BLACK FEMALE PLAYWRIGHTS CARVING A PLACE ON THE AMERICAN THEATRE

Abstract

It aims at highlighting the changing complexion of the traditional American theatre which propagated negative and tenuous images of African American women. Being ‘black’ and ‘female’, these women had to suffer from various disadvantages in the dominant white patriarchal society. Nevertheless, in the midst of subordination and marginalization, these women attempted to retain their ‘womanhood’ and preserved African cultural heritage in the U.S. prominently, African American women playwrights made sincere efforts to liberate black women from the restraints of subjugation and from socio-political and cultural devaluation.