Dr. Mahala’s Book Talk – “Black Theater, City Life: African American Arts Institutions and Urban Cultural Ecologies”

It is not enough to passively acknowledge history nor is history something that remains in the past. 

Dr. Mahala’s thesis is: black theater companies help tell black history, but they are also part of that history.  They are erasing the dominant narratives that have silenced the oppressed voices of the minorities and help those voices rise up with strength and pride. They live in that history, contribute to it and show it to the world.  This resonated deeply with me.  Historians claim to write history down so that humanity does not make the same mistakes twice, yet we seem to cycle through the same destructive behavior in different forms. 

But what we sometimes forget is that history is also now, the present day that we currently live in.  Time does not just pause in the present and what you do now does matter because it will become—or rather, it is—history.  So instead of acknowledging what happened in the past and letting it remain there, take a lesson from it all and make what contributions you can.  

One of the other things that I enjoyed was Dr. Mahala mentioned that one production of “Seven Guitars” by August Wilson was performed in Wilson’s very own backyard.  He wrote that play not with the intent of conjuring up a fictional world in a fictional setting, but one that showed the reality of the silenced and oppressed – the reality he grew up in.  He wanted people to be aware of the problems of housing amongst African Americans both in fiction and in reality.  

Wilson grew up in a poor neighborhood and to truly resonate with his intent behind writing the play, the theater performed in his backyard, where it was always supposed to be.  This is an example of what ecocriticism calls a “beauty-burden paradox.” Where the privileged hoist their burdens, usually environmentally devastated lands that more often than not are destroyed for resources or experimentation purposes, upon the oppressed and leave them to fend for themselves. 

Using plays and other forms of expressive art, artists use their imagination and vision to bring awareness to these vital issues in ways that academia cannot, and that is what Dr. Mahala’s book is all about.