| Mule Bone | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Written by | Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston |
| Date premiered | February 14, 1991 |
| Place premiered | Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York |
| Genre | Comedy |
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life is a 1930 play by American authors Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. The process of writing the play led Hughes and Hurston, who had been close friends, to sever their relationship. Mule Bone was not staged until 1991, when it was produced in New York City by the Lincoln Center Theater.
The play begins in Eatonville, Florida, on a Saturday afternoon with Jim and Dave fighting for Daisy's affection. The two men come to blows, and Jim picks up a hock bone from a mule and knocks Dave out. Jim is arrested and held for trial in Joe Clarke's barn. [1]
On Monday, the trial begins in the Macedonia Baptist Church. The townspeople are divided along religious lines: Jim's Methodist supporters sit on one side of the church, Dave's Baptist supporters on the other. The issue to be decided at the trial is whether or not Jim has committed a crime. Jim admits he hit Dave but denies it was a crime. Elder Simms argues on Jim's behalf that a weapon is necessary to commit a crime, and nowhere in the Bible does it say a mule bone is a weapon. Elder Childers, representing Dave, says Samson used a donkey's jawbone to kill 3,000 men (citing Judges 18:18), [2] so the hock bone of a mule must be even more powerful. Joe Clarke declares Jim guilty and banishes him from town for two years. [3]
Act III takes place some time later, with Daisy encountering Jim outside of town. She tells him she's been worried about him, but he's skeptical. She demonstrates the sincerity of her affection and Dave comes upon the couple. The two men engage in a war of words to try to show which of them loves Daisy more. The contest ends when it becomes clear that Daisy expects her man to work for the white people who employ her. Jim and Dave are reconciled, and neither remains interested in courting Daisy. The two men return to Eatonville. [4]
Hughes and Hurston began writing Mule Bone in March 1930. They wanted to write a comedy about African-American life that didn't consist of racial stereotypes. They decided to base the plot on a folktale which Hurston had collected in Florida during one of her anthropological field trips. The two writers dictated their work to Louise Thompson, who typed it. [5] [6]
Their work was almost complete in June, when Hurston went away for the summer. She took her notes and said she would return in the fall, and they could finish the play. When Hurston came back, she would not return telephone calls from Hughes. She felt he wanted Thompson to be considered a third collaborator in the project, a proposal to which she strongly objected. [7] [8]
Concurrently, Hughes was in the process of severing his relationship with their common literary patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason (Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason). Reviewers have conjectured that Hurston may have been trying to protect her own relationship with Mason by shunning Hughes. [9] [10]
Hurston submitted Mule Bone for copyright in October 1930, listing herself as the only author. In January 1931, Hughes learned that a copy of Mule Bone, bearing only Hurston's name, had been sent to the Gilpin Players, an all-black theater company in Cleveland, for their consideration. Hurston told Hughes that she had not sent them the play, which was true, but Hughes was furious. [11] Hurston had sent Mule Bone to Carl Van Vechten, who sent it on to the Gilpin Players without her knowledge. [11] Hughes sent a copy to apply for copyright under both their names. [11] [12]
In the meantime, the Gilpin Players wanted to stage the play. The work was still somewhat rough, but Hughes was in Cleveland, and he offered to help rewrite portions of the play. Hurston sent a telegram advising that she refused to allow the production. A day later, she sent another telegram authorizing the production on the condition that she be allowed to work with Hughes on changes. That same day, Hughes received a letter from Hurston saying that no part of the play had been written by him. [13] [14]
In light of all the off-stage drama, the Gilpin Players decided not to proceed with their production. [15] [16] The copy of Mule Bone in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale University has a hand-written notation by Hughes: "This play was never done because the authors fell out." [17]
Mule Bone was produced for the first time in 1991 by the Lincoln Center Theater, more than 60 years after it was written. [18] It opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway on February 14, 1991, to generally negative reviews. [19]
Reviewing Mule Bone for The New York Times , Frank Rich wrote that it was "an evening that can most kindly be described as innocuous". He described it as a "broad, often bland quasi-musical". [20] Also writing in The New York Times, David Richards said of Mule Bone: "it's just not a very good play." [21] Both critics suggested the play might have been much better had Hughes and Hurston finished their collaboration. [20] [21]
The production closed on April 14, 1991, after 68 performances. [19]
Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays.
