Porgy and Bess

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Catfish Row was based on the real-life Cabbage Row in Charleston, South Carolina.

reader’s and viewer’s attention while being true to a particular culture and time period. The 1927 play gave a larger audience an opportunity to experience Heyward’s story. Presented by the Theatre Guild in New York, the play gained praise from many white critics and mixed reviews from the African American viewers. It must be emphasized that Porgy was seen by big-city Easterners, as opposed to the entire nation. The success of the play as a commercial venture may also be due in part to the presentation of other ethnic productions, including works by such writers as EugeneO’Neill ( The Hairy Ape ) and the widely popular Elmer Rice ( Street Scene ). Many cities boasted of their Irish, Jewish, and Italian theaters, all popular with immigrant audiences. The creation of African American theaters such as the Lafayette Theatre and Krigwa Theatre, and others in Philadelphia and Washington, D. C., made it possible for Porgy to fit comfortably in New York and be a legitimate success for theatergoers. Porgy and Bess raised the stakes of the Heywards’ story by creating an opera (the composer labeled it “folk opera”) intended to highlight music over story. When it opened in 1935, the country was no longer experiencing the “good life” that characterized the 1920s. By 1935 the Depression spread to a majority of Americans, and for African Americans optimism was fast fading as racism and poverty intensified. At the same time, more African Americans were becoming literate in historically black colleges William Warfield and Leontyne Price in the title roles of Porgy and Bess, 1952.

and language practices handed down from generation to generation. As the island migrants came to cities such as Charleston, they brought their culture with them, including folktales, music, dance, religion, and speech, often presenting a minority culture within the traditional African American culture that existed. Heyward, inspired by his mother who collected Gullah stories and songs and fascinated by the people he saw on his walks through their neighborhoods, decided to create a work that would capture the uniqueness of their lives. After reading a story in the local newspaper about an African American beggar, Samuel Smalls (“Goat Cart Sam”), who was arrested for attempting to shoot a woman, Heyward decided to explore the character. With Catfish Row as the background, Porgy told the story of the lead character (a crippled beggar), his sensual lover (Bess), and a cast of poor stevedores, fishermen, desperate mothers, a drug dealer, a pseudo- intellectual want-to-be paralegal, and a white policeman and lawyer. Porgy painted a portrait of Gullah people whose dialectic language patterns differed from traditional African American dialect in word choice and language structure. Heyward paints pictures of spirituals (ring shouts) that emphasize the repetition and call/response symbols of West African culture. Although the dialogue was difficult to read, especially with the usage of the term “nigger” spoken constantly by the African Americans, the basic love story between Porgy and Bess

in this “strange” environment impressed literary critics. Given the background of the Harlem Renaissance, Porgy presented an exotic view of African Americans. The novel and, two years later, the play by Dorothy Heyward raised questions of authenticity vs. realism. The New York Times called the play “…a sympathetic and convincing interpretation of Negro life by a member of an ‘outside’ race.” W. E. B. Du Bois hated the negative images. After publication of the novel, Langston Hughes wrote, “With his white eyes…Heyward saw wonderful poetic qualities in the inhabitants of Catfish Row that make them come alive.” Later in 1956 Hughes would criticize Porgy and Bess for its negative images of “an interminable crap game and whose leading lady…stands straddle-legged like a cow to sing her arias.” This changing difference of opinion by Hughes represents not only the adaptation from novel to stage but, more importantly, the changing times as the culture changed and Hughes and others saw the art through different eyes. A larger issue of authenticity vs. realism is the question of what is true vs. what audiences believe. Dramatically, realism has the goal of selecting believable events/characters and creating exciting moments in a story that will hold the audience’s attention, as opposed to naturalistic authenticity that may be absolutely true but fails to engage the audience. Porgy – the novel and play – was designed to hold the

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