Black Theatre Making and Censorship in the Archive
Channel: British Library
Date: 2022-12-01

Black theatre making is often written out of the archive, credited to white theatre practitioners, or catalogued in ways that make it hard to find. But because Black theatre makers were frequently at the forefront of movements for change, their work was regularly subject to censorship and surveillance and collected in state archives.  
  
This panel discussion and performance explores Black theatre making in the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays Collection, an archive which owes its existence to British theatre censorship laws requiring theatre managers to obtain a license to stage a new play up until 1968.  
  
Come and find out how Black theatre practitioners are talking back to archives of censorship to recover the rich heritage of Black theatre making.   
  
The event will feature staged readings from theatre manuscripts and censor’s reports on two plays by Black theatre makers held in the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays Collection at the British Library: Una Marson’s At What a Price (1933) and In Dahomey (1903) one of the first musical comedies written almost entirely by Black theatre makers and presented by Black performers in American and Britain. It will be followed by a panel discussion and chance for audience members to consider what they would censor if these plays were performed today.  
  
This event is supported by the Independent Social Research Foundation as part of the Archives of Cultural Surveillance and the Making of Black Histories Project at the University of Leeds.  The event is a collaboration between the University of Leeds, Leeds Playhouse and the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. The Eccles Centre exists to support and promote creative research and lifelong learning about the Americas, through the world-class collections of the British Library.