Commercial Feature

Black performance has a long and varied history which dates back hundreds of years. Today we see black performers in all kinds of roles including the stars of the new hit musical Sister Act, which is currently showing at London’s Adelphi theatre.

However, this has not always been the case and although black performers featured in pageants in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, as more and more black people came to Britain the need for an expressive outlet was needed.

References have been made to African performers in Edinburgh, which date back as far as 1505 and Henry VIII also had a ‘Black Trumpete’ who he hired for eight pence a day, and as such an image of him in included in the painted roll of the Westminster tournament of 1511.

The nineteenth century regularly saw black performers on the stages of London, often coming over from America and the first well known black actor was Ira Alridge who proved very popular on the Victorian stage and was acclaimed throughout Europe for his role as the lead in Othello.

The UK abolished any form of slavery in 1807 but America was slower to bring about complete change and 11 states refused to put an end to slavery. An American anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was adapted to be a stage play and played at the London Adelphi Theatre to widespread support and acclaim in 1852.

Black faced minstrels were very popular in London during the 1840s and were considered as being popular entertainment for families. Minstrels sang, danced and played various musical instruments including the banjo and tambourine. The shows were usually performed by white actors who adopted a ‘blackface’ using make up and often represented grotesque caricatures of stereotyped black behaviour. Though this kind of show continued well into the 1960s, the shows began to feature increasing numbers of black performers.

Black British stars made names for themselves during the 1930s with new shoes like Showboat opening at London’s Drury Lane theatre which focussed on dealing with serious topics such as racial prejudice and unhappy marriages.

Although an increasing number of black actors were training at British drama schools, prejudice was still rife with Jamaican actress Pauline Henriques, of LAMDA, being made to ‘white up’ in order to take part in a Shakespearean play in1932.

Several successful black actors emerged over the following years with the musical Calyspo featuring a predominantly West Indian cast and actors such as Robert Adams, from British Guyana, who founded the Negro Repertory Arts Theatre and Mrinalini Sarabhai, a renowned dancer from Madras, who helped to popularise Indian dance in the UK.

In the 1970s several new black theatre companies were set up including the Black Theatre Co-operative, Temba Theatre, Tara Arts, Tamasha Theatre Company and Carib Theatre, all of which aimed to bring people from all backgrounds into the wider theatre community. Black companies such including writing companies and venues such as the Oval House in London and The Drum in Birmingham which aimed to create work that expressed their own experiences and to provide opportunities for black people to become more involved with the arts.

Today black theatre is thriving with black music, dance and humour being intrinsic to developing western entertainment. Of course, the argument will always arise as to why there is any need at all to simultaneously refer to a person’s work and colour or racial identity in the same sentence.

There is obviously still some room for growth to make sure that theatre is open to all, however, large leaps of progress have been made and because of this today we see musicals such as Sister Act, currently playing at the London Palladium with a black leading lady. There’s no shortage of actors from different cultures on the stage these days, it just seems to be a case of continuing integration and thus creating a theatre for all.

The London Palladium theatre currently has an exhibition documenting the history of black theatre, which is well worth a look if you are interested in discovering a little bit of theatrical history before going on to experience a theatre show for yourself.