Black or Red?: The Creation of Identity in the Radical Plays of Langston Hughes
Vrtis, Catherine.
2017
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Abstract: Langston Hughes, despite his reputation as the measure of an
"authentic" black identity in art, was self-consciously performative in his creation of
self through his writing. While this is hidden in most of his work due to his mastery of
the tropes of "writing race," the constructed nature of his public personae is revealed
through his profound shift of artistic position, from primarily ... read moreracially focused to
primarily class oriented and Communist aligned, during the decade of the 1930s. As
demonstrated by his radical works, Hughes' professional identities were shaped by competing
needs: to represent his sincere political beliefs and to answer the desires of his
audiences. As he supported himself exclusively through his writing, Hughes could not risk
alienating his publishers, but he was also not willing to support any ideology for profit.
His radical plays, more so than his other Red writing, track Hughes' negotiation of this
tension during his Communist years. Hughes already had sympathies with the Communist cause
when he broke with his patron, Charlotte Mason, at the beginning of the Great Depression,
and instability of the period only deepened his radicalism. Freed from her expectations and
in need of an audience, Hughes sharply shifted his public and artistic persona, downplaying
his "Negro Poet Laureate" identity to promote his new Red one. His first radical drama,
Scottsboro Limited, reveals his ambivalence to this abrupt change of persona, even as it
announces the change. After his year in the USSR Hughes shifted to strictly orthodox Soviet
forms for Harvest and Angelo Herndon Jones, but he then abandoned these models when he
could not find an audience for the work. Finally, in his work for the Harlem Suitcase
Theatre, Hughes successfully synthesized his Communist playwriting with his earlier,
racially focused and blues and jazz inspired poetry, creating something personally
fulfilling and financially successful, before abandoning his radical persona at the outset
of World War II and adopting new ones to fit the changing world. As a result, these works -
historically undervalued by scholars - become the key to new understanding of Hughes'
entire oeuvre.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2017.
Submitted to the Dept. of Drama.
Advisor: Downing Cless.
Committee: Noe Montez, Heather Nathans, and Steven Tracy.
Keywords: Theater history, American literature, and African American studies.read less - ID:
- n296xb17f
- Component ID:
- tufts:22462
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
