Stepping to the National Stage: Protesting Injustice, Producing Shakespeare, and Claiming Black Space at the Sylvan Theater

Abstract

This is an examination of Washington, D.C.’s Sylvan Theater at three scales. Getting and keeping access to this stage is a theme that resonates through each perspective. At the broadest scale, the Sylvan was a national venue for social protest including civil rights from its founding in 1917 until at least the early seventies. Making use of this government-controlled space, social movements made the Sylvan a national center in the search for justice. Many events known generically for having happened at the Washington Monument or on the Mall happened specifically at the Sylvan Theater.

At the middle scale, it was the place that Ellie Chamberlain produced the Summer Shakespeare Festival from 1961-1982. Her use of the government-owned space necessitated negotiating federal and local resources and reaching out to her potential audience in a time of great social change. Neither serving the Black citizens of Black-majority Washington, D.C. nor enriching the arts scene with Black perspectives was part of her rhetorical strategy when testifying before Congressional funding committees. However, Chamberlain eventually backed Black artists and did so with some success. She introduced nontraditional racial casting and sponsored Black-led dance and jazz with federal money under the banner of her festival. Even so, it is not clear to what extent, if any, Black audiences increased in general or in response to specific shows.

At the micro scale, the Sylvan was a place where Black actors including Janet League, Darryl Croxton, Henry Baker, and Robert Guillaume played prominent roles in this largely White theater company between 1967 and 1973. In particular, the Summer Shakespeare Festival used nontraditional casting in a 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet, a 1970 Tempest, and a 1973 Othello. Nontraditional casting is the casting of actors of color in roles originally written to be played by Whites. In nontraditional casting, Black actors may shoulder extra burdens, including those due to the way that the color of their skin can shift the meaning of plays originally written for White actors.

The stories of Black actors in the Summer Shakespeare Festival show that such extra burdens occurred in Festival plays. These actors were caught in a paradox. They wanted to be known as skilled actors and not to be limited by external conceptions of Black actors. However, their skin was visible, and the productions used racial casting both for marketing and for meaning. Their work on stage echoed the social struggles contested by the Civil Rights Movement on that very stage. Meanwhile a White director sent conflicting messages about race. And at least two of the four Black actors examined here had very different backgrounds yet had common experiences and trauma due to navigating race in the transforming cities of the twentieth century.

Current as-yet-unfunded plans of the National Park Service aim to get rid of the Sylvan Theater in renovations of the Mall. Because of the theater’s significance in social protest including the Civil Rights Movement in the twentieth century and its significance in the diversifying of largely White regional theater, the Sylvan space deserves to be preserved or restored as a permanent performing arts and protest venue.

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