Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen

About

Curated by Es-pranza Humphrey, the show traces Black performers' presence in American theater and film from the 1880s, when producers billed "All Colored Revues" to distinguish real Black casts from blackface minstrelsy, through the 1940s shift toward film. Because many productions went otherwise undocumented and numerous all-Black-cast films are now lost, the posters on view stand as some of the only surviving evidence of works by playwrights, composers, and directors representing Black life on stage and screen. Organized with The Black Canon Collection of Detroit.