Zora Neale Hurston, (Harlem) Renaissance Woman

Leticia Ridley: On a side note before we talk about her works. If Zora Neale Hurston lived today, do you think she'd be a rapper?

Jordan Ealey: Absolutely. Or she'd love rap music, I think.

Leticia: Yeah. I feel like she'd be a battle rapper, probably.

Jordan: She had crazy beefs with people.

Jordan: Actually. She'd be a stand-up comedian. No joke. And then she also performed with Moms Mabley. We're not really talking about that here, but she performed a revue with Moms Mabley.

Leticia: Welcome to Daughters of Lorraine, a podcast from your friendly neighborhood, Black feminists, exploring the legacies, present, and futures of Black theatre. We are your hosts, Leticia Ridley.

Jordan: And Jordan Ealey.

Leticia: This is a podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. And on it we discuss Black theatre history; conduct interviews with local, national, and international Black theatre artists, scholars, and practitioners; and discuss plays by Black playwrights that have our minds fuzzing.

Zora Neale Hurston is likely a name you've encountered before. Maybe you read her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in your high school or college English class, or watched the film adaptation starring Halle Berry and Michael Ealy. But did you know that she was a prolific theatre creator?

Jordan: In today's episode, we dig into the theatrical life of Zora Neale Hurston, as we consider some of her plays and essays to think through her dramaturgical and theoretical contributions to Black theatre and performance.

Oh, welcome back to another episode of Daughters of Lorraine. Before we get started, Leticia, it's such a beautiful day here in Rochester. Is it just as gorgeous there in Toronto?

Leticia: Sure. I say that because I have not been outside. As you know, we are expected to produce in our jobs, and that's how we keep our jobs. So, I actually have been sitting on my laptop all morning trying to get these words to do what they do for this book project. But perhaps after we’re done recording and I'll go outside and just take a little walk and get some fresh air. That will probably help my mind a little bit. How about you?

Jordan: Oh my God, I've been outside. It's so beautiful here. It's like high sixties, partly cloudy, and it's just such a gorgeous day. I had a Pilates class this morning, so when I was on my way there, I saw the people out strolling around. It's just so nice in our area. It can be pretty chilly, if you will, and a little bit gloomy sometimes. It's really nice that we're finally entering into a season of fun and sun, and I'm so excited to soak it all up. I'm just really... Can you just tell my mood is just lifted?

Leticia: I know. You are the light on the podcast right now. And you know who else is a light? Our subject of today's episode. I feel like this is a long time coming. We have referred to this dramatist, scholar, extraordinaire, novelist many, many times on this podcast, but we haven't actually had an opportunity to dedicate an episode to her theatrical presence and work. In particular, I think, with this figure, who is Zora Neale Hurston… There has been a tendency, not within theatre and performance studies in particular, but outside other fields which take up her work, to actually, one, exclude her or to not consider her theatrical work as part of her legacy, but as impactful as these other folks engage her in the disciplines of things like anthropology and English and literary studies, right? She has her hands firmly within the theatre world. And, Jordan, this is someone you take up quite a lot in your own work. This is definitely an ode to Zora Neale Hurston, but also an ode to the important work that you are also doing.

Jordan: Thank you, thank you. I'm just joining a cadre of wonderful scholars, many of which helped to supply our research for this episode of people who are uplifting Zora Neale Hurston's work. And, sorry, to that point, in the anthology, Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays, the authors of that anthology, Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell, both talk about the way that oftentimes Zora Neale Hurston's plays are used as like, “Oh, how can we use her plays to then better understand her novels?” They're used as a comparison point or like, “Oh, this is the foundation, and then she was able to write Their Eyes Were Watching God, right?”

But in their anthology, and ya know subsequent scholars like Eric Glover, Michelle Cowin Gibbs, myself included, are all like, “No, let's flip this around and let's look at actually what she's doing as a playwright, in my point of view a dramaturg, as a director, as a choreographer,” as Anthea Kraut looks at. Let's talk a little bit about her relationship to performance. Even in reading Their Eyes Were Watching God, I don't see how you can't see how influenced she was by embodiment and movement and sound and all of these different practices. I'm really excited to talk about her today.

Leticia: Yeah, it's so interesting that you say that, and thank you for citing all those wonderful folks who are doing this work. It's so interesting because for us and those in our field, Zora is an absolutely monumental figure within Black theatre and the American—

Jordan: 100 percent.

Leticia: ... theatre landscape. Not only the type of plays that she wrote, but even the method of anthropology and theatre and thinking about how these two distinct fields are intertwined in how they inform each other. And we spoke about, I believe, “Characteristics of Negro Expression” on a previous episode, right? And just anecdotally, I remember that there was a scholar, not within theatre and performance, who mentioned to me once like, “Oh yeah, I'm taking up this essay by Zora Neale Hurston. that's never engaged,” and I was like, “Never engaged?” I was like... a lot of folks have taken up that essay and used it in so many ways within theatre and performance studies.

I think it just speaks to the way that certain figures move in and out of spaces.

Jordan: Right.

