{"id":5006,"date":"2024-01-22T16:01:12","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T16:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5006"},"modified":"2024-01-24T14:18:17","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T14:18:17","slug":"on-this-day-in-1824-the-african-theatre-and-ira-aldridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5006","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1824: The African Theatre and Ira Aldridge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On January 19, 1824<\/strong>, New York City\u2019s African Theatre staged its last known production: a one-man character sketch show performed by its principal actor James Hewlett.[1]<\/a> The theatre had opened in 1821, when William Alexander Brown, a businessman, theater producer, and playwright, established it as an outgrowth of the African Grove, a backyard \u201cice cream garden\u201d or \u201ctea-garden,\u201d which offered music and refreshments and was located at 38 Thomas St. in present-day Tribeca.[2]<\/a> The first to feature an all-Black acting troupe and the first created for the entertainment of New York\u2019s Black community, the African Theatre staged its first performance on September 17, 1821: Colley Cibber\u2019s adaptation of Richard III<\/em>, starring James Hewlett.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Mr. Hewlett in Richard the third in imitation of Mr. Kean. <\/em>Drawing. Theatrical Portrait Prints (Visual Works) of Men (TCS 44), Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The African Theatre offered its audiences a program of opera, ballet, pantomime, and classical and modern drama, including Shakespeare\u2019s Othello<\/em> and the abovementioned Richard III<\/em>; John Home\u2019s Douglas<\/em>; Richard Brinsley Sheridan\u2019s Pizarro<\/em>; John O\u2019Keefe\u2019s comic opera The Poor Soldier<\/em>, the pantomimes of Don Juan; or, The Libertine Destroyed<\/em> by Carlo Delpini, and Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack <\/em>by John Fawcett; and William Thomas Moncrieff\u2019s Tom and Jerry, or Life in London<\/em>. Brown himself authored for his company the first-known play by a Black American, The Drama of King Shotaway<\/em>, based on the life of Joseph Chatoyer, the Garifuna chief who led rebellions opposing British rule on the island of St. Vincent: the First Carib War (1769-1773) and Second Carib War (1795-1797). Brown\u2019s drama, which was never published and is considered lost, focused on the events of the Second Carib War and is mentioned as being slated for performance in the Commercial Advertiser <\/em>of January 16, 1822.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The African Theatre mounted several such anti-colonial and anti-slavery dramas. The January 19, 1824, performance was itself\u00a0staged \u201cFor the Benefit of the Greeks\u201d during their 1821-1829 war of independence from the Ottoman Empire\u2014a campaign Lord Byron joined in 1823. (He died from fever a year later in Missolonghi, three months after the African Theatre\u2019s final performance.) Keeping the African Theatre open and active had been a struggle. Brown was forced to relocate it soon after its inaugural staging of Richard III <\/em>due to noise complaints, and he moved the theatre several times thereafter, often under duress. Company actors were arrested and, on several occasions, attacked, and in January and August 1822, thugs hired by Stephen Price, the manager of the neighboring Park Theatre, disrupted African Theatre performances and incited a riot, causing an estimated two hundred dollars in damage to costumes, scenery, the stage curtain, benches, and the lamp over the pit.[4]<\/a> Brown\u2019s liberal politics, the theatre\u2019s performance of Shakespeare (the province of British high culture) and of politically charged dramas, its competition with the neighboring Park Theatre, and a climate of pervasive racial discrimination and intolerance all contributed to the African Theatre\u2019s short yet vibrant, three-season existence. Errol G. Hill summarizes the theatre\u2019s predicament: \u201cCompany members and Brown himself were harassed by police, physically assaulted by white roughnecks during performance, and victimized without compensatory redress in law courts.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Playbill, Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University, announcing a performance of \u201cMatthews [sic<\/em>] At Home,\u201d starring James Hewlett on \u201cMonday even\u2019g, Jan. 19.\u201d 1827 is penned in as the year, but January 19 fell on a Friday in 1827. It fell on a Monday in 1818, 1824, and 1829. The Greek War of Independence, to which the playbill refers, began in 1821, and the African Theatre at Mercer Street was no longer active after 1824. See Thompson p. 145.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

By the date of the theatre\u2019s last known performance, Brown had stepped down as manager of the African Theatre and was replaced by Hewlett. Just months later, Hewlett left for London, possibly to confront Charles Mathews over A Trip to America <\/em>(1824), which featured caricatures of Black Americans and a scathing depiction of Hewlett\u2019s acting.[6]<\/a> Hewlett never actually met with Mathews, returning home that same year to continue his career performing dramatic excerpts and imitations of prominent actors and singers such as Mathews, Angelica Catalini, John Braham, Edmund Kean, and William Macready. But around the same time, another New Yorker with ties to the African Theatre (likely attending performances and acting there) travelled to London: Ira Aldridge (1807-1867).[7]<\/a> At just seventeen years of age, Aldridge made his London debut at the Royalty Theatre on May 11, 1825, in the role of Othello.[8]<\/a> It was the start of a lifelong journey that would see him become one of the most famous performers of his age and one of the most celebrated Shakespearean actors of all time. And so it was that, in Aldridge, the legacy of Brown, Hewlett, and the African Theatre lived on.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ira Aldridge<\/em>. Lithograph by Nicholas Barabas. 1853. National Portrait Gallery, London.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Terry F. Robinson<\/strong> is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. https:\/\/www.english.utoronto.ca\/people\/directories\/all-faculty\/terry-f-robinson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/a> This is the last performance for which a playbill exists. See Bernth Lindfors, Ira Aldridge: The Early Years, 1807-1833<\/em> (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2011), p. 45. See also George A. Thompson, A Documentary History of the African Theatre<\/em> (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), pp. 17, 144-46.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Thompson, p. 5. See also Errol G. Hill, \u201cThe African Theatre to Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin,\u201d A History of African American Theatre<\/em>, ed. Errol G. Hill and James V. Hatch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 24-60, p. 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> See Thompson, pp. 87-88.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Lindfors, pp. 30-31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Hill, p. 26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> The performance\u2019s success leaned heavily on caricatures of Black Americans, including \u201cAgamemnon, a fat, lazy, runaway slave; Maximilian, a jolly waiter; an unnamed itinerant fiddler; and most unforgettably, a black tragedian,\u201d patterned after Hewlett himself (Lindfors, p. 51). In the performance, Mathews\u2019s Hewlett, styled as \u201cthe Kentucky Roscius,\u201d botches Hamlet\u2019s \u201cTo be, or not to be\u201d and Richard III\u2019s \u201cNow is the winter of our discontent\u201d soliloquys and breaks into song extempore, voicing \u201cOpossum up a Gum Tree.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Lindfors, p. 33.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Lindfors, pp. 61-65.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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