Harlem Renaissance theater companies

A number of theatre companies are associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

Anita Bush, a pioneer in African American theater, began an acting company after seeing a show at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem. She wanted an all-Black group that performed Broadway plays, to combat the popular "racial stereotypes of African Americans as singers, dancers, and slapstick comedians." According to Bush, she wanted to prove that Blacks can do the same thing as whites. They were called the Bush Players. After performing at the Lincoln Theater for two years, the owner, Marie Downs, wanted to change their name to the Lincoln Players. Anita refused and took her company to the rival theater, The Lafayette Theatre.

In 1916, due to financial difficulties, Bush sold her company to the theater. One of the actors, Charles S. Gilpin, took over the players and helped establish the Lafayette Players Stock Company, which became the first legitimate Black in Harlem. That same year Robert Levy, an American Jew, became involved with the Lafayette Players through the formation of the Quality Amusement Corporation, which managed both the theater and the acting troupe. Later, Levy used the talents of the players in the movies he produced. Reol Productions Corporation had a goal to product high-class pictures with colored actors, which created continuous employment for Black performers. The company consisted of only black actors who were cast as serious dramatic roles—something that was unheard of at the time. White playwrights, who intended to have white actors playing them, wrote many of these roles. This allowed serious black actors transcend the stereotyped and comedic roles, which they were normally expected to play. The Lafayette Players began performing for almost exclusively Black audiences. The plays they would perform were shows that were popular in the white theater repertory as well as the classics. Some examples of these are performances: Madame X, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Shakespeare's Macbeth, which had been directed by Orson Welles. The Players performed anything that was being done on Broadway. They performed short plays, shortened versions of popular Broadway success'—most which were melodramatic. Sometimes they would perform musicals like Darktown and Shuffle Along. Some Harlem figures, like W.E.B. Du Bois, opposed this choice of materials because it did not promote the work of black playwrights.

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