Leticia: Then also to this historical precedent within Black theatre where the most foremost thinkers of our time in a field, let's say, for Black studies, W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, that we have supplanted in these other fields, were actually deeply intertwined, engaged in seeing the power of what theatre can be. I say that all to say that this work and this theatre history episode that we're embarking on today, I think it's important to uplift these figures as folks who laid the groundwork for folks, for us, and for other folks that are doing the work of Black theatre in whatever way that they enter into it.

Jordan: Yeah, before we get started talking or diving a little deeper into some of what Zora Neale Hurston did in the theatre, I'm just curious, Leticia, when we're talking about how people use her work or when and how she comes up in different fields. When was the first time you heard Zora Neale Hurston's name or the first thing you encountered by her? What context? Even as a theatremaker, when was that introduced to you?

Leticia: I am ashamed to admit this, but my first engagement with Zora was probably what a lot of people's engagement was, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and I remember reading it, but I was in high school. In California, where I got my education from, there wasn't necessarily... That wasn't on the curriculum. But I went to a school, San Diego High School, shout out, Diego, where you're at. Where we had this new system called small schools, like a college-esque. And there were six small schools within the larger high school campus. And I was able to enter into the International Baccalaureate Program, similar to AP, where we're allowed to engage other things outside of the curriculum. And that was one of the things that came up. That was my first introduction. I vaguely remember watching the film of it, but I don't remember particulars about it.

Then her theatre work, quite honestly, I didn't read one of her plays or even knew she was as engaged in the theatre until I took Faedra Chatard Carpenter, our mentor and former advisor's African American theatre history class, which at that time when I was a master's student, was the first time she ever, in her career at UMD, got the chance to teach it. And then I think you took it a few years later when you arrived at UMD. And I read Color Struck. When I was thinking about Black theatre, the usual suspects came up with people recommending folks. But someone like Zora wasn't necessarily the person that people would say like, “Oh, you should read these Zora Neale Hurston plays.” Right?

And I think that's for a lot of different reasons, but I think what happens in how we tell Black theatre history is that it is so vast and so wide that, of course, people are going to fall out with how we share and shape the narrative. But I didn't realize how integral she was to theatre. It wasn't just Color Struck. As the girls say, “She wasn't new to this. She was true to this.”

Jordan: Yes, as we will soon find out. I don't know why you were embarrassed to say that you first read Their Eyes Were Watching God. Yeah, same. That was my first encounter with Zora Neale Hurston. I was fifteen years old when I first read it, and I didn't get it. I did not understand it. Grew up in the south, grew up around southern vernacular, everything like that. And still it just went right over my little head. Although I will say…Oh man, shout out, shout out to my high school classmates. I'm not going to name you because... But we did this performance project where you had to make a piece based on, I went to performing arts school, I think I've mentioned this many times before. We had to make a small little skit or something artistic inspired by Their Eyes Were Watching God.

It was the book that every single grade read. Every single year they would choose a book that every grade read, and my tenth-grade year was Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Leticia: Atlanta.

Jordan: I know right. Our teacher gave us an assignment to create something based off of it. And I'll never forget we made a song. I don't remember all of the verses, but I remember the hook. The melody was like “Their eyes were watching God” and we just like sang that. I was just saying it. And we had all these verses about the book and every... My first adaptation, it was my first musical theatre adaptation. Anyway, performing arts school.

Leticia: Yeah, performing arts school, right? Is it true that Zora's integration or beginnings into the theatre was not as a playwright or director, but like working backstage.

Jordan: You're so right. According to biographer, Valerie Boyd, who wrote an incredible biography, Wrapped in Rainbows. This is where I first encountered this information, is that Zora Neale Hurston started off as a wardrobe girl with Gilbert and Sullivan Repertory.

Leticia: Gilbert and Sullivan. Yeah. I wonder how she got that...

Jordan: Musical theatre royalty. Well, I'll tell you a little bit how she got that.

Leticia: That's like Beyoncé being like, “Hey, you want to dress me? You want to help the wardrobe people.” That's wild.

Jordan: Right. So we know Zora, she was born in Alabama, and her family moved to Florida, which is essentially what people mostly associate her with: Eatonville, Florida. That's where she grew up, and also where we know she returned to many, many times throughout her life. But after a period of turmoil in her teenage years and early twenties, she found herself in need of work. And a friend, and according to Valerie Boyd, “and wearing a new blue poplin dress”, she landed the job of being a wardrobe assistant to the lead singer in a Gilbert and Sullivan Repertory Company. Like, what the heck? Her boss was a blonde woman who Zora only called Miss M. For all my historians out there, I'm not a historian, can you all figure out who Miss M is? Can someone tell me? But she was assumed to be younger. She was twenty-four.

Leticia: Black don't crack.

Jordan: Exactly. Okay, she was assumed to be younger even though she was twenty-four years old. And then this would kind of inspire Zora to lie about her age for pretty much the rest of her life, which shout out to a queen for that. Yeah, she got paid ten dollars a week, which would be about $160 when Valerie Boyd wrote this, which was I believe in the early 2000s at some point. Who knows what it would be equivalent to today's money? She also got expenses covered as well. And in Wrapped in Rainbows, Valerie Boyd says, quote, “‘Zora also was instantly smitten by the stage. The sights, the sounds, the backstage atmosphere enchanted her. Everything was pleasing and exciting,’ she would remember, ‘If there was any more heaven than this, I didn't want to see it.’” End quote.