Eatonville is a town in Orange County, Florida, United States, six miles north of Orlando. It is part of Greater Orlando. Incorporated on August 15, 1887, it was one of the first self-governing all-black municipalities in the United States. The Eatonville Historic District and Moseley House Museum are in Eatonville. Author Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Eatonville and the area features in many of her stories.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hurston's best known work. The novel explores protagonist Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny".
The Niggerati was the name used, with deliberate irony, by Wallace Thurman for the group of young African-American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. "Niggerati" is a portmanteau of "nigger" and "literati". The rooming house where he lived, and where that group often met, was similarly christened Niggerati Manor. The group included Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and several of the people behind Thurman's journal FIRE!!, such as Richard Bruce Nugent, Jonathan Davis, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Aaron Douglas.
Karamu House in the Fairfax neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, United States, is the oldest African-American theater in the United States opening in 1915. Many of Langston Hughes's plays were developed and premièred at the theater.
Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist and screenwriter active during the Harlem Renaissance. He also wrote essays, worked as an editor, and was a publisher of short-lived newspapers and literary journals. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929), which explores discrimination within the black community based on skin color, with lighter skin being more highly valued.
The Zora Neale Hurston House is a historic house at 1734 Avenue L in Fort Pierce, Florida. Built in 1957, it was the home of author Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) from then until her death. On December 4, 1991, it was designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark.
Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis, born Oluale Kossola, and also known as Cudjo Lewis, was the third to last adult survivor of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the United States. Together with 115 other African captives, he was brought to the United States on board the ship Clotilda in 1860. The captives were landed in backwaters of the Mobile River near Mobile, Alabama, and hidden from authorities. The ship was scuttled to evade discovery, and remained undiscovered until January 2018.
Anas "Andy" Shallal is an Iraqi-American artist, activist, philanthropist and entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and CEO of the Washington, D.C., area, restaurant, bookstore, and performance venue Busboys and Poets. He is also known for his opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was a candidate for the city's mayoral election in 2014.
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue."
Charlotte Osgood Mason, born Charlotte Louise Van der Veer Quick, was an American socialite and philanthropist. She contributed more than $100,000 to a number of African-American artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, equal to more than $1 million in 2003. This was especially critical during the Great Depression, when foundation support declined. She helped young artists become established.
Valerie Boyd was an American writer and academic. She was best known for her biography of Zora Neale Hurston entitled Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. She was an associate professor and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, where she taught narrative nonfiction writing, as well as arts and literary journalism.
Leonard Jackson was an American stage, film, and television actor. He had roles in several PBS television series for children, and also acted in several films, including The Brother from Another Planet, Car Wash, and The Color Purple.
Dust Tracks on a Road is the 1942 autobiography of black American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.
Mules and Men is a 1935 autoethnographical collection of African-American folklore collected and written by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The book explores stories she collected in two trips: one in Eatonville and Polk County, Florida, and one in New Orleans. Hurston's decision to focus her research on Florida came from a desire to record the cross-section of black traditions in the state. In her introduction to Mules and Men, she wrote, "Florida is a place that draws people—white people from all over the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West". Hurston documented 70 folktales during the Florida trip, while the New Orleans trip yielded a number of stories about Marie Laveau, voodoo and Hoodoo traditions. Many of the folktales are told in vernacular; recording the dialect and diction of the Black communities Hurston studied.
Jonah's Gourd Vine is Zora Neale Hurston's 1934 debut novel. The novel is a semi-autobiographical novel following John Buddy Pearson and his wife, Lucy. The characters share the same first names as Hurston's parents and make a similar migration from Notasulga, Alabama to Hurston's childhood home, Eatonville, Florida.
"How It Feels To Be Colored Me" (1928) is an essay by Zora Neale Hurston published in World Tomorrow as a "white journal sympathetic to Harlem Renaissance writers", illustrating her circumstance as an African-American woman in the early 20th century in America. Most of Hurston's work involved her "Negro" characterization that were so true to reality, that she was known as an excellent anthropologist.
Emma Langdon Roche was an American writer and artist, best known for her work Historic Sketches of The South (1914).
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is a compilation of recovered short stories written by Zora Neale Hurston. It was published in 2020 by Amistad: An Imprint of HarperCollins publishers. ISBN 978-0-06-291579-5
