THE INTERNATIONAL BLACK THEATRE SUMMIT

In June 1996, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson delivered the keynote address for the annual gathering of the Theatre Communications Group, the nation’s pre-eminent organization of non-profit professional theaters. Entitled “The Ground on Which I Stand,” the speech has since become “a critical black theatre manifesto, studied alongside W.E.B. Du Bois’s Four Principles of Negro Theater and Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones’s The Revolutionary Theatre”. (Harry Elam Jr., American Theater June 2016 issue). The now-landmark speech immediately ignited a contentious public discussion about racial inequity within the theatrical world, encompassing conversations about casting, funding, audiences, and much more. Subsequent events included a public debate with American Repertory Theater Artistic Director Robert Brustein, moderated by Anna Deveare Smith at the Town Hall in New York City (listen to excerpts from the conversation between Wilson and Brustein here.)
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Following the speech and the subsequent firestorm of publicity and debate, Wilson was approached by Dartmouth Professors of Theater Victor Leo Walker II and William Cook at the recommendation of Paul Carter Harrison, who suggested setting up a major conference for black theatre artists and professionals on campus. The resulting event took place at Dartmouth in March of 1998, with participants that included Ntozake Shange, Clinton Turner Davis, Robbie McCauley, Ricardo Khan, Thulani Davis, Ed Bullins and Woodie King Jr.