Leticia: Oh my God, that is unique. Theatre is heaven and also theatre as heaven for someone... Not someone, for a Black woman of her day and age moving around and tending with misogynoir and racism and class.

Jordan: She also grew up working class, right? And she was struggling with money pretty much her whole life as well. Yeah.

Leticia: Right, to instantly be a part of this form that we call theatre and liken it to something like heaven is honestly like... When you read that, it was quite striking to me that this place—

Jordan: Kills.

Leticia: ... that a lot of people would say that we play imaginary on, is doing something and is akin to something like a higher place where there is no pain and suffering, which we know is not true of the theatre, but that Zora was making those connections, I think, is just quite profound, right? And makes sense why she was like, “I'm going to pursue this, and even if I pursue different avenues, I'm always going to keep a foot within the theatre.” One, I'll just say, I never met Zora. Obviously, I'm still here, but she had to be super charismatic. I imagine she was...

Jordan: 100 percent.

Leticia: And listening to some of her recordings because of the work that you do, you can get that sense she would walk into a room and have major aura, like people eating out of the palm of her hands. I can only imagine. I'm eating out of the palm of her hands.

Right. That's why that white woman gave her that money to do her anthropology work. She probably had crazy mouthpiece.

Jordan: Which we probably... You know what I mean? She wrote it down.

Leticia: True.

Jordan: You know what I mean? She absolutely did. I laughed so much with her. Yeah, she traveled with this company for a little bit, and then Ms. M got married. Decided she was leaving the theatre. Gave Zora a hug in Baltimore and said, “Peace, I'm not doing this anymore.” And Zora Neale Hurston, essentially, they talked about how unsteady the pay already was, because if theatre being so... I'm like, No, the more things change-

Leticia: The more they stay.

Jordan: The more they stay the same right?

Leticia: Period.

Jordan: I'm like, “Theatre has never been a steady career ever. From early 1900s till now.” Oh yeah, I've got to mention this is around the 1910s, is when all of this is happening. Yeah, also you talked about the fact that we have discussed “Characteristics of Negro Expression” before. It's definitely one of the foremost essays that... Like you said, we study in performance studies. Dwight Conquergood, performance studies extraordinaire, basically talks about how “Characteristics of Negro Expression” is the first study of Black performance. I'd argue, say, just generally performance studies. I think that it's one of the first major works that we get in understanding and connecting performance, embodiment, choreography, and gesture in everyday life. And that is performance studies.

Leticia: Right. And I think that yes, yes, yes, yes. Also, for her to be writing in this particular essay about the characteristics of what she would—

Jordan: And this was 1934. Yeah.

Leticia: She's talking about how the expressions of Black life both in its grandiose-ness and also in its mundaneness. I think one of the things that I really appreciate about it is that this is also a time where minstrelsy is still very much in the vocabulary of life in the world, and she does not shy away from something like mimicry as something that Black folks can claim and participate in, right? In a way that minstrelsy, again, it is a very complicated history, in a way that some Black folks might shun that or try to distance themselves from mimicking something because of this sort of ‘hot bed-ness’ of being seen as a minstrel is that she is actively working against that, not as a counter or a foil to minstrelsy itself, but saying that, “No, there is something, there is otherwise, there is something else within what Black folks have always participated in. And I am one just writing it down and noting it.” Right?

I'll also say that I think that we unpack this essay on, I believe, “What is Black Theatre?” episode, a little-

Jordan: Yeah, we go into that.

Leticia: ... bit. But I will say that I think that this is also a really good way, to your point that you said earlier, to understand the dramaturgy of her own particular work, right? That you can match up what adornment looks like or angularity within her theatrical work or her asymmetry and how she's dramatizing this within her text. Similar to, she paces someone like Suzan-Lori Parks. You look at her essays to inform how you understand the actual dramas that she's writing, that Zora also has this sort of engagement within her work that you go to her to understand how she's thinking through the choices that she's making on stage.

Jordan: Yeah, and it's something very interesting for me, especially as someone who is currently writing a lot about her, is thinking about the ways that we talk about... You and I talk about this a lot. We've talked about this on the podcast, especially shout out to Dr. Lisa B. Thompson, who we had as a guest, who gave us that phrase that I now use all the time, “Black theatre is Black life.” None of that is more true than in Zora Neale Hurston's work, because she was in the communities, she's learning about these communities, she's archiving their work, and she's also using literally that knowledge to frame the work that she does inside of the theatre, right? And it goes back to “Characteristics of Negro Expression” in many, many ways where, like I said, she's looking something like angularity, right? Which is where she talks about how Black folks are always just a little bit off center, right?

