Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:11:06.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Joy and Love in Zora Neale Hurston and Dorothy Waring’s 1944 Black Feminist Musical Polk County

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2021

Eric M. Glover
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What makes Zora Neale Hurston different as a musical theatre writer is her concern about the creation of safe spaces for black women actors. By looking at the theatrical representation of black women in Hurston and Dorothy Waring’s Polk County, it is possible to see ways in which they resist intersecting oppressions of gender and race. Hurston’s adaptation of the blues and folk music for the musical is also subject to analysis, as is her lasting impact on musical theatre.

Type
Article
Information
TDR , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press for Tisch School of the Arts/NYU

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Andrews, Lindsey. 2015. “Black Feminism’s Minor Empiricism: Hurston, Combahee, and the Experience of Evidence.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 1, 1:1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stage, Arena. n.d. Arena Stage Records, Collection #C0017, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries.Google Scholar
Bass, Holly. 2002. “Critic’s Notebook.” American Theatre 19, 6:50–52.Google Scholar
Biers, Katherine. 2015. “Practices of Enchantment: The Theatre of Zora Neale Hurston.” TDR 59, 4 (T228):67–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boehm, Lisa Krissoff. 2009. Making a Way out of No Way: African American Women and the Second Great Migration. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carby, Hazel V. 1986. “It Jus Be’s Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues.” Radical America 20, 4:9–24.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Faedra Chatard. 2011. “The Innovation of Inclusion: Dramaturgy in the Mythos of a ‘Post-Racial Era.’” Review: The Journal of Dramaturgy 21, 1:16–21.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics.” The University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, 1:139–67.Google Scholar
Diamond, Elin. 2015. “Folk Modernism: Zora Neale Hurston’s Gestural Drama.” Modern Drama 58, 1:112–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drobney, Jeffrey A. 1997. Lumbermen and Log Sawyers: Life, Labor, and Culture in the North Florida Timber Industry, 1830–1930. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.Google Scholar
Funderburg, Lise. 2006. The Color Purple: A Memory Book of the Broadway Musical. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers.Google Scholar
Galella, Donatella. 2019. America in the Round: Capital, Race, and Nation at Washington, DC’s Arena Stage. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. 2011. “Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Reimagining Porgy and Bess in the Twenty-First Century.” Theatrebill. Program for The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Gaunt, Kyra D. 2006. The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Graziano, John. 2008. “Images of African Americans: African American Musical Theatre, Show Boat, and Porgy and Bess .” In The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, ed. Everett, William A. and Laird, Paul R., 89–102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Griffin, Farah Jasmine. 2004. “When Malindy Sings: A Meditation on Black Women’s Vocality.” In Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, ed. Edwards, Brent Hayes, Griffin, Farah Jasmine, and Robert, G. O’Meally, 102–25. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Griffin, Farah Jasmine. 2013. Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics during World War II. New York: Basic Civitas.Google Scholar
Hammerstein, Oscar II. (1927) 2014. Show Boat. New York Public Library, 8 July. Accessed 9 May 2017. www.nypl.org/blog/2014/07/08/musical-month-show-boat/.Google Scholar
Harris, Paul. 2002. “Polk County.” Variety, 26 April:30.Google Scholar
Harris-Perry, Melissa V. 2011. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hazzard-Gordon, Katrina. 1990. Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. 1993. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Abe. 1944. “GIs Want Variety Acts Fed Up on Song and Dance: Zora Neale Hurston’s Play Goes into Rehearsal in July—Beautiful Actress Wanted.” New York Amsterdam News, 1 July:8B.Google Scholar
Hill, Lynda Marion. 1996. Social Rituals and the Verbal Art of Zora Neale Hurston. Washington, DC: Howard University Press.Google Scholar
