PBA Galleries

4 programs for African-American theater productions:

• “The Green Pastures, a Fable by Marc Connelly”, Souvenir Program for the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, ca. 1930. Original wrappers. 8½x11x½, 18pp. Illustrated with photographs. Name in ink on front wrapper.
• “Natural Man” by Theodore Browne, American Negro Theatre, New York City, beginning May 7, 1941. Original wrappers, 10pp.
• “Paul Robeson as Othello”. Theatre Guild, New York, [1943]. Original color wrappers. 8½x11. 18pp. Extensively illustrated with photographs; biographic notes on Robeson and “The Black Othello” by producer Margaret Webster.
• “Garden of Time” by Owen Dodson, American Negro Theatre, New York City, March 7, 1945. Original wrappers, 10pp. 

Pultizer Prize-winning“Green Pastures”, with its all-Black cast, starring the Canadian-born son of fugitive slaves, opened on Broadway in February 1930, ran for 16 months and then went on tour of more than 200 cities. The American Negro Theatre was formed in Harlem in 1940 and produced 19 plays before closing in 1949. It was the training ground for such future stars as Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Renaissance man Paul Robeson was already an internationally-famed singer and actor when he starred as Othello during World War II, being the first African American to play that role with a white supporting cast (including Jose Ferrer as Iago) on Broadway.