It's slanted, it's not ever straight. You can connect that and see something like voguing, right? The way that people vogue and the angles in voguing, the ways that Black folks... Even when we're talking and laughing. If you've ever seen two Black people laugh, we don't just chuckle at each other and just a ha-ha and a hee-hee. Like it's with our entire body. We're slapping each other. We're walking around praise dance because something was so affecting to us, right? And you can see all of that in the way that Zora Neale Hurston was able to capture it in that essay, “Characteristics of Negro Expression.” Yeah, I know we've already covered it on this podcast, but I really wanted to bring that back into the conversation, because from that dramaturgical perspective, I think, it's really significant.

Leticia: Yeah, and just to make a connecting point, but also a side note. When we were recording this episode, I have been having Streamer University in the background, which for folks who doesn't know Kai Cenat was watching Harry Potter and was like, “I want to recreate that in real life, but for streamer.” So he basically went to the University of Akron, had people apply to go to Streamer University. He selected 150 people. And all these people are making content for four days, and it literally just ended today. I've been listening about that in the background because I have an interest in the online digital culture and the way that performance is operating there. In prepping for this episode, a lot of what I thought about with these majority Black streamers is the way that the “Characteristics of a Negro Expression” plays out there, right? Like you said, to your point, the way that Black folks are laughing, the way they're engaging in mimicry, is also very much present.

Also, what's so interesting about it is this blurring of real life and also performance, and also the shared understanding that what we're doing to create content for people who are watching online is actually also making them believe what they're seeing is real. But we have an understood contract that we are engaging in. I just find that really interesting. But all that to say is like looking through the lens of this essay, to your point, expands beyond just Black theatre and Black performance, but other realms that we still see the legacies. And today, I think digital culture, and particularly streaming culture in this essay, there's so many resonance with this particular essay and the way that the juke joint is perhaps now transferred to the digital space.

She was also about authenticity. And authenticity meant messiness. It meant chaos. It meant imperfections. It meant flaws.

Jordan: Right. Oh my God, that's an essay. No one else steal that. I'm just kidding. Well, this is going to be out in the world, so just cite Leticia, if you want to write about that. But that's such a great point that you're making. I think the other thing too that makes me, again, Zora Neale Hurston's hilarious. She talks about asymmetry, and she says, quote,

“It is a lack of symmetry, which makes Negro dancing so difficult for white dancers to learn. The abrupt and unexpected changes, the frequent change of key and time are evidences of this quality in music. Note, the St. Louis Blues, the dancing of the justly famous Bojangles and snake hips are excellent examples. The presence of rhythm and lack of symmetry are paradoxical, but they are there. Both are present to a marked degree. There's always rhythm, but it is a rhythm of segments. Each unit has a rhythm of its own, but when the hole is assembled, it is lacking in symmetry. But easily workable to a Negro who is accustomed to the break and going from one part to another so that he adjusts themselves to the new tempo.”

One, her pen game was insane. There's something so interesting where she talks about... So much about “Characters of Negro Expression” is about thinking about that paradox and that contradiction that happens within Black performance culture, right? It's like, Black folks are original and inventive, but also they're really skilled in mimicry. Black people are able to exist in this asymmetrical space. It seems unplanned, but also it is actually very highly skilled to be able to know how to follow the rhythm. Right? There's so many... And I think that that to me also speaks to Zora Neale Hurston's oeuvre in general, is that she herself existed in a lot of contradiction, and she was also comfortable in representing those contradictions in her work. We're going to move on to talk a little bit about some of her works in a moment, but it's like reading and engaging her works is that she's not just this utopic, “Oh, being Black is so amazing and everything we do is amazing.”

I mean, it is, and she was about that, and she was also about authenticity. And authenticity meant messiness. It meant chaos. It meant imperfections. It meant flaws. That's why she was tapping into those taboos, folk communities and colorism and classism and sexism, all of these different things exist in her work. And sometimes it annoys me when people will read her work and be like, “Oh, well, she was doing this and this is too this and this is too that.” And I always encourage people to read it from a expansive, in my opinion, Black feminist lens to say, “Well, maybe she wasn't trying to represent it perfectly.” Like, “I have a perfect politic.” Maybe she was just trying to represent the truth and the truth is not perfect. Right?

Leticia: On a side note before we talk about her works, if Zora Neale Hurston lived today, do you think she'd be a rapper?

Jordan: Absolutely, or she'd love rap music. I think.

Leticia: Yeah, I felt like she'd be a battle rapper.

Jordan: I think her work... Yeah, probably.

Leticia: She had crazy beefs with people, but-

Jordan: Actually, she'd be a stand-up comedian. No joke, no joke. She also performed with Moms Mabley. We're not really talking about that here, but she performed a review with Moms Mabley. Actually, I think she would've had a pretty good career as a stand-up comedian.

Leticia: But alas, what could have been?

Jordan: What could have been?

Leticia: She decided to do many other things. And one of them was...

Jordan: She did many things.

Leticia: ... was a playwright. And probably if you are reading or have read a Zora Neale Hurston play, the play that you probably have read is Color Struck. I know I assigned it in my classes, in my Black theatre history class. Her one-act play that she received second place in the Opportunity literary prize. Right? It was not officially awarded in the capacity in that she won, but it was recognized in so much so that it has stood the test of time.

Jordan: Right.

Leticia: 1925, around the time that one-act plays, particularly in Black theatre, are very prevalent and specifically them being published in journals and magazines and editorials of the time. “Color Struck” for our un-melanated listeners. If you may not know…

Jordan: And the uninitiated.

