The Blackface Mask
Backstage photograph from 1955 production of The Desert Song at the Theatre Royal Nottingham (image courtesy of ourtheatreroyal.org)
“We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.”
We Wear the Mask, Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1895
In We Wear the Mask, African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar describes the almost constant, invisible mask that presents a smiling false countenance to a dominant white society.
Praised as a pioneering black poet, Dunbar also wrote songs, presented by white performers in blackface for the popular turn of the century minstrel shows. Dunbar’s mask can therefore also be perceived as the grinning stereotype of the blackface.
In a performative context, the mask is an iconic theatrical device, dating back to Ancient Greece. The mask symbolises the adoption of a role and through blackface, the mask perpetuates a role of black people as “outrageously incompetent, harmless and grotesque” [1] As Jonathan Daigle states, it is “a white performance of blackness.” [2]
Black Lives Matter has forced cultural institutions to examine their past in relation to race and raising the visibility of black artists. The movement provoked discussion on blackface in 2020, with public apologies from writers and comedians such as David Walliams, Matt Lucas and Leigh Francis for their use of blackface in the television comedies Little Britain and Bo’ Selecta in 2002 and 2003.
Other recent controversies include the Bolshoi Ballet using blackface for dancers in a 2019 production of La Bayadère and pro-blackface activists in support of Zwarte Piet in the Netherlands.
With the affirmative opportunity offered through Black Lives Matter to examine their racial past, have cultural institutions accepted the need to confront their history and heritage of blackface and “the historiographical neglect of blackface minstrelsy in Britain”? [3] What are the means to shed the blackface mask and to engage in a positive dialogue about black history on stage?
The roots of blackface and its association with minstrel shows are attributed to Thomas Rice, a nineteenth century white performer, who was able to further his career having seen a black man singing and dancing to a traditional slave song, Jump Jim Crow. Rice applied the burnt cork and premiered his Jim Crow character in New York in 1832 to huge success, which was to later continue in the UK.
Compare this treatment with that of the pioneering black actor Ira Aldridge, who from 1833 onwards was the victim of sustained racism and ridicule from the London press. Whilst not wholly forgotten, Aldridge is an example of both poor representation at the time and a need to properly document black theatre history. This lack of inclusiveness ensured the cultural dominance of the blackface mask.
The revered Rice developed his Jim Crow persona even further to play Othello in a burlesque version of Shakespeare’s tragedy. James Dorman rightly describes this work as a “travesty” [4] and yet Othello performed as blackface continued well into the twentieth century. Laurence Olivier’s 1964 National Theatre performance is often cited as one of his finest, as evidenced by this glowing contemporary review in The Stage.
“Laurence Olivier’s Moor remains in the memory as a magnificent, subtle and moving characterisation, a complete absorption into the role, even to Negro voice and deportment”.
In his 1982 autobiography, Olivier, rather than rejecting blackface twenty years later as anachronistic, prefers to muse on the composition of his make-up for the role, rejecting “the modern trend towards a coffee-coloured compromise”.[5]
The Black & White Minstrel Show first aired on BBC TV in 1958. Billed as a light-entertainment variety show, the programme centred around the now classic minstrel image of white performers in blackface. Many of the songs performed in the TV show belonged to the era of nineteenth century Jim Crow US minstrelsy, such as Dixie Land, a paean to the Confederate South.
The show was enormously popular. It ran until 1978 and achieved its audience peak in 1964, when 18 million people viewed the programme. The same year as Olivier’s Othello. The BBC and the National Theatre, two major British national cultural institutions, were now officially endorsing blackface.
Lucrative theatre tours of The Black and White Minstrel Show took place around the UK for over three decades. Its final tours took place well after the TV show was axed and still drew large audiences.
Theatre programme for The Black and White Minstrel Show, 1982 (image courtesy of ourtheatreroyal.org)
Like the folk purists advocating ‘tradition’ in support of the use of blackface in mummers plays, minstrelsy was “an established custom within British entertainment that was not seen as racist by its white British producers or its majority white audience” [6]
BBC producers were well aware of how offensive The Black & White Minstrel Show was. In 1967 the Campaign for Racial Discrimination petitioned the BBC to cancel the programme. In 1962, Barrie Thorne, the BBC’s Chief Accountant complained about the show to Kenneth Adam, the Director of Television, writing: “The Uncle Tom attitude of the show in this day of age is a disgrace and an insult.”
There was a clear decision by the BBC to ignore protests, preferring to assert “their authority to define what was, or was not, racist on British screens”, resulting in the programme’s longevity and its impact on race perception in this country.
Contradicting the view from some, such as John McWhorter, that minstrelsy is the product from a bygone age, and that artistic expression in relation to use of blackface should not be determined by Al Jolson, The Black and White Minstrel Show is easily within living memory for many people. I remember watching the programme myself as a young child with my family. At a time of only three available TV channels, the programme could easily attract millions of viewers and shape the view of black people and culture in this country.
