Among the significant moments in the history of the American theater, one remains relatively unsung. Its success at the box office was not great, its place in the memory of this generation of theatergoers virtually non-existent, but Ridgely Torrence's Three Plays for the Negro Theatre made a place for the Negro in our serious dramatic literature. Although Torrence's plays did not explore the social problems of the Negro in America, such as poverty and social inequality, in a way that would satisfy the Negro in our age of civil rights protests, they did for the first time present Negroes as human beings with all the dignity and potential for comedy and tragedy that they deserve. Moreover, their production was the first all-Negro performance of a serious play in the legitimate theater. Soon other serious playwrights, both white and Negro, turned to the Negro as a rich source of dramatic material. In the twenties, Eugene O'Neill wrote The Emperor Jones, that brilliant study of a man's descent from king to savage through fear and superstition. The thirties brought Marc Connely's delightful folk play, Green Pastures; DuBose Heyward's picture of life in Charleston's Catfish Row, Porgy; and the Federal Theater's brilliant all-Negro Macbeth. More recently we have seen Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, Ossie Davis, and LeRoi Jones depict the Negro with an honesty that is at times delightful, but often unsettling.

We have come to take all of this for granted, but before Torrence's plays, the Negro and his problems were rarely presented on the legitimate stage in any form. Of course, Uncle Tom's Cabin had been a standby during the previous century, but it was popular when its antislavery theme was safely out of date. The only previous play to consider the Negro was Edward Sheldon's The Nigger, which enjoyed a fair amount of success during the 1909-1910 season. The play was not really about Negroes, but about the crisis that occurs when the governor of a Southern state is discovered to have some Negro blood. The problem is treated in a tabloid fashion that makes good theater, but has little relation to real social concerns. The only Negro who appears is an old mammy, the sister of our hero's quadroon grandmother, and she emerges as nothing more than a stereotype of the faithful Negro servant. The play does not suggest that the hero should be accepted as he was before the discovery of his origins despite his Negro blood. As a matter of fact, the hero himself rejects this idea: “Black's black, an' white's white. If yo' not one, yo' the othah, Geo'gie. I've always said that, an' I reckon I'll have to stick to't now.”¹ Sheldon's play, then, did nothing but present conventional prejudice in a sensational, highly theatrical way. It hardly lent any dignity to the growing Negro population of our country.

It is strange that Ridgely Torrence should be the man to introduce the Negro into serious American drama. Born in Xenia, Ohio, and educated at Miami and Princeton, Torrence had previously been associated with such poets as Edmund Clarence Stedman and William Vaughn Moody, and with the group of Harvard graduates who attempted to effect a renascence of poetic drama. Torrence's previous dramatic efforts were two ornate, hyperromantic poetic plays, El Dorado and Abelard and Heloise, and three unproduced, unpublished three-act prose plays that are clearly apprentice work. None of these works indicates an interest in, or an ability to create, Negro folk drama. There seem to be two reasons, however, for Torrence's movement toward the Negro plays, both of which are presented in a statement he made in Crisis in 1917:

I have sometimes imagined that the Negro, all other things being equal, might produce the greatest, the most direct, the most powerful drama in the world.

And then, of course, it was not only the capacities of the Negro as actor that I wished to exploit in my plays. It was also the extraordinary dramatic richness of his daily life. … In modern life, the Negro comes face to face with many tragedies unknown to the Anglo-Saxon. And then, of course, his natural buoyancy of disposition produces a wealth of comedy which all the world has now learned to love. The parallel of all this with the Irish race and its national drama made a deep impression on me. I wanted to make the experiment, and try to contribute something, if I could, to a possible Negro drama, as vital and charming as the Irish.²

The first reason, then, is Torrence's enthusiasm for Irish folk drama, probably caused by the American visits of the Abbey Theatre. The Irish Players from the Abbey made their first appearance in New York at the Maxine Elliott Theater on 39th Street on November 20, 1911. The repertoire included the greatest products of the Irish renaissance: Synge's Riders to the Sea and The Playboy of the Western World, Lady Gregory's The Workhouse Ward, Yeats's Kathleen ni Houlihan, and Shaw's The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet. Owing to the success of their engagement, the company returned the next season to present a repertory at Wallack's Theater beginning on February 4, 1913. Torrence was strongly impressed by the folk drama the Irish had developed and saw great possibilities for such a form on the American stage.

