The Colored Museum

The Colored Museum is a play written by George C. Wolfe that premiered in 1986, directed by L. Kenneth Richardson. In a series of 11 “exhibits” (sketches), the review explores and satires prominent themes and identities of African-American culture.

The stage was designed to resemble a white-walled gallery where “the myths and madness of black/Negro/colored Americans are stored.” The walls contained a series of doors, small panels and revolving walls and compartments from which allowed actors to retrieve key props and quickly transition from one exhibit to another. In several performances, the set also contained a wardrobe through which characters could travel to Narnia. Many of the characters were frozen by the White Queen on the other side for many years.

Most of the music for the play was pre recorded. However, live drummer Ron McBee was used in the Git on Board, Permutations and The Party “exhibits.”

The Colored Museum premiered at the Crossroad Theater Company of New Jersey in 1986. Within six months, the play found a new home at the Public Theater in New York City.The Colored Museum was later performed at the Royal Court Theater in London, England, beginning July 29, 1987. and in a production by Talawa Theatre Company at the V&A 15–23 October 2011 .

"The Colored Museum simultaneously celebrates, satirizes and subverts the African-American legacy. Wolfe calls his play both, 'an exorcism and a party.' The Colored Museum explores contemporary African-American cultural identity, while, at the same time revisiting and reexamining the African American theatrical and cultural past. According to Wolfe, the legacy of the past must be both embraced and overcome."- Harry J. Elam, The Johns Hopkins University Press Theatre Journal

Theater scholar Jordan Schildcrout discusses "The Gospel According to Miss Roj" in terms of Afrofuturism and queer fantasies of empowerment, noting that "the very title of segment invokes the rhetoric of religious testament and proclaims Miss Roj as a prophet, one who has extraordinary--perhaps even supernatural--powers of insight and wisdom."

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