Place · New York
African Grove Theatre
c. 1821 – c. 1823
Black-run theatre company in Manhattan founded by William Alexander Brown, among the first of its kind in the United States.
Beginning as a pleasure garden, Brown's venture staged Shakespeare — with James Hewlett as Richard III — as well as pantomimes and Brown's own play The Drama of King Shotaway (1823), on a Black Caribbean uprising, whose script does not survive. The company faced harassment from police, a rival white manager, and the press.
Much of what is known comes from hostile newspaper reports, making the Grove a key case for reading the archive against its makers.