Hine, Darlene Clark. 1989. “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance.” Signs 14, 4:912–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, Langston, and Hurston, Zora Neale. (1931) 1991. Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life. In Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, ed. Bass, George Houston and Gates, Henry Louis Jr., 41–153. New York: HarperPerennial.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale. 1931. “Hoodoo in America.” The Journal of American Folklore, 44, 174:317– 417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale. (1934) 1996. “Characteristics of Negro Expression.” In Negro: An Anthology, ed. Cunard, Nancy and Ford, Hugh, 24 –31. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale. 1935. Mules and Men. Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale. (1937) 1991. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale. (1943) 1995. “High John de Conquer.” In Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings: Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles , ed. Wall, Cheryl A., 922–31. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale, and Waring, Dorothy. (1944) 2002. Polk County. Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, dir. Kyle Donnelly. Performed 9 April 2002. Washington, DC: Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive. DVD.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale, and Waring, Dorothy. (1944) 2008. Polk County: A Comedy of Negro Life on a Sawmill Camp with Authentic Negro Music in Three Acts . In Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays, ed. Cole, Jean Lee and Mitchell, Charles, 269–362. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Joyce, Joyce A. 1987. “The Black Canon: Reconstructing Black American Literary Criticism.” New Literary History 18, 2:335–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, Carla, ed. 2002. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Kelley, Robin D.G., , and Lewis, Earl, eds. 2005. To Make Our World Anew, Volume Two: A History of African Americans since 1880. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Library of Congress (LOC). n.d. “About This Collection.” Accessed 9 May 2017. www.loc.gov/collection/zora-neale-hurston-plays/about-this-collection/.Google Scholar
McC., B. 1944. “News of the Theatre: Four Plays and Three Musicals on Way without Having NY Theatres to Go Into.” New York Herald Tribune, 9 November:23A.Google Scholar
McCauley, Mary Carole. 2002. “A Welcoming ‘Polk County’; Arena Stage Production Sets Zora Neale Hurston Work to Music; Theatre Review.” The Baltimore Sun, 13 April:1D.Google Scholar
McMillin, Scott. 2006. The Musical as Drama: A Study of the Principles and Conventions behind Musical Shows from Kern to Sondheim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni. (1977) 2004. Song of Solomon. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.Google Scholar
New York Amsterdam News. 1944. “‘Polk County’ New Play by Zora Hurston.” New York Amsterdam News, 25 March:10.Google Scholar
New York Times. 1944. “Friedlander Play Closes Abruptly: ‘Good Morning, Corporal’ Is Taken Off Boards after Thirteen Showings at Playhouse.” New York Times, 19 August:8.Google Scholar
Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard. 2015. Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pak, Greg. 2003. “‘Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, and Hapas’: Multiracial Representation in the Movies.” “Matters of Race.” PBS.org. Accessed 9 May 2017. www.pbs.org/mattersofrace/essays/essay4_mulattoes.html.Google Scholar
Perkins, Kathy A., ed. 1989. Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Michael. 2004. “Carving a Musical from ‘Color Purple;’ Chicago-Based Gary Griffin Is Directing the Show, Based on Alice Walker’s Novel, Which Will Preview Thursday at an Atlanta Theatre.” Chicago Tribune, 5 September:7.7.Google Scholar
Rowe, John Carlos. 2000. Literary Culture and US Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sexton, Jared. 2010. “People-of-Color-Blindness: Notes on the Afterlife of Slavery.” Social Text 28, 2 (103): 31–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sun, William Huizu. 2021. “The Theatre of Purgation and the Theatre of Cultivation: A Comparative Study of Theatre and Culture from a Chinese Perspective.” TDR 65, 2 (T250):8–28.Google Scholar
West, Carolyn M. 2012. “Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, and Their Homegirls: Developing an ‘Oppositional Gaze’ towards the Images of Black Women.” In Lectures on the Psychology of Women, ed. Chrisler, Joan C., Golden, Carla, and Rozee, Patricia D., 286–99. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Emily Allen. 2000. “Harryette Mullen, ‘The Queen of Hip Hyperbole’: An Interview.” African-American Review 34, 4:701–07.Google Scholar
Wolf, Stacy. 2011. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wooden, Isaiah Matthew. 2019. “The Complex Racial Politics of Smart People.” Modern Drama 62, 2: 171–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Richard. 1937. “Between Laughter and Tears: A Review of Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” New Masses, 5 October:22–25.Google Scholar
Zolotow, Sam. 1944. “News of the Stage: Dave Wolper’s Musical ‘Follow the Girls’ Opens at the Century April 8.” New York Times, 15 March:17.Google Scholar

TDReading

Biers, Katherine. 2015. “Practices of Enchantment: The Theatre of Zora Neale Hurston.” TDR 59, 4 (T228):67–82. https://doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar