The University of Arkansas Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and their Movement in the Black Theater by Kerry Goldmann.
Prior to the 1960s, most Black theater was barred from mainstream white venues, instead relegated to schoolhouses and churches, which limited public accessibility, Black artistic and economic opportunity, and cultural ownership. The rise of cultural nationalism in the 1960s came with resounding promises of innovative and assertive new methods to achieve Black liberation in America, especially through art. Nowhere were these efforts more effecting or longer lasting than in the Black theatres founded by Black women between 1960 and 1980.
Playhouse to Powerhouse examines the cultural nationalist work of Black theaters founded by Black women in California, New York, and Texas in this time period, showing how these revolutionary women merged arts and entrepreneurship to ground theater institutions in Black communities across the nation.
Kerry Goldmann is senior lecturer in the History Department at the University of North Texas, where she teaches courses on histories of race, ethnicity, and American culture.
Playhouse to Powerhouse will be published in August 2025.