89:—the company of the African Grove—played classics and many other plays with an entirely black cast and crew to mostly black audiences. It was the third of at least four attempts to create a black theater in the city, and the most commercially successful. At one point the theatre had to build an extra level of seats to house white audiences that wanted to see the performances. After a few years, city officials shut down the African Grove, because of complaints about conduct: conduct that was normal among working-class white New York theatre audiences of the time was considered unacceptably boisterous when displayed by blacks. It is thought that the real reason was because this black theatre was becoming as successful as many other venues. One source says that the theatre was "mysteriously burned to the ground in 1826". "There are no records of the African Grove Theater after 1823."
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state (gradual abolition brought it to an end in 1827, but young people born to slave mothers had to serve apprenticeships to age 21). 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
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curtains of the ballroom. Owing to the smallness of the company King Henry and the
Duchess were played by one person, and Lady Anne and Catesby by another. Lady Anne, in Act III, sang quite incongruously." The scholar Laura V. Blanchard identifies Odell's "dapper waiter" as the actor James Hewlett.
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Frequently harassed by the police, and facing increasing hostility from the white populace, the company moved several times, from Thomas Street north to
Bleecker and Mercer Streets. At the time this was the edge of the developed parts of New York City. When Brown moved his theatre from 38 Thomas
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Street to
Bleecker and Mercer Streets, he had a dilemma. Realizing that his theatre now was located too far from its core audience ("free persons of color"), he constructed a theatre building which was near a popular white theater called the
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ship and bought a house in New York, at 38 Thomas Street. At the start, Brown held performances of the
African Grove in his back yard, where he offered food and drink, but also poetry and short drama pieces. At the suggestion of
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The theatre was founded by
William Alexander Brown, a pioneering actor and playwright from the West Indies. He had worked as a ship's steward at times. Through his work as a ship's steward, he traveled to England and the
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As was common at the time, the producers adapted
Shakespeare's plays. Small casts and smaller budgets required expedients such as that described by the reviewer George Odell, writing of an 1821 performance of
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Despite the frequent changes in location and its short period of productions, the
African Grove Theatre was important as a venue for noted African-American actors, such as James Hewlett.
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Early Black
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In addition to
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is believed to have been the first full-length play by a black American performed in the United States.
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When the Park Theatre—New York City's leading theater of the time— put on
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Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
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Shakespeare in Sable: A History of Black Shakespearean Actors
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Dewberry, Jonathan. “The African Grove Theatre and Company.”
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actor, first saw a production of a Shakespeare play.
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