Rather than neglecting this difficult history, as evidenced by the BBC’s own archive on The Black and White Minstrel Show, with the removal of items in 2007 due to the corporation’s possible unease with the subject matter [7], we can now utilise this heritage, as well as seeking out artist’s voices, when trying to understand and learn more about the history of blackface in the UK.
The Theatre Royal Nottingham’s digital archive at www.ourtheatreroyal.org includes material relating to the stage shows of The Black and White Minstrel Show from 1961 to 1982. There can also be found images from amateur productions staged at the Theatre Royal in the 1950s of the musicals Show Boat and The Desert Song, highlighting both the wide use of blackface in performance and its resonance.
These shows are all part of the venue’s history and need to be preserved. They offer stories and perspectives into the past that enable us to question such representation of race. Open access via a public digital archive means that they are not hidden or catalogued away from view, but this material requires more than just the requisite metadata.
Black Lives Matter has proved that deep racial concerns still exist. This heritage can be utilised to discuss both the past and the present.
In 2015, the BBC’s The One Show ran a short feature on The Black and White Minstrel Show. Not having seen or even heard of the programme before, they showed some clips to an audience of sixth-form students in London. Their shock was palpable, with comments such as “they’re making fun of them”, “they’re mocking black people” and “it was unfair”.
The One Show segment shows young people talking about and challenging the past. This is a principle at the heart of the Jim Crow Museum in Michigan. Established in 2012 and with a collection of 8,000 plus items, including Ku Klux Klan robes and segregation signs, it defines itself as a ‘Museum of Racist Memorabilia – using objects of intolerance to teach tolerance and promote social justice.’
Following Thomas Rice’s creation of the Jim Crow character as the “Negro minstrel stereotype” in the 1830s, Jim Crow soon became synonymous with segregation and white supremacy.
The Jim Crow Museum now endeavours to reclaim that name as a tool for reflection, whilst not forgetting the term’s racist past. Founder David Pilgrim states of the museum’s collection:
“I collected these items because I believed—then later, knew—that objects, even hateful ones, can be used as teaching tools …Studying the past (and the histories which narrate it) should not be driven by desires to make us feel good or bad—but, simply, to help us understand what happened.”
Reclaiming the blackface mask, through making archives more accessible and enabling discussion is a positive move forward.
Contemporary black writers, such as Branden Jacobs-Jenkins are intertwining heritage and performance to provoke reaction and discussion regarding race and stereotypes. In his 2010 play Neighbors, Jacobs presents the Crows, a family of blackfaced minstrels, moving into a modern suburban neighbourhood. Jacobs is exploiting the extreme racist stereotype as Brechtian satire, whilst “theorising and teaching his audience about the history of blackface entertainment through the dialogue of the minstrels themselves”. [8]
Set in the deep South, An Octoroon from 2014 is Jacob-Jenkins’ adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s 1859 melodrama. Again, Jacobs-Jenkins explores blackface, twisting the plot for the lead black actor to play the plantation owner in whiteface.
Re-appropriation through discussion, wider learning and even satire are key to understanding the history and purpose of the blackface mask. However, this should not exist in isolation.
The National Theatre’s Black Plays Archive at www.blackplaysarchive.org.uk supported by Sustained Theatre and Arts Council England is an online catalogue for the first professional production of every African, Caribbean, and Black British play produced in post-war Britain. This fully accessible public resource emphasizes the importance of “plurality”, but also reveals some of the nuances and differences within black theatre and society as a whole, with “multiple black experiences” to document. It is a complete rejection of the blackface mask, shaped by white subjugation, as the expression of blackness and identity on stage.
This plurality was emphasized even further for me having recently seen the touring production of J’Ouvert, the 2019 debut play by Yasmin Joseph. Set against the backdrop of the annual Notting Hill Carnival, it is a rich and vibrant play, with strong female voices and expression, that explores black history and community, as well as generational challenges.
After centuries of caricature and racist stereotyping, black theatre heritage needs to be defined by genuine black voices and experiences, from Ira Aldridge to the contemporary prodding of history by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Yasmin Joseph. The blackface mask should not be lost to history, but as a heritage tool to understand systematic exploitation and the drowning out of those voices.
1. Green, A, (1970) Jim Crow – The Northern Origins of Minstrelsy, The Massachusetts Review, 11 (2), 395
2. Daigle, J. (2009) Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Marshall Circle: Racial Representation from Blackface to Black Naturalism, African American Review, 43 (4)
3. Pickering, M. (2008) Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain, London: Ashgate Publishing.
4. Dorman, J. (1969) The Strange Career of Jim Crow Rice, Journal of Social History, 3 (2)
5. Olivier, L. (1982) Confessions of an Actor, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson
6. Grandy, C. (2020) "The Show Is Not about Race'": Custom, Screen Culture, and the Black and White Minstrel Show, Journal of British Studies, 59 (4)
7. Ibid.
8. Foster, V.AS. (2019) Excavating American Theatrical History: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Neighbors, Appropriate and An Octaroon, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 32 (1)
This is an abridged version of a paper submitted in January 2021, as part of the MA Culture & Heritage Management at the University of Lincoln.
