of a link does not constitute an endorsement. 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