Staging Haiti in nineteenth-century America : revolution, race and popular performance / Peter P. Reed.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reed, Peter, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in modern theatre.

Cambridge studies in modern theatre

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American drama--19th century--History and criticism.

American drama.

Theater--United States--History--19th century.

Theater.

American literature--Haitian influences.

American literature.

Theater and society--United States--History--19th century.

Theater and society.

Public opinion--United States--History--19th century.

Public opinion.

Haiti--In literature.

Haiti.

Haiti--Foreign public opinion, American--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 215 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

American culture maintained a complicated relationship with Haiti from its revolutionary beginnings onward. In this study, Peter P. Reed reveals how Americans embodied and re-enacted their connections to Haiti through a wide array of performance forms. In the wake of Haiti's slave revolts in the 1790s, generations of actors, theatre professionals, spectators, and commentators looked to Haiti as a source of both inspiring freedom and vexing disorder. French colonial refugees, university students, Black theatre stars, blackface minstrels, abolitionists, and even writers such as Herman Melville all reinvented and restaged Haiti in distinctive ways. Reed demonstrates how Haiti's example of Black freedom and national independence helped redefine American popular culture, as actors and audiences repeatedly invoked and suppressed Haiti's revolutionary narratives, characters, and themes. Ultimately, Haiti shaped generations of performances, transforming America's understandings of race, power, freedom, and violence in ways that still reverberate today.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Series information

Title page

Copyright information

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Performing the Haitian Revolution

Staging the ''Horrors of Saint Domingue''

Enacting the Unthinkable

Networks of Embedded Performance

Revolutionary Performances, Revolution as Performance

1 Rebels and Refugees: Sentimental Suffering and Antic Revolt in the 1790s

Acting Refugees, Refugee Actors

The Triumphs of Love's Sentimentalized Refugees

Black Performance and Rebellious Play

2 The Lessons of Haiti: Performance, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Haitian Independence

Haitian Declarations and Deliberations

Melodramatic Haitians

Performed Pedagogy, Commencement, and Credentialing

Performing Haitian Prospects: John Brown Russwurm in 1826

3 Virtuosity, Illegitimacy, and Haitian Royalty: Ira Aldridge and Christophe, King of Hayti

Haitian Royal Pageantry and the Performing King

Illegitimacy and Haitian Burlesque

Theatrical Virtuosity and Honorary Haitianness

4 Travesty and Transformation: Haiti and Blackface Minstrelsy

''Ching a Ring Chaw'' and the Minstrelization of Haitian Emigration

Haiti Travestied: Dowling's Haitian Othello

Late Minstrelsy and the Traffic in Haitianness

5 Abolitionist Acts: Haitian Respectability, Oratory, and Celebrity Performance

Haitian Character on the World Stage

Performing Haitian Respectability

Toussaint Louverture's Celebrity Eloquence

Reclaiming Haitian Celebrity

6 Conclusion: The Pleasures and Perils of Revolutionary Re-enactment

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 22 Nov 2022).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-009-12136-7

1-009-12224-X

1-009-11897-8