In light of tonight’s Tony Awards celebration, airing on CBS, starting at 8/7c, and the many nominations black creatives received this year…

Theatre and documentary buffs can further shed some light on this, but there really isn’t a current (as in produced in the last decade) feature documentary film or TV documentary series that tells the story of black theatre here in the USA, and does so comprehensively.

There certainly are several books written on the subject, but very few films/series. The only one that I’m aware of is a 1978 documentary film titled “Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement,” which, as the film’s distributor California Newsreel describes it, documents the birth of a new theatre out of the Civil Rights activism of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, featuring the leading figures, institutions and events of those years that transformed the American stage.

Notables in the film include Amiri Baraka, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, James Earl Jones and Ntozake Shange who describe their aspirations for a theatre that served/serves the Black community exclusively. Excerpts of key productions like “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Dutchman” and “For Colored Girls…” reveal how these actors and playwrights laid the basis for the Black theater of the present (the “present” of course being 1978, the year the film was first released; although the same can still be said of black theatre today).

Across the pond, in the UK, we’ve featured at least 2 different projects that have focused on the history of black theatre in Britain. There was the film produced by Nu Century Arts in partnership with the Octavia Foundation titled “Margins to Mainstream: The Story of Black Theatre in Britain,” a groundbreaking film that builds on previous theatre heritage projects delivered by Nu Century Arts, that explores the history and heritage of black theatre in Britain.

Historians, playwrights, producers and actors that contributed and appear in the film include Courttia Newland, Javone Prince, Kwame Kwei-Armah, and Pat Cumper.

The film premiered in May 2012 in London, and was screened at venues throughout London and Birmingham. It doesn’t appear to have traveled far beyond the UK, and isn’t available for purchase either.

More recently (last fall, 2015), there was the 10-Part BBC radio documentary series on the history of black British theatre presented by actor and comedian Sir Lenny Henry. The series highlighted the “history and struggle of black British creativity” over the last century, covering a huge span of black British theatre – from Ira Aldridge to Steve McQueen, and Nina Baden-Semper to Bola Agbaje.

Trinidadian playwright Mustapha Matura, actor and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, and theatre director Paulette Randall were amongthe  interviewees.

Titled “Raising the Bar,” the series (part of the BBC’s On Stage season) was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 throughout November. And now, thankfully, the entire radio documentary series is available online – even for those not in the UK. So you can all play the entire series wherever you are. Unfortunately, it’s not embeddable, so you’ll have to go to the BBC’s website here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06phflx/episodes/player.

As for the 1978 California Newsreel documentary on black theatre here in the USA, there’s a home video DVD version available, which you can buy for $24.95. It’s not available elsewhere, certainly not as a rental, or to stream, so your only option is to buy it from Newsreel. A clip from the film is embedded below.

But again, if any of you theatre or documentary buffs is aware of any other documentary film, or TV program that should be mentioned here, especially one that’s current and includes coverage of black theatre since 1978, please share with us in the comment section below. And if one doesn’t exist, shouldn’t there be one? If you’re working on something related, please let me know.

Below is a clip from “Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement” which you can pick up from California Newsreel; I also found a segment from PBS’ two-hour documentary on “Vaudeville” which focused on Blacks and Vaudeville, beginning in the 1880s and through the 1920s, which is part the history we’re talking about here. That 19-minute segment from the PBS special is embedded underneath the clip from “Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement.”

The Tony Awards airs tonight on CBS, starting at 8pm. Black nominees include, in the lead actor in a musical race, Leslie Odom, Jr. and his main competition, co-star Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Hamilton”). In the lead actress category, Cynthia Erivo in “The Color Purple.” In the featured acting competitions, there’s Renee Elise Goldsberry and Daveed Diggs, both of “Hamilton.” The featured actor slate includes three actors of color, with Christopher Jackson of “Hamilton” and Brandon Victor Dixon of “Shuffle Along” joining Diggs in the contest. Danai Gurira’s “Eclipsed” picked up multiple nominations as well including nods for Lupita Nyong’o, Saycon Sengbloh, Pascale Armand, and Gurira. Sophie Okonedo is nominated for Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” And there are others…