Leticia: And the uninitiated, is often a term used in AAVE that describes when someone is enamored by lighter skin. In a sentence it'd be like, “Man, she's too color struck.” A.K.A., she's like hyper-fixated on this.

Jordan: Thank you, Urban Dictionary. Okay, wait, side note. I know your grandma grew up in...

Leticia: Yes.

Jordan: Did she ever use that term?

Leticia: Yes.

Jordan: Yeah, my family uses that. My older folks in my family, my grandma and her sisters would use that term to describe people in our family and stuff. Y'all know who you are. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know how often it's still used now, but it was definitely a thing. I actually definitely heard this term growing up. And for context, I'm a millennial.

Leticia: Right. The play focuses on Emmaline, a brown-skinned woman in her relationship with John, who she accuses of being enamored with light-skinned women. And this takes place predominantly on a railroad car and then later transitions to-

Jordan: Like her house?

Leticia: ... her house of some sort, where they can... Oh wait, and then the contest. The actual contest.

Jordan: Yeah, it's like the car and then the contest, and then her house.

Leticia: The contest, and then the house. And on the car, she's like, “John, who are you talking to?” Kind of really keeping tabs on him because she has this internal conflict within herself about how she perceives and understands her being brown-skinned, not even dark-skinned, just brown-skinned, right? Not light-skinned. And what happens when they get to the contest. And these are the notable, best cake walkers. Everyone's like, “Oh, they're going to win again.”

Jordan: Yeah.

Leticia: But she becomes so, hint hint, color struck that what ends up happening is she chooses not to compete. And her partner, John, ends up dancing with her worst fear, a light-skinned Black woman. And even though John is not interested in this light-skinned Black woman romantically at all, he's just like, “I'm here to dance and have a good time.”

Jordan: And they win.

Leticia: And they win. Then we fast-forward to, spoiler alert, but this was written in 1925. If you ain't read it, I don't know what to say.

Jordan: Oh my God, literally one hundred years—

Leticia: Oh, one hundred years.

Jordan: ... years ago.

Leticia: Oh, look at that. That's kind of serendipitous. It transitions to her home twenty years later where John comes to kind of find her. And what we discover is that she has a child who is light-skinned but sick. And John comes back to be like, “It's always been you, baby. It's always been you. I always wanted you.” And she still, twenty years later, can't get over how color struck she is. Right? And she refuses to save her child in part because of her color-struckness, right? That's a quick synopsis of the play, but a lot of the discourse around how folks engage this particular play and how a lot of us teach it is around the intra-cultural critique of colorism.

Jordan: Yeah, that's high. That's also how I teach it too. One of my favorite theoretical dives into Color Struck is written by Soyica Diggs Colbert. In her book, The African American Theatrical Body, she has an entire chapter on Color Struck. Honestly, it's fantastic. And in that chapter, Colbert talks specifically around the concept of racial melancholia. And she describes and says, quote, “Racial melancholia causes the individual to question how he or she is both part of and alienated from the larger group as oppressors eats each individual's ability to form group affiliations.” And this specific phenomenon, she applies it to Emma in the way that her melancholic disposition stems from this colorism that she's faced in her life, right? And that she talks specifically about this as a structure of feeling to call back into my American studies training. They can't access their full autonomy through systematic oppression, right?

And that oppression in Color Struck is colorism, right? This is very specifically also placed within the context of the New Negro Movement, which is kind of in tandem with and preceding the Harlem Renaissance, is this period of a burst of African American, Black, artistic expression that Black folks were also experiencing a high level of economic growth as a people and self-determination in so many ways. This is in contrast to that, right? Because we see Emma not in the racial uplift trajectory that we see from a lot of folks in Hurston's period, right? In contrast, it's really delving into the, like you said, intercultural critique, but also the... Yeah, it depreciates in a way, because when we see her twenty years later, she's gotten worse, right? It doesn't seem like her mental health has improved. Then she also has to care for a child that she's unable to care for, both economically and emotionally, because of this particular oppression. Anyway, Color Struck, it's literally four scenes. It's very, very short, but it really packs a punch. I've never forgotten it since I read it in Faedra's class all those years ago.

Leticia: 100 percent. 100 percent. Also, just the skill of the one-act play, I think, is a forgotten skill. We often joke like, “Man, our Black dramatists were quite long-winded.” But I think there's something about this tradition in what she's a part of. I put someone like Georgia Douglas Johnson, also a part of it. Mary Burrill for example, the one-act form where a lot happens, but it's very economical and impactful, I think is, one, notable, but also something that we can actually return to and think more deeply about the one-act form and what it served in this particular time period. And it begs the question is, especially Black theatre in the US, if the one-act form might be returning because of the conditions in which so many Black theatremakers are working under, right? Do we go back to the churches? Do we go to the one-acts? Do we go to the periodicals again? I know we have some of that with some American Theatre magazines that publish plays and such. But it just makes me think of that.

Jordan: Yeah.

Leticia: So read Color Struck, but... Yeah, no but. Why did I say but?

Jordan: No but.

