Black History in Theatre | Silhouette Stages

Silhouette Stages is proud to be a part of a community that is working to actively highlight Black artists and diverse stories as we look to our future and beyond. There’s a new Black Renaissance happening in Theatre and it's giving Black playwrights, directors, and talent the long overdue spotlight to share their stories.

Theatre is heading in the right direction of being more inclusive of actors of color in Black-oriented roles and storylines. Our local theatre community has made strides including Greenbelt Arts Center's phenomenal mounting of The Mountaintop, St Marks Players highly lauded production of The Color Purple, and ArtsCentric/ Baltimore Center Stage's most recent all Black reimagining of the Rogers & Hammerstein's classic Cinderella set in Africa was a celebration of black joy.

Broadway history is Black history. The history-makers of the early 1900s broke down the color barriers and made space for the changemakers of the present. This February, Silhouette Stages is committed to celebrating the outstanding contributions that Black artists have made to the American theatre. We celebrate the monumental firsts and significant moments in Black history in theatre that continue to make a lasting influence on stage and beyond. Here are just some of the many notable players:

Ira Frederick Alridge

Ira Frederick Aldridge originally started his career as a teen actor at the African Grove Theatre in New York, a theater by and for African-Americans in the 1800s. He grew to stardom once he moved to Europe and was the first well known Black actor to star in Shakespeare's Othello. He created a career filled with international fame from his portrayal of Shakespearean leads, including roles written for white actors, and used his fame to campaign for an end to slavery.

Bert Williams & George Walker

Bert Williams and George Walker were two of the most sought after comedians in America. In 1903 they starred in In Dahomey, the first all-Black musical comedy on Broadway and the first to be written almost entirely by Black writers at a major Broadway house. The story follows two conmen from Boston who, having found a pot of gold, devise a plan to move to Africa to colonize Dahomey with a group of poor American Blacks. The show moved to Broadway in 1903 and landed at the former New York Theatre after a run at the Grand Opera House in Stamford, Connecticut. Although the show still used blackface and vaudeville comedy, it was a major step in representation. The theme of the show even included criticizing African Imperialism.

Shuffle Along, 1921

Although Shuffle Along wasn't the first musical by African-Americans, it did make a huge splash in 1921. The show succeeded when no one thought it would, accumulating heavy debt and starring a creative team and cast who had never created anything for Broadway before. It was the first Broadway show to integrate audiences in the orchestra seating area. It also was the first musical to include heavy jazz influence and set the stage for a new formula of African-American musicals of the 1920s. The 2016 production of Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed told the story of mounting the original production and starred Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Billy Porter.

Garland Anderson

Garland Anderson was the first African-American known to have a full-length drama produced on Broadway. Anderson had no playwriting experience or theatrical stage training of any kind. A self-educated man, he wrote about his experiences as a hotel bellhop and infused his show Appearances with his beliefs of working hard for the classic American dream.

1935 - Porgy and Bess

George and Ira Gershwin penned this opera, featuring an all-Black cast of classically trained singers. Even though it has been criticized for stereotyping African-Americans with depictions of drug abuse, poverty and prostitution, it has been revived on Broadway seven times, most recently in the 2012 Audra McDonald- and Norm Lewis-led production.

Juanita Hall

Juanita Hall was a prominent American musical and film actress. In 1950, Hall became the first Black actor to win a Tony Award for her portrayal of Bloody Mary in the original Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. Following her history-making performance, Rodgers and Hammerstein personally chose Hall to portray Madame Liang in their 1958 musical, Flower Drum Song.

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun opened in March 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, solidifying her place in history as the first African-American woman to have a play on Broadway. The show won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for its rich story of a working-class African-American family living in Chicago. Hansberry wrote about segregation in Chicago after her family's court case traveled to the Supreme Court when it challenged a restrictive covenant law that banned African-Americans from buying or renting property in a Chicago neighborhood.

Lloyd Richards

Lloyd Richards was a Canadian-American who directed the plays of Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson on Broadway. He became the first African-American to direct a play on Broadway in 1959 when he directed Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. His partnership with writer August Wilson was legendary, and he directed six of his works: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running and Seven Guitars.

Diahann Carroll

Diahann Carroll was the first African-American actress to win a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Carroll made her Broadway debut in House of Flowers in 1954. After seeing her, composer Richard Rodgers cast her in his Broadway musical No Strings for which she won the Tony award in 1962.

Pearl Bailey’s All-Black Hello, Dolly!

