Raymond O'Neil

Last updated

Raymond O'Neil was a European-trained American theater director.

He was the critic of drama and music at The Cleveland Leader newspaper (now The Plain Dealer). To explore more innovative theatrical ideas than what was available in Cleveland at the time, O'Neil traveled to Europe to study newer forms of theatrical expression, including at the Moscow Art Theatre and the work of Max Reinhardt. After returning to Cleveland, O'Neil and his friend Henry Keller began experimenting with new theatrical techniques involving puppets, cardboard, shadows and light. The popularity of O'Neil and his shadow plays led him to become he first art director at the Cleveland Play House in 1915. However, he was not a theatre manager nor was he interested in the operation of a professional theatre company. A dreamer at heart, O'Neil resigned from the Play House in 1921 to pursue other opportunities in live theatre. [1]

Following his resignation at the Play House, O'Neil formed a company of professional black actors in Chicago. He was inspired from seeing, "African American nightclub performers in Chicago." [2] O'Neil persuaded several of the Lafayette Players [another little-theatre group out of New York originally called the Anita Bush Stock Company formed by Anita Bush (1883–1974)] to join him by promising them roles that were not previously available. [3] Under O'Neil's direction the performers received, over a twelve-month period, extensive artistic training much like many European theatrical groups at the time. Raymond O'Neil was, " interest[ed] in the work of [Edward] Gordon Craig and other modernists and in the experimental techniques and motives of the Moscow Art Theatre." [4] "He sought, not to train [the actors] in imitation of the more inhibited white actors, but to develop their particular racial characteristics-freshness and vigor of their emotional responses, their spontaneity and intense mood, their freedom from intellectual and artistic obsessions." [5] He was interested in "experimenting with the Negro art form in the commercial theatre", [6] and "establishing a national black theatre company. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

Karamu House United States historic place

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.

Theatre Owners Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., was the vaudeville circuit for African American performers in the 1920s. The theaters mostly had white owners, though there were exceptions, including the recently restored Morton Theater in Athens, Georgia, originally operated by "Pinky" Monroe Morton, and Douglass Theatre in Macon, Georgia owned and operated by Charles Henry Douglass. Theater owners booked jazz and blues musicians and singers, comedians, and other performers, including the classically trained, such as operatic soprano Sissieretta Jones, known as "The Black Patti", for black audiences.

African Grove Former New York theatre

The African GroveTheatre opened in New York City in 1821. It was founded and operated by William Alexander Brown, a free black man from the West Indies. It opened six years before the final abolition of slavery in New York state. The African Grove Theatre was attended by "all types of black New Yorkers -- free and slave, middle-class and working-class" along with others. It was the first place where Ira Aldridge, who would later become an esteemed and renowned Shakespearian actor, first saw a production of a Shakespeare play.

American Negro Theatre Community theater group in Harlem

The American Negro Theatre (ANT) was co-founded on June 5, 1940 by playwright Abram Hill and actor Frederick O'Neal. Determined to build a "people's theatre," they were inspired by the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Unit in Harlem and by W. E. B. Du Bois' "four fundamental principles" of Black drama: that it should be by, about, for, and near African Americans.

The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) is a New York City-based theater company and workshop established in 1967 by playwright Douglas Turner Ward, producer-actor Robert Hooks, and theater manager Gerald S. Krone, with funding from the Ford Foundation. The company's focus on original works with themes based in the black experience with an international perspective created a canon of theatrical works and an audience for writers who came later, such as August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.

Eulalie Spence was a writer, teacher, director, actress and playwright from the British West Indies. She was an influential member of the Harlem Renaissance, writing fourteen plays, at least five of which were published. Spence, who described herself as a "folk dramatist" who made plays for fun and entertainment, was considered one of the most experienced female playwrights before the 1950s, and received more recognition than other black playwrights of the Harlem Renaissance period, winning several competitions. She presented several plays with W.E.B. Du Bois' Krigwa Players, of which she was a member from 1926 to 1928. Spence was also a mentor to theatrical producer Joseph Papp, founder of The Public Theater and the accompanying festival currently known as Shakespeare in the Park.