Leticia: No but, read Color Struck.

Jordan: Can I ask you a question, Leticia?

Leticia: Yes.

Jordan: Did you know that Zora Neale Hurston was on Broadway?

Leticia: No.

Jordan: Okay.

Leticia: Was she really on Broadway?

Jordan: Okay, kind of. She was kind of on Broadway. She staged a pageant called The Great Day in 1932, and it premiered in a Broadway theatre.

Leticia: Interesting. How did that unfold? Now I'm confused. It premiered in a Broadway theatre, but it wasn't, as the girls would say, on Broadway in the sense of it was Broadway build.

Jordan: No.

Leticia: Interesting. Okay, tell me more. Now, I'm curious.

Jordan: Well, that's really as much information I have in terms of the production of it. My understanding is that it wasn't necessarily connected to a Broadway producer or someone who brought it there, but that she was able to raise enough funds likely from her benefactor to where she was able to stage The Great Day, which is a pageant. It is arranged around a single day of life in a railroad work camp in the south, which we have come to know is very much a part of Zora Neale Hurston's interest and oeuvre. Then it also concludes with a West Indian fire dance as a part of this climactic finale of this particular show. Anthea Kraut, who wrote this incredible book called Choreographing-

Leticia: Copyright?

Jordan: No. Yes, she did write a book called Choreographing Copyright, but her very first book is... Why am I? I have the name right here, Choreographing the Folk. I want to say “Choreographing Zora Neale Hurston.” Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston, where she actually looks at the way that Zora Neale Hurston used dance within her work. It's an incredible book. Please read it. Go ahead.

Leticia: I just want to say quickly, Anthea Kraut can write her face off. I love... I have not had the chance to read Choreographing the Folk, but I read Choreographing Copyright. And let me tell you, foot in book. And, again, for our listeners that may not know that vernacular. That means she killed it. Yeah, she put her foot in it. Meaning, she did a really good job. I just want to shout out Anthea Kraut and her work and also recommend that podcast listeners to read her work.

Jordan: Absolutely. Obviously, it's very relevant to today's podcast because of that book. Actually, that book was... Once I became interested in reading more about Zora Neale Hurston, then reading that book also really encouraged even more of my deep dive into Zora Neale Hurston as a theatremaker. As someone who is actively using her work to create theatre. A lot of The Great Day is it recreates these daily activities in this work camp. They sing a bunch of work songs. They do specific dances. One of those is the “fire dance.” Zora Neale Hurston had actually first encountered the fire dance while she was collecting folk material in south Florida. In Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, which I say is mostly true. Dust Tracks on a Road. Many people have disputed some things that she said in there or whatever. I'm like, “Look, if she wrote it, it may not be the truth, but it was her truth.”

Leticia: Critical fabulation.

Jordan: Look, believe Black women. She really wanted to learn more about this dance. She actually went to the Bahamas to try and track it and see if she could find out a lot more of it. And she didn't just take it down. This is why I talk a lot about Zora Neale Hurston as a dramaturg and as someone who is active in her theatremaking. She learned it. She wanted to learn this dance so that she's able to both get it in her body, replicate authentically, and then represent it in her piece. So I find that really fascinating. We've talked about this. Both you and I are dramaturgs, and as a dramaturg, I am deeply, deeply about being a very active collaborator in productions. I'm not the... Look, if you want to actor’s packet, I'm sure there's so many people that can create a beautiful one for you.

I am not the actor's packet type of dramaturg. I am definitely the person that's like, “Oh, you're going to create a fire dance in the show. Let me learn the fire dance with you and see how this works in my body and how that can change...” Anyway, just seeing the way that she would ingratiate herself in these communal practices. Obviously, we've gotten some critiques on the specifics around what does appropriation look like and the relationship between being an African American and traveling to other Black nations and taking those cultural practices, which I totally understand and agree with. But I think there's something very interesting about trying to draw a connection between African American practices in Florida and also Bahamian and other Caribbean practices or Haitian practices, like the way that she would do and trying to create that diasporic connection even in the 1930s.

Leticia: Yeah no, absolutely. I think that's so interesting. Also, I've never heard of this pageant.

Jordan: Oh, okay.

Leticia: I'm learning as we did research for this, but also in this conversation. I think that what you raised is so important and this idea of embodying this and, again, referring back to her dramaturgical sensibility in all of her work and the way that she's also thinking about ethnography as engaged in performance.

Jordan: She created the study of autoethnography.

Leticia: That's why I think it's wild that some genealogies and some syllabi, specifically when there's a class on performance ethnography will not engage her or not recognize her as foundational to performance ethnography that we do. That's not everyone, but I've seen it and I was also quite shocked with it. But just transitioning a bit before we close, I want to talk about the famous beef with Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, or I guess maybe more appropriately frenemy. And they wrote a... was this a musical or a pageant? It's so weird. I've read Mule Bone. I've read a bunch of stuff about it, but I don't know it was actually...

Jordan: You know what, form at that time and how we'll categorize it is…

Leticia: Was it a...?

