Situation Report

IN the theater, black is bitter. During a given tested month, December of 1969, more than half of all the black actors employed on Broadway were working in one show, the all-black production of David Merrick's Hello, Dolly!, and the cast numbered 48.

Merrick is a theatrical barometer. In 1961 he hired not a single black actor for his musical, Subways Are for Sleeping, though the Manhattan locale is a spectrum of racial color. On the other hand, he has employed a skilled black stage manager, Charles Blackwell, for years. In 1957 Merrick briefly ruptured the tacit ban on black stagehands by insisting on hiring some for his musical Jamaica. But that was an isolated case, and there is scarcely a black stagehand around. The union has been totally familial, a closed corporation. As Producer Arthur Cantor puts it: "You have to be born into it. It's like Pitcairn Island."

There are virtually no black producers outside black companies, and black directors with professional status are few. Actors Studio was formed in 1947 with 100 members and no blacks. Today it has a little over 400 members, about 30 of them blacks. Equity, the actors' union, claims a membership of 16,000, though it keeps no count by race. Of these, union officials estimate that "between 400 and 500" are blacks. Since 1964 Equity has gained some 3,000 new members; "about 100" were blacks.

In the five-year span between the '63-'64 season and the '68-'69 season, the number of Broadway plays dealing seriously with blacks and black themes rose from three to five, and off-Broadway from nine to 17. A more impressive development has been the country-wide rise of black theater groups. An issue of The Drama Review (summer 1968) lists 38 such companies. A key problem for these groups is to encourage blacks to attend the theater. The Negro Ensemble Company has achieved gratifying results along this line. In its first season ('67-'68) audiences were 70% white and 30% black. In the two intervening years, the proportion has been exactly reversed.

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