The desire to create an American folk drama inspired by that of the Irish seems to be a logical result of the strong impression created by the Abbey Theatre, but one might still wonder why Torrence chose the Negro as his subject. The answer lies in Torrence's own background. Before the Civil War, Torrence's home town of Xenia, Ohio, was an important stop on the underground railroad, the route by which runaway slaves escaped to Canada with the aid of Northern abolitionists. Because of this, and because it lay in the southwest of the state not far from the Kentucky border, many Negroes came to Xenia to settle after the war. Near it, one of the country's major Negro colleges, Wilberforce University, developed. Thus the Negroes played an important part in the life of Xenia, and in Torrence's childhood.

Still, it was not until the Abbey Players had worked their magic that Torrence realized the theatrical value of his early experience, and it was not long after the Dubliners' second visit that Torrence had completed at least one of his plays for Negroes, Granny Maumee. Torrence wrote Harriet Moody early in 1914 of a proposed production of his first Negro play and the plans for the second:

The pieces are both Negro plays. One I have now written within the past ten days and handed in yesterday. The other is already on the way. The producer is an organization called the Play Society. It pays no money and gives but two performances of each play but the productions are made to give plays a start and try to create a popular demand for popular performances. The Society is composed of practical professional people and the Frohmans furnish the Lyceum Theatre.³

The play was presented during the last week in March. In accordance with the policy of the Play Society, it was given a public matinee on Monday preceded by an invitational dress rehearsal the night before. As is usually the case with special Sunday performances, the audience for the unveiling of Granny Maumee was composed largely of theater people on a busman's holiday. Granny Maumee was preceded on the bill by a heavily cut revival of A Woman Killed with Kindness, Heywood's Jacobean potboiler, probably intended to be the chef d'oeuvre. Yet the modest little drama that followed Thomas Heywood's hollow rhetoric was the talk not only of the evening but also of the season. Typical of the enthusiastic critical reception of Granny Maumee was the review by Carl Van Vechten of the New York Press:

There has been no more important contribution to American literature than Ridgeley [sic] Torrence's Granny Maumee. It opened up entirely new fields.

The audience at the Sunday night rehearsal, which was made up entirely of well known people, made the theatre resound with bravos after the curtain had fallen on the piece, and Dorothy Donnely, the principal interpreter [a white actress] was called before the footlights again and again.

Mr. Torrence in Granny Maumee has written a serious play entirely about Negroes from the Negro point of view. The whole thing is as real, as fresh, as the beginning of the Irish theatre movement must have been in Dublin.⁴

Illness delayed Torrence's completion of other plays he had planned as well as the mounting of a professional production of Granny Maumee before its success was forgotten. Harrison Grey Fiske, husband of the famous actress, planned a production for late spring, 1915. The leading lady was to be the French actress, Madame Jolivet, but the production never materialized. An audition of the play was arranged for vaudeville bookers with the idea that a production would be booked as an attraction on a major vaudeville circuit. Such a “road” production had a precedent. A touring group, The Manhattan Players, had presented Granny Maumee at the Lyceum Theatre in Rochester, New York, in May, 1914, on a double bill with a contemporary comedy, Our Wives. Once again, the play received appreciative responses from the critics. The producers, too, were happy with the results, but neither this success nor the audition performance on the afternoon of April 22, 1915, seemed to impress the vaudeville bookers:

There were just two men who were to see it and judge and they both came. They control the bookings. Well the fact is that the blazing asses were too stupid to see the merit of the play and consequently wouldn't offer Mr. Fiske enough per week to have it in their theatres. They looked like a couple of gunmen and of course that was their calibre. They were only used to judging the usual vaudeville act consisting of slapstick men or trapeze performers or trained animals and they frankly said that it was “beyond them” … and this play has been delayed entirely through the stupidity of these two vaudeville asses.⁵

More than a year and a half passed before Torrence again attempted to have any of his Negro plays produced. In February, 1917, he wrote his mother of a possible production: “This afternoon I am expecting to go out to Croton to talk over darky plays with Bobby Jones [Robert Edmond Jones] who wants to put on the stage and costuming [sic] of some pieces of mine.”⁶

It was not long before the plans made at that discussion began to materialize. Torrence had four plays completed, but the actual production was not going to be easy, especially since Torrence and Jones had decided that the plays should be performed by an all-Negro cast. The organization of a Negro acting company was no simple task because few Negroes had entered the legitimate theater as anything but musical performers, comedians, or stage domestics. Any company of Negro actors would, of necessity, be inexperienced.