Tutt Brothers American vaudeville producers, writers and performers

Salem Tutt Whitney and J. Homer Tutt, known collectively as the Tutt Brothers, were American vaudeville producers, writers, and performers of the late 19th and early 20th century. They were also known as Whitney & Tutt, Tutt & Whitney and the Whitney Brothers. They were prominent in black vaudeville and created over forty revues for black audiences.

The Ethiopian Art Theatre — originally called the Chicago Folk Theatre, later the Colored Folk Theatre, also referred to as The Ethiopian Art Players — was an African American theatre company based out of Chicago, Illinois. The company was an influential albeit short-lived (1922/1923–1925) group founded during the Harlem Renaissance. There are differing views over the precise year that the company was founded, 1922 or 1923. The founder was Raymond O'Neil, a white theatre director, and its principal sponsor was Mrs. Sherwood Anderson, also white; though all its performers were African American. The organization was unique and controversial during its era, primarily for being one of the few African American Theatre Companies to perform European theatrical works, but also, among other things, for producing theatrical works of African American playwrights for both African American and Non-African American audiences.

Anita Bush American actress

Anita Bush was an African American stage actress and playwright. She founded the Anita Bush All-Colored Dramatic Stock Company in 1915, a pioneering black repertory theatre company that helped launch the careers of Charles Gilpin, Dooley Wilson, Evelyn Preer and others.

A number of theatre companies are associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

Jesse A. Shipp American writer (1864–1934)

Jesse Allison Shipp, Sr. was an American actor, playwright, and theatrical director, who is best remembered as a pioneer African-American writer of musical theater in the United States, and as the author of the book upon which the landmark play In Dahomey was based. Shipp played an influential role in expanding black theater beyond its minstrel show origins and is recalled as perhaps the first African-American director of a Broadway performance.

Tom McIntosh (1840–1904) was an African-American comedian who starred in many colored minstrel shows in the US from the 1870s to the 1900s. He was considered one of the funniest performers in this genre.

The Chip Woman's Fortune is a 1923 one act play written by American playwright Willis Richardson. The play was produced by The Ethiopian Art Players and is historically important as the first serious work by an African American playwright to be presented on Broadway. Although Broadway had seen African American musical comedies and revues, it had never seen a serious drama.

William Alexander Brown, also known as William Henry Brown (1790–1884), was an American playwright and theatrical producer. He is considered the first known black playwright in America.

William King was an African-American vaudeville comedian and showman, who was described as "a living link between the Harlem Renaissance and nineteenth-century black minstrelsy."

Cleo Desmond American actress

Cleo Desmond was an American actress and vaudeville performer who had a long career on the stage and screen.

James Loften Mitchell was an American playwright and theatre historian who was part of the black American theatre movement of the 1960s.

Andrew S. Bishop (1894–1959) was an actor on stage and screen. He and Cleo Desmond drew adoring fans to their theatrical performances. He starred in several of Oscar Michaux's African American films.

Lionel Monagas American actor

Lionel John Monagas was an American actor originally from Caracas, Venezuela. A member of the original Lafayette Players company of Harlem, he appeared in theatrical and film productions.

Marion A. Brooks was an actor, playwright, and theater businessman. He partnered on the Bijou theater company at the newly established Bijou Theater in Montgomery, Alabama with players from Chicago. After it folded, he returned to work at the Pekin Theatre in Chicago.

References

  1. ↑ Oldenburg, Chloe (1985). Leaps of Faith: History of the Cleveland Play House, 1915-85. Cleveland. p. 15–19.
  2. ↑ Wintz, Cary D. and Paul Finkelman. Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Routledge, 2004.
  3. ↑ Hill, Errol G. and James V. Hatch. A History of African American Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 2003.
  4. ↑ Peterson, Bernard L. The African American Theatre Directory 1816-1960: A Comprehensive Guide to Early Black Theatre Organizations, Companies, Theatres, and Performing Groups. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997.
  5. ↑ Hill, Errol G. and James V. Hatch. A History of African American Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 2003.
  6. ↑ Peterson, Bernard L. The African American Theatre Directory 1816-1960: A Comprehensive Guide to Early Black Theatre Organizations, Companies, Theatres, and Performing Groups. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997.
  7. ↑ Krasner, David. A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1927. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.