The Krigwa Players (also known as the Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre and named for the acronym CRIGWA: Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists) was one of the most prominent and popular theatre groups based out of Harlem during the

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...

. Though it only lasted for three years, The Krigwa Players' impact was felt throughout Harlem and the cities it spawned offshoot projects into, these cities being Cleveland,

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was d ...

, Washington, D.C., and even Philadelphia. It was founded in 1925 by W.E.B. Du Bois and

Regina Anderson Regina M. Anderson (May 21, 1901 – February 5, 1993) was an American playwright and librarian. She was of Native American, Jewish, East Indian, Swedish, and other European ancestry (including one grandparent who was a Confederate general); one ...

, with Du Bois serving as the chairman of the theater group entirely. The theatre was converted from the basement of the 135th street Harlem Library. The goal of the company was focusing on creating, nurturing, developing, and promoting new writers, directors, performers, and actors within the black community.

Mission

W.E.B. Du Bois published a statement concerning the objective of the Krigwa Players in the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

magazine '' The Crisis''

Association with ''The Crisis'' magazine

Starting in 1924, Amy Spingarn (wife of

Joel Elias Spingarn Joel Elias Spingarn (May 17, 1875 – July 26, 1939) was an American educator, literary critic, civil rights activist, military intelligence officer, and horticulturalist. Biography Spingarn was born in New York City to an upper middle-class ...

) established an annual literary contest in ''The Crisis''. Accepting submissions for fiction, essays, verse, and plays, this contest became the major source of new work for the Krigwa Players.Walker, Ethel Pitts. "Krigwa, a Theatre by, for, and about Black People." ''Theatre Journal'', Vol. 40, No. 3, Perspectives in Theatre History (Oct., 1988), pp. 347-356

Productions

First season (1926)

The Krigwa Players' first official season was performed at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library in May 1926, and consisted of two one-acts plays selected as winners of the literary contest in ''The Crisis'', ''The Broken Banjo'' by Willis Richardson and ''The Church Fight'' by Ruth Ada Gaines-Shelton, and a third one-act by Richardson "Compromise". It consistently played to full houses, with an average of 200 patrons per night. The entire production cost $165 and made back $240 in ticket sales, netting the company a modest profit.

Second season (1927)

With the second annual Crisis awards in 1926, one of the winning plays was selected to be part of the three one-acts;

Eulalie Spence Eulalie Spence (June 11, 1894 – March 7, 1981) was a writer, teacher, director, actress and playwright from the British West Indies. She was an influential member of the Harlem Renaissance, writing fourteen plays, at least five of which were pu ...

's ''Foreign Mail''. The other two were a second play by Spence entitled ''Her'' and ''Mandy'' by W.J. Jefferson. This season also introduced a new interpretive dance and dialogue by J. Gord Arnold entitled ''Pandora's Box''. Unfortunately none of the scripts for this season have survived over the years preventing analysis of the works.

Fifth Annual National Little Theatre Tournament (1927)

The company's biggest success came after entering Eulalie Spence's ''Fool's Errand'' into the Fifth Annual National Theatre Tournament. The production won the Samuel French for Best Unpublished Play and garnered the company a prize of $200. A huge success considering that this was the company's first time entering such a tournament.

Decline and legacy

The company became sharply split after the tournament. W.E.B. Du Bois used the prize money to pay for the cost of the production and entering the tournament with no money going towards the performers. After this the company parted and went their separate ways. According to Eulalie Spence, the last official production of the Krigwa Players was ''Fool's Errand''. Another group using the name Krigwa Players name emerged in 1928, but they were not affiliated with The Crisis or the original Krigwa Players. The legacy of the theater lead to subsequent groups filling the space after its closure, with some being the Negro Experimental Players (1929), the Harlem Players (1931), and the American Negro Theater, which lasted 9 years, and ran the longest out of all the former theater companies.

References

{{authority control African-American theatre companies Harlem Renaissance Arts organizations established in 1925 1925 establishments in New York City Organizations disestablished in 1928 1928 disestablishments in New York (state) Defunct Theatre companies in New York City