upon June 26.

upon June 26, 1996, before a cross-section of America's theater community gathered in Princeton, N.J.'s McCarter Theatre, celebrated African-American playwright August Wilson courageously seized an opportunity: His intensely personal keynote address "The territory on Which I Stand," delivered at the 11th biennial National Theatre colloquy sponsored by the Theatre Communications dispose (TCG), the nation's service organization for the professional not-for-profit theater, called attention to the condition of professional black theater in America. In his characteristically soft-spoken gentlemanly, gracious manner, Wilson drew a line in the sand about race, civilization identity, politics, funding, cultural power, critics, and certain theatrical casting practices. These issues were not modern nor were Wilson's comments particularly novel among enlightened African-Americans and other population of color. But his candid self-revelation, the historical rationale supporting his views, his political point-of-view, and his unapologetic assertiveness in a setting that neither count uponed these views nor had so prior precedent exhilarated some, traumatized others, and interpreted the eyes of those who had in no degree heard such reasoning.

concussion waves continue to resonate vehemently through the field today at virtue of Wilson's boldness. The issues he raised forward cultural politics are now in the center of public discourse. Wilson's address was high drama of seismic consecution motivated, I believe, by his deep-felt love of black people and his perception of the ne to leverage his considerable clout and prestige upon behalf of black theater and its practitioners.

answer from the field has been heated and varied. Waves of articles and editorials have been published in the TCG's organ of communication, American Theatre Magazine (which also printed Wilson's entire verse except for his first brace paragraphs, in its September 1996 issue), as well as various newspapers and national publications. however no response has been more incendiary than the individual from Western theater's champion Robert Brustein, a noted scholar, critic for The novel Republic, Artistic Director of Boston's American Repertory Theatre, and a white Jewish male of considerable accomplishment. While not existing at Wilson's address, Brustein answered respects that Wilson made to him in Brustein's novel Republic column of July 19 and 26 1996

For years, Wilson and Brustein have traded swipes at each other [i]or[/i] part of to the other their various public platforms; their mutual dislike and differences of opinion are well-known. Temperatures reached of the like kind a critical boiling point by means of the fall of 1996 in their continuing orbeds of volleys that acclaimed African-American actress, playwright, and educator Anna Deavere Smith, employing her avow considerable credentials, brokered a public face-off between the sum of two units which she moderated on January 27 1997 at modern York City's fabled Town Hall before a capacity concourse of 1,500 culturati. Entitled in succession Cultural Power and organized according to the TCG, this discussion was the hottest ticket in newly come memory. The face-off gained national media coverage and triggered besides another wave of reports, opinion pieces, and articles in nationwide publications now being garnered at the TCG's New York office.

Clearly, Wilson tapped a national manhood Race, America's great unresolved question--with its attendant issues of power, reparation, and equity--found recently made known and particularly acute resonances within the cultural construct Wilson articulated with great flowing and impassioned speech this past June. People everywhere are hungering to talk about it. Like the nation's reaction to the Rodney King/Los Angeles uprising, the O J Simpson trials, Louis Farrakhan, and the Million Man March, the Wilson/ Brustein tangle is at the same time another defining moment by which the nation's disjunction forward these matters and our difficulty in talking about race can be examined.

It is revealing to note who be agreeable tos in what way(s) to what part(s) of Wilson's address. Wilson hideed a wide range of topics in his talk. Many African-Americans rejoined warmly to his affirmation of the enlightening and almost sacred mission of black theater: to help correct historical distortions of black population and reclaim their collective psyche; repair the ravages of oppression; build collective self-sufficiency and self-respect; commune with black audiences in limits they understand; develop black talent; investigate black aesthetics; acknowledge stories and present images which celebrate and nursing the innate dignity, beauty, and worth of black people; reconceive, define, and festivity in a sense of peoplehood which resists the corrupting influence of the dominant white culture; and create independent space in which the social/cultural etho and black ambiance consonant with the values held precious at black folk may live likewise that African-Americans may feel in harmony with themselves and create something that is theirs and which can be subservient to as a source of pride.

Many of these values provide benefits to a black community and help define it in ways that cannot be captured by way of statistical, empirical measures. But Wilson's statements upon the practice of color-blind casting, his preferr limits forward the use of black actors in parts conceived with whites in mind, and his advocacy for more funding to put forth a stratum of substantial black theaters producing black plays for, according to near, and with black tribe have been the issues which have chiefly raised white fears and hackles. In what assumes like a very familiar story, his expression of black nationalism, on the same level though framed in a cultural adjoining matter threatens some powerful whites; and his assertion of his black manhood, his refusal to reverence whiteness is viewed as dangerous, unmanageable, and worthy of scorn, cooptation, neutralization, or elimination.