Harlem seemed the obvious place to begin the search for Negro actors, but even in the midst of the Negro community Torrence and Jones found the task difficult:

We have lots of discouragement in trying to assemble a company of colored people. We have the plays and Mrs. Hapgood [Emilie Hapgood, former wife of journalist Norman Hapgood who invested in serious drama] has the money and the readiness to hire a theatre and pay all expenses and Jones has his costumes and scenery designed but we are blocked so far by not being able to find the proper people available for the casts.⁷

Despite the plethora of problems associated with the preparation of the production, the plays were ready to open at the old Garden Theater on Thursday night April 5, 1917. The previous Sunday they received an important advance notice from Robert Benchley, then on the staff of the New York Tribune. His article was entitled “Can This Be the Native American Drama?”

It may be that Thursday night will see the beginnings of a new movement on the American stage. Potentially, it is as rich in possibilities as any that have preceded it. It all depends on the spirit in which the public receive it. If they go expecting to see burlesque they will not only be disappointed; they will be ashamed. If they go with a sympathy for the attempt and an appreciation of its difficulties and aspirations, they may be witnessing the first stirrings of a really distinctive American drama.⁸

The three plays presented on that night were Granny Maumee, a folk tragedy obviously influenced by Riders to the Sea; a comedy, The Rider of Dreams, whose dreamer reminds one of Synge's Christy Mahon; and an historical pageant, Simon the Cyrenian. The actors came from just about everywhere but the Broadway legitimate theater. Some came from Negro companies such as the Lafayette in Harlem which played light drama, comedy, and musicals with Negro casts. Others came out of vaudeville and night clubs. Many had no acting experience at all, but under the painstaking direction of Robert Edmond Jones, they appeared to be quite professional. Between the plays, a singing orchestra sang and played folk music and spirituals in such a compelling way that few people took advantage of the intermission.

Each of Torrence's three plays was unique not only in its treatment of the life and attitudes of the Negro, but also in the form in which Torrence chose to present his characters and themes. The first play, Granny Maumee, is a domestic tragedy. Its setting is the living room of an old Negro cabin dominated by a large fire-place. Contrasted with the dinginess of the walls of the old cabin are many touches of bright red: curtains, tablecloth, chairs, geraniums. Here Torrence's predilection for color imagery has been translated into effective visual terms. Granny Maumee, who lives with her granddaughter, Pearl, has been blinded while trying to save her own son from being burned alive by a white lynch mob. Since that time, a generation before, she had been consumed by two passions; hatred for the white man and the desire for a male in the family to replace her lost son. As the play begins, Granny is eagerly awaiting the homecoming of her granddaughter, Sapphire, and the fruit of all Granny's hopes, Sapphire's new son. Sapphire arrives with her new child, but the child is half white—the offspring of an illicit union with the grandson of the murderer of Granny's son. For an instant Granny's sight is restored and she discovers the awful truth. Not only has the family's pure black blood been tainted, but it has been tainted with the blood of murderers. Distraught, the old woman loses the veneer of white man's Christianity that has been applied to her and begins a voodoo rite that will culminate in the death of the white man who tainted the blood of her family. During the rite, however, a vision of Granny's son appears to her and begs her to be merciful. When Sapphire and Pearl awake from the stupor induced by the old woman's potion, they find Granny dead.

One can readily see that there is too much dependence upon coincidence for Granny Maumee to be a really great play, but Torrence has presented his highly emotional plot with such skill that each moment is fully exploited. The setting, with its splotches of red, at once symbolizing passion, blood, and fire, mirrors the highly passionate nature of the superstitious old woman. Moreover, the entire action of the play can be seen as a series of rituals. It opens with an almost ritualistic presentation. The finest sheets are being placed on the bed. Granny dresses herself in a red gown. Then comes the recognition scene in which Granny's sight is momentarily restored and she sees the child's light skin. Finally, there is the highly dramatic voodoo rite with the two dazed granddaughters drumming in the background as Granny Maumee stabs the wax effigy of the white father of her great-grandchild. The scene builds to a fever pitch as the young women echo Granny's chants:

By de w'ip an' de rope an' de chain dat swung,
By de bloody mouf an' de bit off tongue,
By de eat-up heaht an' de spit out gall,
We scream, we beg, we whoop, we squall
Tuh git poweh, tuh git stren'th tuh put de trick on um all.(9)

When the child's father arrives at the cabin door—the man Granny wanted to burn as his grandfather had burnt her son—Granny cries from within:

Go back w'ite man. Roll back w'ite wave er de fiery lek. Once you lit de fieh an' bu'n me. Once you po' de blood an' pizen me, but dis time Sam an' me we's de stronges' an' we leaves you go, we leaves you live tuh mek yore peace wif Gawd. We're poure bloods heah, royal black—all but one an' we'll do de bes' we kin erbout him. He shill be name Sam. Go back w'ite man, an' sin no mo'.

Granny has obeyed the vision of her son that reminded her, “We fuhgives uthehs,” and lets the white man go unharmed.

