User:Nehita Star/sandbox

Article Evaluation:

WikiProject Nigeria

WikiProject Linguistics

Women in dance

Femi Taylor

Black Theatre Alliance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African-American_theatre

Evaluation; This article is highly underdeveloped. There is a huge lack of information on the achievements that the Black Theatre Alliance had the timeline on the BTA is almost non-existant. Information on who had a big influence on the BTA and Theatre Companies that were involved in the Federation needs to be added. The present day result of the work that the BTA did, the effects that they had on black actors/actresses in the United States needs to be addressed.

Headings

what they did

who was involved in the company

How they worked

affects

people in the company

theatre companies

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View other theatre companies wikipedia pages New York Theatre wikipedia page, new heritage theatre group, Harlem Reperatory theatre..

African-American musical theater

The African American Musical Theatre Wikipedia page is the page that I will now work to develop. The article is rated as a start class article of low importance and it concludes multiple different contents however they are not very detailed with information that goes indepth of the topics. The early history of black theatre mainly focuses Will Marion Cook and Bob Cole and their contributions to black theatre. The national recognitions section only includes the fame that George Walker and  Bert Williams had due to their musicals "Two Real Coons",A Lucky Coon, Sons of Ham, and The Policy Players, and their take on musical theatre connecting it back to Africa up until Walkers death. The section "Lew Leslie's Blackbirds" solely discusses Lew Leslie's success due to the black performers he hired for his shows, I think that A section that included more directors, black directors, success in the United States. The last section in the article is about the opera Porgy and Bess and that fame that it received as a black musical and the article touches upon a few other black comedy musicals and musical versions of the classics that had black casts that rose to fame. I think that the information could go under the section of black musicals that rose to fame, and more information should be added to the already listed musicals. Sections that should be added are; black women in black theatre, more information on the national recognition that black musicals got, information on specific musicals and playwrights, also the effects that black theatre has on society now, and the progress that black theaters have made and the federations that have been created as an effect. Also the references page needs to be developed and updated. Other wikipedia pages on Theater has shown me that different headers and topics that could be included in this article are; types of musical theater that black peoples created and/or worked in such as comedy, tragedy etc, the stagecraft and technical aspects that black theater may have had unique to them.

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Researching information on African America Musical Theater lead me to find a lot of interest in African American playwright Mary P. Burrill and her wikipedia page. Mary P. Burrill. This wikipedia page is classified as a star class page of low importance and is connected to the African Diaspora. The wikipedia page needs to include basic things like a picture of Burrill, and the "biography" section of it needs to be split up into different sections such as: early life, career, death, personal life, and a section for the works that she had created. The sections need to go more in depth and build upon the already available information that has been provided and added. Also information like her parents names can go in the small box of information on the right of the article. Also the effect that she had on the African American Theater musical theater community in the early 20th century can also be added onto her page of information.

McKenzie Clarke's Evaluation

Hello Nehita Star,

Your introduction is very nice, but I do see a grammatical error. The sentence "Burill wrote plays about..." is a run-on. I would recommend placing a period after "Elite" to fix this. The rest of the information is too specific for an introduction. You can elaborate on the individuals she wrote about in the rest of the article. I also do not think that the "Elite" in "Black Elite" should be capitalized. That term is not a true proper noun. Lastly, "Black elite" has its own Wikipedia page, so you could hyperlink that page to the words in your introduction.

For the "Early Life" section, I mostly noticed grammatical errors. I would remove the "in" that comes before "August 1881." In addition, the sentence that begins "During Burrill's adolescence.." could be reconstructed in a way that would make it stronger. Instead of saying "User:Nehita Star/sandbox] During Burrill's adolescence and early adulthood she had an emotional and possibly erotic relationship with Angelina Weld Grimké who would later become a famous poet, playwright and teacher," you could say "During Burill's adolescence and early adulthood she had an emotional and possibly erotic relationship with young Angelina Weld Grimke."

Same for this sentence within the same section. Instead of, "Burrill's family later moved to Boston, she attended Emerson College of Oratory (later Emerson College), where she received a diploma in 1904," maybe consider "Burrill's family later moved to Boston where she attended Emerson College of Oratory (later Emerson College). She received her diploma in 1904." The sentence immediately following this one should be deleted because it is repetitive. Also, I am not so sure about this sentence: "Burrill's passion for education prompted her to become an educator herself." It seems a tad interpretative. It's hard, but in writing/ editing articles we have to avoid storytelling. I don't think the sentence is necessary for the article.

For the Career section, I noticed the beginning of this sentence appeared to have some missing information: " In the mid-1920s[6]for thirty-eight years and directed plays..." What did she do in the 1920s for 30 years?

The main issue I am seeing with the article, besides grammatical errors, is that the language is reminiscent of storytelling. Going forward, I would reread this article and try to adjust any sentences that appear as if they're expressing more than direct fact. I would be happy to help you with this in any way I can, and I will add this article to my watchlist so that I can stay better connected to it in the future.

I think there's a lot of great information in this article, but we can work on the way information is presented within it so that you do not put your work at risk of a low-rating for small mistakes. I hope I've explained my critiques well, and please ask me any questions you may have about what I recommended to you.

