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The first African American theatre is founded in New York City by William Henry Brown and named the African Grove Theatre. The African Grove Theatre was attended by "all types of black New Yorkers -- free and slave, middle-class and working-class" along with others.
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The first African American theatre is founded in New York City by William Henry Brown and named the African Grove Theatre.
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A historical drama based on the Black Carib war in St. Vincent in 1796 against both English and French settlers.
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Angelina Grimke became possibly the most influential African American female playwrights of the early twentieth century by creating the play Rachel. The play addresses nrings racism and poverty to light and plays an impact on the lives of African Americans on a day-to-day basis.
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Tawfiq al-Hakim, a high Egyptian figure dramatist of North Africa, produces The People of the Cave, one of many of his plays that focused on religious issues, the social positions of women, and the pursuit of happiness in a world full of war, poverty, and disease.
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Hubert Ogunde established the first contemporary professional theatrical company in Nigeria, the African Music Research Party. The company explored and evolved the ways of Yoruba Opera, the most popular form of contemporary theatre in Nigeria.
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African American theatre begins gaining recognition with the publication of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, a play that explored the separations of races and the hardships inflicted on African Americans. The play eventually won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.
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The Negro Ensemble Company is founded by Douglas Turner Ward. The company produces plays that explore past and present African American themes and has had a helping hand in launching careers of performers, including Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.
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August Wilson produces Jitney, the first of ten plays produced by Wilson that make up his “Century Cycle”. The cycle explores the African American experience during each decade of the twentieth century. Two of the plays were Pulitzer Prize Winner’s.
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Wole Soyinka becomes the first African to win the Noble Prize for Literature. While Soyinka was largely known as a playwright, he gave up play writing for the most part to focus on human rights activities.