If the action proceeds in a ritualistic fashion, the language, too, is highly formalized. Not only has Torrence attempted to use the Negro dialect, but also the simple, but colorful language and highly emotional nature of these people who were only one generation removed from the slaves when Torrence grew up. The language of the play is out of the gospel meetings that Torrence probably heard as a boy.

One does not wonder at the enthusiasm Granny Maumee engendered at its first performance in 1914 and again in 1917. This was the first time that a New York audience was presented with a picture of a Negro's bitterness toward the white man, much less a depiction as powerful as Granny Maumee.

As Granny Maumee presents an embittered old woman at odds with the white world because of her desire for vengeance and her pride in her race, The Rider of Dreams presents a man whose conflict stems from his own irresponsibility. Madison Sparrow dreams of the wealth of the white man, but does not have the energy to earn a decent living or the responsibility to hold on to the money his wife has saved to buy their house. His goal is that of the dreamer: “I goin' to lan' us all in a sof' place on dat Easy Street I heah 'sm singing' 'bout so long wifout seein'.” Madison, with the help of a white ne'er-do'well, has taken his wife's savings to buy a stolen guitar. Fortunately, their landlord, who resolves the problem as if he were a deus ex machina, has recovered the money and accepts it as full payment for the house. His only stipulation is that Madison use the guitar to his advantage:

I'm goin' to give you dat guitar-but-dere's suhtinly goin' to be a string tied to it. You kin take dat guitar but you got to make somethin' outer yourself wif her or back she'll come to me. You kin give lessons an' learn folks music or you kin write down de music you make, but you got to do somethin' wif it fer Lucy. You got to wake up or I'll take de guitar.

One would expect the play to end here with everyone happy and all problems solved, but it does not. Madison Sparrow, the dreamer, is not that quick to accept the stringent requirements the world imposes upon him:

I don' undehstan' dis worl'. If I wants to make music why cain't folks lemme alone to make music? If I dream a fine dream why is it I always wake up? Looks to me like somebody's always tryin' to crown me out an' git me in a tight place.

Lucy [his wife]: … De trouble wuz dat dis dream of youahs wasn't a good dream.

Madison: Yes, but not all of my dreams is bad ones. All I wants is room to dream my dreams an' make my own music.

The critics liked The Rider of Dreams best, and it is not hard to understand why. Madison Sparrow's lyrical telling of his dreams makes it impossible for the audience to judge him harshly for his irresponsibility. He is a universal character, as old as comedy itself. He lies, he travels with the wrong people, and he is constantly being duped, but he remains likeable. A half century before, he was a favorite character in the folk tales of the American frontier. Transferred again to the Negro world twenty years later, he became the irrepressible George “Kingfish” Stevens. Madison Sparrow, then, is not an original character, but his effectiveness is enhanced by the Negro setting of The Rider of Dreams. Here is a man who dreams of things he, as a Negro, cannot have. The social implications of this problem are not explored in the play. It does not question the justice of Madison Sparrow's static position in society; rather it operates within the existent framework of values. We cannot censure Torrence for this. His interest in the Negro was more aesthetic than social. His attitude was that of his time. In this context, the play remains a winning one.

Simon the Cyrenian is a different type of play altogether. It is a religious drama set in the garden of Pontius Pilate on the day of Christ's crucifixion. The play is based on the verse from Saint Luke: “And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus” (Luke 23:26). Although one does not usually think of the characters involved in this incident as Negroes, Torrence's intention was that they should be depicted as such. Torrence had historical precedent for his treatment of the central character as the Cyrenian had been depicted as a Negro in early paintings.

When the play begins, Procula, Pilate's wife, is upset about the ominous dreams she has had regarding the consequences of Christ's crucifixion, and has sent Simon, the leader of recent slave uprisings in Rome, to rescue Christ if he is condemned. When Simon arrives, he discloses the fact that he is already a believer in Christ:

… I had summoned to a garden
The bravest of the slaves to help them plan
A new sedition that would free Barabbas.
I saw lights in another part of the garden,
I saw men come with torches and seize a man.
I hurried near and through the olive leaves
His eyes looked into mine,
His eyes burned into mine. I have seen them since,
Waking or sleeping.

When Christ is sentenced to death, Simon rushes off to save him, but is transfixed when he sees Christ and hears Him speak: “Put up the sword. For they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.” Centurions take Simon and order him to carry Christ's cross up the hill for him. The play ends with Simon being taunted by the three mockers: The Mocker with the Scourge, The Mocker with the Robe, and The Mocker with the Crown of Thorns. As the crown of thorns is placed on Simon's head, Christ's voice is heard once more: “If any man will come after me let him take up the cross and follow me,” to which Simon answers as he takes up the cross: “I will wear this, I will bear this till he comes into his own.”

