Black actor Charles S. Gilpin, white playwright Eugene O'Neill, and the Provincetown Players made US theater history when they first staged The Emperor Jones in 1920. The attention that production generated was due partially to the play's situatedness in an emergent tradition of serious American drama and partially to the assignment of the title role to Gilpin, rather than, more conventionally, to a white actor in dark makeup. The first run at the Playwrights' Theatre, and the play's subsequent move to Broadway and a national tour, is now considered a turning point in American drama not only for solidifying O'Neill's burgeoning success but also for enabling Gilpin's groundbreaking performance. It also informs the story told in The Black Emperor of Broadway, directed by Arthur Egeli with a screenplay by Ian Bowater, adapted from Adrienne Earle Pender's stage play N (2015).
While Gilpin was not the first African American actor...
