LibCrowds

This is excellent! Thanks for sharing, Mia.

The New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a highly regarded research institute specializing in scholarship on the African American experience and the African Diaspora, is named after Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.

The Schomburg Center holds a "List showing the theatres and plays in various European cities where Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius, acted during the years 1824-1867" and a book titled "Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius." Judging from the New York Public Library's (NYPL) catalog, both appear to only be available for on-site reference viewing. I don't think either can be accessed in digitized form at this time.

However, there is a NYPL blog post titled "Live from the Reading Room: Arturo Schomburg to Langston Hughes," that discusses a 1933 letter in which Arturo Schomburg mentions his interest in acquiring an image of Ira Aldridge to Langston Hughes:
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/02/05/live-reading-room-correspondence-1

Thank you for all of these great links, Mia! You've given me much more to explore and consider.

Yes, that was my suspicion as well, that, as you say, the phrase "Licensed pursuant to Act of Parliament" pertains to the venue being allowed to stage performances. Copyright law, both its history and its scope, is a fascinating subject, as it's continually evolving to meet the advances of technology, especially now with some much digital content and virtual means of disseminating information.

That is interesting about the early restrictions imposed on spoken dramas and the direct effect of that being an abundance of musicals, burlettas, and non-drama productions. I'd wondered why there were quite so many and had put down to the appeal of upbeat, comical, or otherwise light entertainment to wide audiences. That historical fact really helps put this trend into context.

I will check out the Restoration/18th Century Literature and the Romantics and Victorians collections for more information. Thanks, again!

On the playbill for a performance of Shakespeare's "Othello" held on 3rd April 1845 at the Huddersfield Theatre, there is a line that reads "Licensed pursuant to Act of Parliament" directly beneath the theatre's name:

http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100022589102.0x000002#?cv=241

Is this line in reference to early British copyright law? Currently, copyright protects the rights of authors and other creators in their artistic works, including plays, books, song lyrics, films, paintings, and software code, such that anyone who wishes to use or otherwise reproduce those works would have to gain permission from the authors and pay fees to license them. Is the word "licensed" being used here to indicate that the manager of the theatre is staging a legal performance of "Othello" (i.e. one that doesn't infringe upon copyright law), or does it simply mean that the Huddersfield Theatre is allowed to be open for business and serve a public audience?

I first heard of Saartjie "Sara" Baartman in college, in the context of visual representations of the Black female body and the history of racist archetypes used throughout American popular culture (i.e. "Jezebel," "Mammy," "Sapphire," and the "Angry Black Woman") and that have sometimes seeped into American social, educational, and political policy issues that impact modern African American women. Although it centers on the experiences of a young British woman of Caribbean descent, Candice Carty-Williams's recent debut novel Queenie, brilliantly exemplifies these issues of Black female objectification from a 21st-century, millennial perspective.

I had not heard of the film "Black Venus," though will now have to check it out. Thanks for mentioning it! Here's something about Saarjie "Sara" Baartman that I'd forgotten: upon her death in 1815, Napolean's surgeon appropriated her body and displayed her remains in a museum in France, where they remained until they were finally returned to her native South Africa in 2002. There was an article in The Guardian about it:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/feb/21/internationaleducationnews.highereducation

The details of Baartman's mistreatment are difficult to stomach, as her exploitation was truly heinous. Though it is so important to engage with history and critically interrogate the beliefs, practices, and norms of the past and allow that inquiry to positively inform how we understand the present and help us shape the future for the better. In that sense, I am glad that we are getting to see the playbills as they were at the time in which they were created. I feel it is necessary, and after all enriching, to critique history, but not to err on the side of whitewashing it.

The career of Ira Aldridge sounds similar to that of Bert Williams, an African American vaudeville performer of the early 20th century who, due to rampant racism in the US, was often the only African American performer on stage, and who endeavored to turn the stereotypes he and other African Americans were saddled with on their head in his performances: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/bert-williams/.

I'll have to add the BBC's "Black and White Minstrel Show" and "Black Venus" to my TBW (to-be-watched) list, one that may begin to rival my TBR list! It is an interesting process trying to reconcile what was once regarded as "entertainment" with the realities of marginalized peoples then and now. One of my favorite Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films, "Swing Time," features a gratuitous sequence of Fred Astaire performing in blackface. Zadie Smith actually alluded to this exact moment in the film in her novel of the same name.

Thanks for your post, johnjo! Your observation on the recurrence of "curiosities," or exploitative human spectacles, among the many performances advertised in the playbill collection reminds me of something I encountered in the course of transcribing the genres of miscellaneous performances at the Nottingham Theatre. There are multiple playbills featuring a play described as a "ballet pantomime" called "The Island Ape," starring a performer known as Monsieur Gouffe. On the playbill for the performance held on November 16, 1826, Monsieur Gouffe's "singular and laughable performance" was set to include him performing "leaps and humourous tricks," such as flying onto the stage and walking "on three fingers." His act is hyped as being one in which he performs "many surprising Feats never attempted by any Man in the kingdom but himself." The language used here and the accompanying illustration featuring a literal ape-man, conjures images of the dehumanizing caricatures of African Americans and the highly popular minstrel shows that were facets of 19th and early 20th century American culture. It made me wonder whether this particular "ballet pantomime" and performances like it, were that period's British equivalent of American minstrelsy.

I think In the Spotlight definitely provides a fascinating window into a different historical context, replete with its admirable and questionable mores and ideologies. It certainly inspires reflection.