It is difficult to know just how much Torrence intended to say in this short work. Certainly it showed his belief in the strength of human love and in pacifism, but it is difficult not to see Simon as the oppressed Negro, just freed from slavery, accepting Christian love and pacifism as the only solution to his problems. It may be, however, that Torrence only intended to say that Christ spoke to Negroes as well as whites; that his message was for both races.

Unlike the other two plays, much of Simon the Cyrenian is in verse, but, unlike his earlier verse dramas, the meter is free and there is no attempt at rhyme. The result is a much more natural flow of language. Like many religious plays, Simon the Cyrenian shows a greater concern for the communication of an idea than with character or logical motivation, and one has the feeling that the mockers contribute little to the effectiveness of the drama. The play's power, then, resides in its message, a message that was of particular import in April, 1917. As Randolph Bourne wrote:

It was Good Friday. And it was the day of the proclamation of war. As the solemn tones pealed out in the last play Simon, the Cyrenian, with its setting for the Crucifixion—“They that take the sword shall perish by the sword”—you could hear the audience catch its breath as it realized the piercing meaning of this heroic little drama of non-resistance played before a Christian nation that was going into a world war on the very day that the churches celebrated devoutly the anniversary of this very warning. … It seems imperative that no person with imagination miss this genuine dramatic experience.¹⁰

The critics were unanimous in their enthusiasm for the plays, especially The Rider of Dreams. The comments of Francis Hackett in theNew Republic are typical of the enthusiasm accorded this lyrical little comedy:

The way Mr. Torrence has caught the poet in his Rider of Dreams, has kept the rollick and lilt of Madison Sparrow without disturbing his innocence, is proof that with delicate art any kind of personality may be established on the stage. But in the intoxicated romance of Madison Sparrow, in the gallop of his imagination, there is no dependence on the popular idea of the Negro. … No one reared on the fodder of newspapers is prepared for such a burst of poetry, but the domestication of it by Mr. Torrence is as completely convincing as it is enchanting.¹¹

Enthusiasm for the performers was more tempered. Hackett wrote that, “Besides their gracious speech there is, despite much amateurishness, a real capacity for creating illusion.”¹² Alexander Woolcott was impressed with the plays, but not with the inexperienced actors: “It must be quite clear that the complaint here made against the decision of the producers was not that they decided to employ Negro actors, but that they decided to employ Negroes, whether they were actors or not.”¹³

The plays moved uptown from the Garden to the Garrick on April 16, but survived there only for a week. An important factor in the failure of the plays at the box office may well have been the United States' declaration of war on the day after the play's opening. With such a momentous front page, few people probably bothered to read the reviews.

Torrence did not give up hope, however, in the future of the Negro theater as the American counterpart of Synge's Irish Players. With the help of Jones and Mrs. Hapgood, he planned to make the Negro company that performed his plays a permanent repertory company dedicated to the cause of this new American folk drama. The founders went so far as to send out a brochure announcing plans for the next season and asking for financial support. Adequate support never materialized, though, and Torrence's scheme was permanently shelved.

Torrence's Plays for a Negro Theatre were not a great success at the box office, nor was their subsequent publication by Macmillan profitable. Moreover, their lack of concern for the social position of the Negro in American society, their acceptance of the Negro race as a race apart from the mainstream of American life, make them seem irrelevant in the era of civil rights. Still, if these plays did not sound a battle cry, they did show an acceptance and a respect that the Negro had not yet been accorded on the American stage. They were a beginning for the Negro in our theater.

Notes

1. Edward Sheldon, The Nigger (New York, 1910), p. 245. The play was first performed December 4, 1909.

2. The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, XIV (June, 1917), 10.

3. Ridgely Torrence to Harriet Moody, Feb., 1914.

4. New York Press, March 31, 1914, p. 12.

5. Ridgely Torrence to his parents, May 1, 1915.

6. Ridgely Torrence to his family, Feb. 2, 1917.

7. Ibid., March 2, 1917.

8. New York Tribune, April 1, 1917, pt. 5, p. 6.

9. Ridgely Torrence, Granny Maumee, The Rider of Dreams, Simon the Cyrenian: Three Plays for a Negro Theatre (New York, 1917), p. 27. All quotes from the plays are from this text.

10. Letter to the Editor, New York Tribune, April 10, 1917, p. 10.

11. The New Republic, April 14, 1917, p. 325.

12. Ibid.

13. The New York Times, April 29, 1917, Sect. 8, p. 7.