Jordan: Your work is also throwing up... Not throwing up, but disrupting genre where we place folks. But Mule Bone was a piece of artistic work she wrote with her frenemy, Langston Hughes, which is so funny to me. It's based on Hurston's short story, “The Bone of Contention.”

Leticia: It's a play.

Jordan: It's a play. Okay.

Leticia: Yeah.

It's based on Hurston's short story, “The Bone of Contention” that she wrote in 1929. And it's about a political and religious fight between Baptists and Methodists, which is so funny because I feel like it stood in for the beef between Langston and Zora a bit. I was like, “Okay, great.” And tells a story what we would refer to a bromance between two figures in Hurston's hometown Eatonville in Orange County, Florida.

I think through its use of irony and subversion, what some people may categorize as the anti-musical is really about the power of visibility and the resiliency of Black folks. And I think when we think about this pairing and their work, both within the theatre and out of the theatre, we really see community being instilled. But also we see this idea of loving Black life. And I get this all from Eric Glover's own analysis of Mule Bone, and I direct you to read it for more details of it. I think it's interesting, the Black theatre that I gravitate most to is Black theatre that I feel I'm being loved on, even if it's a loving critique. And I feel like Mule Bone definitely embodies that for me. I've, unfortunately, never been able to see a production because theatres really don't be putting it up. Just reading it, I really get that sense.

Jordan: Yeah, I think that... This was reading the script and then also reading Eric Glover's incredible article on it. It is a really interesting... For me, what I think about, and this is because of Glover's article, is also around the sociopolitical critique and the sociopolitical climate. And also, like you said, the contradictory... Not contradictory, but the ironic way that this was also in some ways mirroring the relationship between Zora and Langston, which... I know, Ryan Murphy, you have a show called Feud. Please do a season on Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. I'll watch it, and hire me as a cultural consultant on there, okay? Or even the writer’s room if you're really feeling snazzy. But I need this so bad. Just like they were supposed to have a production, and then Zora Neale Hurston couldn't be involved with it. And then Langston Hughes was like, “Okay, I'll be a part of the production, but only if we make these changes...”

No, sorry. Zora Neale Hurston was like, “I'll be a part of the production, but only if we get to make these changes.” And then she changes the scripts pretty much and Langston Hughes is like, “But none of this was written by me. What the heck?” And it was just a mess. And there's even more drama. But it's so good. They're one of my favorite and most complex relationships in the theatre. Zora Neale Hurston also really had a lot of those kind of relationships with specifically men.

Leticia: What is her sign?

Jordan: Capricorn. She's a Capricorn, through and through. And it gives that. It gives Capricorn—

Leticia: Highly prolific.

Jordan: Very prolific. Always... And interesting—

Leticia: Trying to run something.

Jordan: Always trying to run something. But also, it's interesting, Capricorns, it's like the association with money. And it was the one thing she never had consistently. It was the one thing she never had consistently. She just economically could never get two feet on the ground. But anyways, we're going to end this episode with a show of hers that probably a lot of people know pretty well, but I would say I know it really well because it was a part of my dissertation work and everything. This is Polk County. Both of us actually discovered this... Not discovered, but read this play for the first time at the same time, musical, I should say, right? At the same time, shout out to friend of the pod, former guest Dr. Julius Fleming, who included it as a part of his syllabus on Black performance. Actually, we did a whole week on Zora Neale Hurston, I want to say.

Leticia: We did.

Jordan: That was part of his class, was thinking about just her work in the context of Black performance. And Polk County was one of the texts that we read that week, and it was my first time ever reading it. And little did I know how impactful that moment was going to be for my trajectory as a scholar. Zora Neale Hurston wanted to write a musical. She famously did not like Porgy and Bess. We're not going to go into that too much here, but that was just not her thing at all, right? She wanted to write this musical. She had spent years doing anthropological research in Florida. One of those years, in 1928, included a trip to a mill, and that was, of course, thanks to the benefactory relationship she had with Charlotte Osgood Mason, aka Godmother. Harkening back a little bit to our episode on the Federal Theatre Project where we talked about the Works Progress Administration. Zora Neale Hurston also worked as an archivist with the WPA in the 1930s.

And she actually recorded the work songs that she had learned in those Southern Florida communities. Many of those recordings are still available through the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center. She hooked up with this producer, and his wife is credited as a, quote, unquote, “co-writer.” On this project. But according to Eric Glover, there is not necessarily any evidence to support that she contributed any creative material to it. So Zora Neale Hurston's Polk County, in my opinion. It's hard to talk about it straightforwardly plot-wise. Same with Mule Bone, right? It's hard to sum it up.

Leticia: A lot is happening.

Jordan: But essentially it's about a community in Polk County, Florida, the Lofton Lumber Mill, and specifically the characters of Big Sweet, Lonnie, My Honey, Leafy Lee. Leafy Lee comes to Polk County, she's like our outsider character, our author avatar, if you will. She comes to Polk County to learn to sing the blues. That is her main thing. It's the place where she wants to learn it because it's where it's sung authentically. Big Sweet is probably one of the closest things to another protagonist in the musical. And she is a very strong and self-determined Black woman, the leader really of this mill. And she gets into some trouble with the quarters boss, who is also the only White representation in the play. I won't spoil it for you, but she got to get out of a sticky situation in this musical.

