Yearly Archives: 2014

15 posts

Introduction (JADT 26.2, 2014)

   “The border is not merely a wall or a body of water. It is a force of containment that inspires dreams of being overcome and crossed…” Ramón H. Rivera-Servera and Harvey Young, Performance in the Borderlands (2011)   The American Theatre and Drama Society, now in its twenty-seventh year, is […]

Between Blackface and Bondage: The Incompletely Forgotten Failure of The Underground Railroad‘s 1879 Midwestern Tour

In 1879, nineteen-year-old Pauline Hopkins’s musical slave drama, The Underground Railroad, flopped. Reviews panned the production, suggesting the plagiaristic knock-off of Joseph Bradford’s Out of Bondage “lacked interest and was devoid of plot.” Audiences noted the lackluster performances, asserting “the company can’t sing like the Hyers sisters” (the pioneering African […]