Public Theatre And The Enslaved People Of Colonial Saint Domingue

Download or read book Public Theatre and the Enslaved People of Colonial Saint-Domingue written by Julia Prest and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-04-13 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) was home to one of the richest public theatre traditions of the colonial-era Caribbean. This book examines the relationship between public theatre and the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue—something that is generally given short shrift owing to a perceived lack of documentation. Here, a range of materials and methodologies are used to explore pressing questions including the ‘mitigated spectatorship’ of the enslaved, portrayals of enslaved people in French and Creole repertoire, the contributions of enslaved people to theatre-making, and shifting attitudes during the revolutionary era. The book demonstrates that slavery was no mere backdrop to this portion of theatre history but an integral part of its story. It also helps recover the hidden experiences of some of the enslaved individuals who became entangled in that story.

Download or read book Colonial-Era Caribbean Theatre written by Julia Prest and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cutting across academic boundaries, this volume brings together scholars from different disciplines who have explored together the richness and complexity of colonial-era Caribbean theatre. The volume offers a series of original essays that showcase individual expertise in light of broader group discussions. Asking how we can research effectively and write responsibly about colonial-era Caribbean theatre today, our primary concern is methodology. Key questions are examined via new research into individual case studies on topics ranging from Cuban blackface, commedia dell’arte in Suriname and Jamaican oratorio to travelling performers and the influence of the military and of enslaved people on theatre in Saint-Domingue. Specifically, we ask what particular methodological challenges we as scholars of colonial-era Caribbean theatre face and what methodological solutions we can find to meet those challenges. Areas addressed include our linguistic limitations in the face of Caribbean multilingualism; issues raised by national, geographical or imperial approaches to the field; the vexed relationship between metropole and colony; and, crucially, gaps in the archive. We also ask what implications our findings have for theatre performance today – a question that has led to the creation of a new work set in a colonial theatre and outlined in the volume’s concluding chapter.

Download or read book Theater, War and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France and its Empire written by Logan Connors and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first study of French theater and war at a time of global revolutions, colonial violence, and radical social transformation.

Download or read book Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire written by Gauvin Alexander Bailey and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2018-06-06 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning from the West African coast to the Canadian prairies and south to Louisiana, the Caribbean, and Guiana, France's Atlantic empire was one of the largest political entities in the Western Hemisphere. Yet despite France's status as a nation at the forefront of architecture and the structures and designs from this period that still remain, its colonial building program has never been considered on a hemispheric scale. Drawing from hundreds of plans, drawings, photographic field surveys, and extensive archival sources, Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire focuses on the French state's and the Catholic Church's ideals and motivations for their urban and architectural projects in the Americas. In vibrant detail, Gauvin Alexander Bailey recreates a world that has been largely destroyed by wars, natural disasters, and fires – from Cap-François (now Cap-Haïtien), which once boasted palaces in the styles of Louis XV and formal gardens patterned after Versailles, to failed utopian cities like Kourou in Guiana. Vividly illustrated with examples of grand buildings, churches, and gardens, as well as simple houses and cottages, this volume also brings to life the architects who built these structures, not only French military engineers and white civilian builders, but also the free people of colour and slaves who contributed so much to the tropical colonies. Taking readers on a historical tour through the striking landmarks of the French colonial landscape, Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire presents a sweeping panorama of an entire hemisphere of architecture and its legacy.

Download or read book The World of the Haitian Revolution written by David Patrick Geggus and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-21 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays deepen our understanding of Haiti during the period from 1791 to 1815. They consider the colony's history and material culture as well as it 'free people of colour' and the events leading up to the revolution and its violent unfolding.

Download or read book From Plantation to Paradise? written by David M. Powers and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1764 the first printing press was established in the French Caribbean colonies, launching the official documentation of operas and plays performed there, and marking the inauguration of the first theatre in the colonies. A rigorous study of pre–French Revolution performance practices in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Powers’s book examines the elaborate system of social casting in these colonies; the environments in which nonwhite artists emerged; and both negative and positive contributions of the Catholic Church and the military to operas and concerts produced in the colonies. The author also explores the level of participation of nonwhites in these productions, as well as theatre architecture, décor, repertoire, seating arrangements, and types of audiences. The status of nonwhite artists in colonial society; the range of operas in which they performed; their accomplishments, praise, criticism; and the use of créole texts and white actors/singers à visage noirs (with blackened faces) present a clear picture of French operatic culture in these colonies. Approaching the French Revolution, the study concludes with an examination of the ways in which colonial opera was affected by slave uprisings, the French Revolution, the emergence of “patriotic theatres,” and their role in fostering support for the king, as well as the impact on subsequent operas produced in the colonies and in the United States.

Download or read book Colonialism and Slavery in Performance written by Jeffrey M. Leichman and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonialism and Slavery in Performance brings together original archival research with recent critical perspectives to argue for the importance of theatrical culture to the understanding of the French Caribbean sugar colonies in the eighteenth century. Fifteen English-language essays from both established and emerging scholars apply insights and methodologies from performance studies and theatre history in order to propose a new understanding of Old Regime culture and identity as a trans-Atlantic continuum that includes the Antillean possessions whose slave labour provided enormous wealth to the metropole. Carefully documented studies of performances in Saint-Domingue, the most prosperous French colony, illustrate how the crucible of a brutally racialized colonial space gave rise to a new French identity by adapting many of the cherished theatrical traditions that colonists imported directly from the mainland, resulting in a Creole performance culture that reflected the strong influence of African practices brought to the islands by plantation slaves. Other essays focus on how European theatregoers reconciled the contradiction inherent in the eighteenth century's progressive embrace of human rights, with an increasing dependence on the economic spoils of slavery, thus illustrating how the stage served as a means to negotiate new tensions within "French" identity, in the metropole as well as in the colonies. In the final section of the volume, essays explore the enduring legacy of the Old Regime in contemporary Antillean stage culture, illustrating how performance traditions continue to structure the understanding of what it means to be French in France's former Atlantic slave colonies.