The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe

First produced: 1986, at the Crossroads Theatre Company, New York, New York

First published: 1988

Type of work: Play

Type of plot: Satire; experimental

Time of work: 1980’s

Locale: Various locations, including an airplane, a television set, and a living room

Principal Characters:

• Miss Pat, a flight attendant
• Aunt Ethel, the host of a cooking show
• Guy, a fashion model
• Girl, a fashion model
• Junie Robinson, a soldier
• Miss Roj, a drag queen
• Mama, a religious matriarch
• Walter-Lee-Beau-Willie-Jones, Mama’s son
• The Man, a businessman
• The Kid, his younger self
• Lala Lamazing Grace, a singer
• Normal Jean Reynolds, a woman whose baby is an egg
• Topsy Washington, a hip young woman

The Play

The Colored Museum, as has often been pointed out, is not set in a museum, and none of its characters ever utters the word “museum.” Instead, it is a series of eleven separate scenes or “exhibits” performed without intermission. Each has its own title, and each illustrates a different facet of African American life in the 1980’s. In many of the scenes, characters speak directly to the audience, exhibiting different examples of racism and of surrender to victimhood. For example, the first exhibit, “Git on Board,” is spoken by the smiling Miss Pat, a female flight attendant, delivering to the audience a version of the typical instructions given to passengers before an airplane takes off. However, Miss Pat is the flight attendant on a slave ship bound for Savannah, Georgia, and she instructs her passengers not to play drums or rebel but to fasten their shackles and sing spirituals.

The second exhibit is “Cookin’ with Aunt Ethel,” a parody of a television cooking show whose star speaks, and wears a bandana, like a stereotypical Mammy character. Aunt Ethel demonstrates a recipe for “Negroes” that includes such ingredients as rhythm, attitude, and style. “The Photo Session” features a Guy and a Girl, models for Ebony magazine, who have internalized the values of materialism and consumerism. Junie Robinson, the titular “Soldier with a Secret” in the play’s third scene, admits that he has killed some of his comrades in arms, believing that death in combat was preferable to the pain of oppression. “The Gospel According to Miss Roj,” one of the play’s most controversial exhibits, is spoken by a beautiful drag queen, who includes homophobia among the types of oppression she has faced. One of the funniest exhibits, “The Hairpiece,” features two speaking wigs and challenges European-influenced ideas about beauty.

In “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play,” the longest scene, an urban African American family struggles with poverty and racism. Characters in this scene include Mama, her son Walter-Lee-Beau-Willie-Jones, his feminist poet wife, and the Greek figure Medea. “Symbiosis” features a successful businessman who tries to assimilate into white culture and put his younger self behind him, while “Lala’s Opening” features an African American woman who adopts a fake French accent and manner, forsaking her own past. Normal Jean Reynolds, in “Permutations,” is a young woman optimistically laying an egg. “The Party,” the play’s concluding scene, brings back characters from earlier scenes, who dance in front of projected slides that quickly summarize African American history. The scene is loud and energetic, with characters talking over one another, emphasizing the chaos and contradictions that make up the museum.

Critical Context

Wolfe was born in segregated Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1954, and he felt unwelcome at the integrated high school he attended, until he found his way to the school’s theater department. He started college at Kentucky State University but completed his degree at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he wrote his first plays. After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles and taught theater to inner-city children, experiencing for the first time the diversity of people and ideas that thrives in a major city. In the late 1970’s, he moved to New York City. There, The Colored Museum opened at the Crossroads Theatre in 1986.

The Colored Museum was controversial from its opening. While many audience members were offended by the play’s edgy satire, critics generally reviewed the play favorably, admiring Wolfe’s wit and his courage in boldly pointing out ways in which both African Americans and whites were complicit in the oppression of African Americans. Many of these critics were white men, writing for important periodicals such as The New York Times, New York magazine, and The New Republic, and they praised Wolfe for the biting satire directed, in part, at them. An exchange of analyses in The Village Voice, a liberal New York newspaper, demonstrates the controversy surrounding the play: Thulani Davis, an African American critic and playwright, challenged the play as misogynist and reflective of self-hate, while critic Michael Feingold celebrated the plays’s use—and abuse—of stereotypical characters. The controversy fueled ticket sales, and the play was a commercial success, as well as the winner of the Elizabeth Hull-Kate Warriner Award, presented by the Dramatist’s Guild to the best play dealing with a social, religious, or political topic.

The play itself makes reference to earlier African American literature, saluting and moving beyond such important works as Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf (pr., pb. 1975), and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982). In making satirical references to these and other works, The Colored Museum stakes out its own place in African American literature: indebted to earlier work, but making a deliberate break from it.

Bibliography

Catanese, Brandi Wilkins. “’And the Rest Is L.A. History’: Autobiographical Strategies in The Colored Museum.” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 14, no. 1 (Winter, 2002): 15-28. Examines Wolfe’s life in California between college and his move to New York City, as reflected in his most influential play.

Davis, Thulani. “Sapphire Attire.” Review of The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe. The Village Voice 31, no. 45 (November 11, 1986): 91. Finds the play funny but ultimately trivializing.

Elam, Harry J., Jr. “Signifyin(g) on African-American Theatre: The Colored Museum by George Wolfe.” Theatre Journal 44 (1992): 291-303. Explores the ways in which Wolfe’s play parodies, illuminates, and challenges earlier African American plays.

Euell, Kim. “Signifyin(g) Ritual: Subverting Stereotypes, Salvaging Icons.” African American Review 31, no. 4 (Winter, 1997): 667-675. Places The Colored Museum as the starting point of a black drama charged with challenging racist stereotypes. Lists playwrights following or influenced by Wolfe, including Michael Henry Brown, Robert Alexander, and Matt Robinson.

Jackson, Pamela Faith. Black Comedy—Nine Plays: A Critical Anthology with Interviews and Essays. New York: Applause, 1997. Includes the full text of the play, as well as an interview with L. Kenneth Richardson, the play’s original artistic director, discussing The Colored Museum and black theater.

Jung, Byung-Eon. “Fantasy Space and the Subversive Desire of ’the Uncanny’ in African American Drama.” Journal of Modern British and American Drama 18, no. 3 (December, 2005): 165-192. Thematic analysis of The Colored Museum and of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson (pr. 1987, pb. 1990).

Little, Benilde. “George C. Wolfe: On Our Beauty and Complexity.” Essence 21, no. 10 (February, 1991): 35. To prepare audiences for the public television production of The Colored Museum, Wolfe explains why making viewers uncomfortable is important to his work.

Silverstein, Marc. “’Any Baggage You Don’t Claim, We Trash’: Living With(in) History in The Colored Museum.” American Drama 8, no. 1 (Fall, 1998): 95-121. Argues that The Colored Museum challenges African Americans to understand and live both with and within history.