Sincerely,

IamKoi

Mary P. Burrill (Auguse." t 1881 – March 13, 1946) was an early 20th-century African-American female playwright and Feminist Realist of the Harlem Renaissance who inspired Willis Richardson and other students to write plays. Burrill wrote plays about the Black Experience, their literary and cultural activities, and the Black Elite such as central figures in the black society of Washington D.C. and people who contributed to black women’s education in early twentieth century[1]

Contents

 * 1Early Life
 * 2Career
 * 2.1They Sit in Darkness
 * 2.2Aftermath
 * 3Personal Life
 * 4Death
 * 5References
 * 6External links

Early Life[edit]
Mary Powell Burrill was born in August 1881 in Washington, D.C., the daughter of John H. and Clara E. Burrill.[2][3] In 1901, she graduated from M Street High School (later Dunbar High School) in Washington, D.C, which was one of the leading black secondary schools in the country at the time.[1] During Burrill's adolescence and early adulthood she had an emotional and possibly erotic relationship with Angelina Weld Grimké who would later become a famous poet, playwright and teacher. Evidence of a relationship between the two consists of letters that date back to 1896, when Angelina and Mary were about 15 years old.[4] Burrill's family later moved to Boston, she attended Emerson College of Oratory (later Emerson College), where she received a diploma in 1904.[5] After her family relocated to Boston, Burrill graduated from Emerson College in 1904. Burrill's passion for education prompted her to become an educator herself.

Career[edit]
From 1905 until her retirement in 1944, Burrill taught English, history and drama at her alma mater Dunbar High School as well as at Armstrong High along side Grimke. In the mid-1920s[6]for thirty-eight years and directed plays and musical productions at Dunbar and throughout the city.[7] Burrill was well-respected among her students, holding high standards for their education and personal achievement. Some of her students went on to become educators and writers actively involved in the Harlem Renaissance, an African American cultural arts movement during the 1920's.While there, she encouraged several of her students to write plays. One of her prized students was Willis Richardson, who would later become the first African-American dramatist to have a play produced on Broadway. Another was May Miller, who published her first play, Pandora's Box, while still a student at Dunbar.[5] In 1919, two of her best known plays were published. They That Sit in Darkness was published in Margaret Sanger's progressive Birth Control Review, a monthly publication advocating reproductive rights for women. The other play, Aftermath, was published in Liberator, edited by socialist Max Eastman.[3][5] Burrill understood her plays as deliberate acts of political protest advocating radical stances on issues of race and gender.[8][9] Along with her teaching, and playwriting. due to the invitation of Jean Toomer[10]," Georgia Douglas Johnson, an African-American poet and playwright during the harlem renaissance hosted literary gatherings in her home she called the Half-Way House, which provided as a meeting space for creativity and intellectual discussions and ideas to many of the prominent writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance, which included Burrill. [11]

They Sit in Darkness[edit]
The story of They That Sit in Darkness is a one act play that focuses on the effects that having multiple children has on a young mother. Despite repeated warnings from midwives for the mother to "be careful" she continues to have children with dire consequences.[12] The play also explained how legal restrictions to provide women with information about contraception can destroy a whole family a poor southern black woman named Melinda who died in childbirth, leaving behind a husband and four kids, the play humanized the difficulties that women like Melinda faced, and it advertised for the legalization of birth control, which would later become legal on March 22 1972[13]. In the play a 38 year old woman who works a job and takes care of her 10 children. dies of physical and mental exhaustion, forcing her oldest daughter 17, to take care of the family, not go to college, and continue the cycle of poverty and ignorance.[14] Sandra L. West of Virginia Commonwealth University in a brief essay on Burrill described the work as controversial for its time because the play advocated birth control as a means to escape poverty long before women were given reproductive rights.[3] Burrill took to the convention of the one-act form as it flowered in the contemporaneous productions and as it has been hailed as a prime source of modern American drama.[15]

Aftermath[edit]
Burrill's play Aftermath is set in rural South Carolina and involves a soldier who discovers that his father has been lynched and after he returns from fighting in World War I [16]John goes out to avenge his father It was produced by New York City's Krigwa Players in 1928.[3][17] In Aftermath (1919), Mary Burrill presents the character John as an example of the assertive black male who selflessly and fearlessly confronts racial oppression.[18] Aftermath, which shares themes and characters with Grimke's[19] play Rachel, is confining both physically and mentally. characters carry the weight of knowing that American justice doesn't not apply to black people in America. The play also aptly reflects its title as Burrill focused on the effects of the loss of a father, or brother has on the characters in the play, male or female. John goes out to avenge his fathers, who was lynched and burned while John was away fighting

Personal Life[edit]
In 1912, while teaching, Burrill met Lucy Diggs Slowe, an English teacher from Baltimore. After a few years, Slowe moved to DC to teach at Armstrong Manual Training Academy, and Burrill and her bought a house together.[20] Mary Powell Burrill was attracted to others of the same sex and sought to keep this fact from affecting her social positions, and were she stood among the African American society more generally. As black elite women in the capital, Burrill, was held to a high standard and had less freedom and mobility to act on her sexual feelings. Slowe and Burrill, who were together for twenty-five years, and their close friends, who were mostly other black female educators, treated them as a couple, however Slowe indicated to Howard officials that she and Burrill were buying a house together for financial reasons. Following Slowe’s appointment at Howard, they decided to buy a house at 1256 Kearney Street in Brookland, a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood in Northeast Washington at the time. Slowe and Burrill lived there for fifteen years until Slowe died from kidney disease in 1937.[21]

Death[edit]
Shattered from the death of her partner Slowe, Burrill moved out of their house and into an apartment near Howard. She retired from Dunbar in 1944. Upon her retirement from teaching in 1944, Burrill moved to New York City, where she died on March 13, 1946 in her early 60's.[22][5] She is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Washington D.C.[23]