In what might be seen as a radical casting move even today, in 1967, the entire Broadway cast of Hello, Dolly! turned over to welcome an all-Black cast, led by actress and singer Pearl Bailey as Dolly Levi. The reviews for Bailey and the new cast were glowing, and the production ran for another two years. Bailey received a 1968 Special Tony Award for her performance.

James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones is a Tony Award and Golden Globe-winning actor who is one of the most iconic figures in American entertainment. He made his Broadway debut in 1958 in the play Sunrise at Campobello. In 1968 he starred as boxer Jack Jefferson in the Broadway drama The Great White Hope which brought him his first Tony Award, making him the first African-American winner in any play category. Jones would go on again to win Best Actor in a Play a second time in 1987, for August Wilson’s Fences. Jones is also one of the few artists to win an EGOT—Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. In 2022 Broadway's Cort Theatre was renamed in his honor. Jones passed away on September 9, 2024 at the age of 93.

The Wiz

The 1975 Broadway production of The Wiz won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and was the first mainstream culture African-American musical. The Wiz celebrates community, subculture and Black pride, and it was a huge step forward for Black representation in musical theater. The show was later remade into a film in 1978 starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson and was revamped into a live network television musical in 2015.

Geoffrey Holder

In 1975, Holder won two Tony Awards for Best Director and Costume Design of The Wiz, and was the first Black man to win in either category. He also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design for his work on The Wiz. Holder was a multi-talented man, touching the arts through Broadway performance, costume design, and direction and professional dance and painting.

August Wilson

In 1984 Wilson launched his Broadway career and legendary cycle of plays, beginning with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which is about a group of blues musicians in the 1920s. He would go on to make an enormous impact in American theater with his works chronicling the 20th-century African-American experience such as Fences and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which have both received Broadway revivals. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, and his Jitney won Best Revival of a Play at the Tony Awards in 2017. In 2005 Broadways Virginia Theatre was renamed in his honor.

Audra McDonald

Audra McDonald is the first person to ever earn six Tony Award wins for acting (not counting honorary awards) and the first person to win a Tony Award in all four of the acting categories. The only other actress with this amount of Tony Awards is Julie Harris. Trained in classical voice from Juilliard, McDonald also holds two Grammy Awards and an Emmy Award. Audra is currently starring as Rose in Gypsy at the Majestic Theatre, the first Black actor to take on the role on Broadway.

George C Wolfe

George C Wolfe is a playwright and director. He won 3 Tony Awards for Direction including Angels in America: Millennium Approaches (1993), Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk (1996) and Elaine Stritch At Liberty (2002). He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater in New York from 1993 until 2004. His directing credits include the original Broadway productions of Jelly's Last Jam, The Wild Party, Caroline, or Change, and 2016's Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. For his work in film and television he received a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Miniseries or TV Film for 2005's Lackawanna Blues and in 2021 he won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. In 2013 Wolfe was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee

In 2023, Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee made history when they became the first 2 openly non-binary people to win Tony Awards. Newell nabbed the Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical category for their role as Lulu in Shucked. Ghee later won the award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for their performance as Jerry/Daphne in Casey Nicholaw’s Some Like It Hot, the new musical based on the famous 1959 film.

Cynthia Erivo and Lencia Kebede

Tony award winner Cynthia Erivo has been well known on the Broadway stage, but she made her debut in film this past year for her role of Elphaba in Wicked Part 1. Despite the Broadway show's 20+ year run, Erivo is the first Black actor to portray Elphaba. She was open and candid about her hopes that her on-screen portrayal of the Wicked Witch would positively impact the role for future Black performers on stage. It was then announced in January of this year that Lencia Kebede will take over the role of Elphaba on Broadway beginning March 4th, 2025. Kebede has previously toured with Hamilton as Angelica Schuyler and Rent as Joanne. For Wicked Part 1, Cynthia Erivo has received multiple award nominations including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Film Award, and two nominations from the Screen Actors Guild.

There is still a long way to go toward racial equality, but strides have been made by Black actors who have recently originated, replaced or gone on as an understudy as characters that have usually been perceived as white. Not to mention outstanding performances including Leslie Odom Jr. in Purly Victorious, Calvin Leon Smith in Fat Ham, Alex Joseph Grayson in Parade, and Marchánt Davis in Good Night, Oscar.

Some wins for representation in the past few years include the multicultural reimagining of Some Like It Hot, Michael R. Jackson's black queer comedy, A Strange Loop, "Blackness like never before" in Jocelyn Bioh’s JaJa’s African Hair-Braiding, and Maleah Joi Moon and Kecia Lewis winning their Tonys for Best Actress and Best Featured Actress for their performances of Ali and Miss Liza Jane respectively in Hell's Kitchen with music and lyrics by Alicia Keyes.