There's some romance stuff, there's some jealousy, there's knife wielding, and there's music. You got everything. Never received a full production in Zora Neale Hurston’s lifetime, though there was a planned production that was supposed to be happening in the 1940s that never happened. And it wasn't until 1997, ten of Zora Neale Hurston's plays were, quote unquote, “rediscovered” at the Library of Congress. These scripts drew the attentions of so many different people who were like, “Oh my God, what's going on there?” One of those people, Cathy Madison, who was at that time, the resident dramaturg and literary manager at Arena Stage theatre company in Washington, D.C. She read the scripts, including Polk County, and she was like, “We have to do this.”

She's like, “We have to do this.” Right? So she spent the next few years trying with the powers that be, if you will, at Arena Stage, Molly Smith, who was the artistic director at the time, who was a huge fan of Zora Neale Hurston, by the way, trying to get this into their hands. They ended up doing a staged reading of the play in a collaboration between Arena Stage and the Library of Congress. The fruits of their labor were not in vain. Just a few years later as a part of their season, I wanna say it was an anniversary season, that they were able to then in 2001 have a full production of the play, of the musical that happened. The reviews of the musical were mixed, but it was a success for the theatre. And it had a production at Berkeley Rep in a co-pro with McCarter Theatre. I don't think I've heard of any productions of it ever since then, to my knowledge.

Leticia: Shout out to all those theatres that you named, because I think there is... I'm a contemporary girl. I like contemporary stuff. I write mostly about contemporary things. But I do think that there is such an importance of doing work and plays from the past. Regardless of the mixed reviews of the production, I think that the endeavor is one that we should uplift and also appreciate because there's just so many plays that don't get produced anymore, because of where they sit within the timeline of the past. So, shout out to them. And for folks who want to read more about Polk County, we, of course, have a reading list for you. But I would also just really emphasize that you go read my co-host Jordan Ealey's work on Polk County. Your insight, the way that you unpack this particular musical, the way that you think about how Zora is asking us to reconsider form, and also Blackness, I think is just brilliant.

Also, that I think that folks should read and engage with your long study of Zora just in general. So please, please, please go read that. And in that spirit, let's transition to our reading list. I'm going to let you take the books and articles, Jordan, because this is your jam. But for the plays, of course, read Color Struck by Zora Neale Hurston. Polk County by Zora Neale Hurston. Mule Bone by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Then, of course, honorable mention to her biggest beef Langston Hughes play, Mulatto. Those are some plays if you want to engage more with Zora's work.

Jordan: Absolutely. Many of these articles and books supplied our research for this episode. I want to go ahead and tell you all some things to engage. One of those is, again... I just want to say Eric Glover, if you're listening to this, you are just an inspiration to me as a scholar. Literally, I'm so happy that to be writing at the same time as you on Black musical theatre. And I'm just excited that you exist. So read Eric Glover's article, “Joy and Love in Zora Neale Hurston and Dorothy Waring's 1944 Black Feminist Musical Polk County”. And that's published in TDR: The Drama Review. And also Michelle Cowin Gibbs's article, “Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston.” That's in Journal of American Drama and Theatre. Leticia already mentioned my article, so I'll go ahead and give you the title. It's called “Sonic Secrets: Zora Neale Hurston's Experiments in Black Dramaturgical Opacity.”

And that is in the very new journal, Global Black Thought. That is the inaugural issue of this journal. University people, if you are listening to this, please get a subscription to Global Black Thought and make sure that it's available at universities, so you can continue to keep up with what's happening in Black intellectual history. And then a few books. We have Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, by Valerie Boyd. When I tell you, you will not be disappointed by this biography. It is legitimately one of the best biographies I've ever read. And even though I'm a nerd, I'm not that kind of nerd. I'm not a biography kind of girl. This is a page turner. Valerie Boyd's writing style is... May she rest in power. This book is incredible, absolutely incredible. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, by Robert Hemenway, which I believe is one of the first, if not the first biography of Zora Neale Hurston.

And then we have, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean & Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader, which is edited by Alice Walker. We didn't talk about this in the episode, but one of the reasons why Zora Neale Hurston is such a big presence within academia especially, but just in the popular mindset is because of Alice Walker taking the time to find her unmarked grave and bring her back into the public consciousness. We didn't really go into that in this episode, but that is her story. Alice Walker is the GOAT for that. She edited a collection of that, and you should consult it. Then finally, the wonderful Anthea Kraut's book, Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston. And please also check out the sound recordings from her work for the WPA at the Library of Congress. You can also find them on YouTube, if you want to do that as well.

Leticia: Thank you for listening to Daughters of Lorraine. Hopefully, you either learn something new about Zora Neale Hurston, or you learned for the first time her impact in American theatre, but also on Black theatre. Thank you all for listening. This has been another episode of Daughters of Lorraine. We're your hosts, Leticia Ridley.

Jordan: And Jordan Ealey. We'll see you on our next episode. You definitely won't want to miss it. In the meantime, if you're looking to connect with us, please follow us on Instagram at daughtersoflorrainepod. You can also email us at [email protected] for further contact.

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