SOURCE: Elam, Harry, and Alice Rayner. “Echoes from the Black (W)hole: An Examination of The America Play.” In Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theater, edited by Jeffrey D. Mason and J. Ellen Gainor, pp. 178-92. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Elam and Rayner detail the process that the characters in The America Play use to replace the “hole” in their African-American history, culture, and identities with reconstructed memories and afrocentric ideas to create selves and a past that are “whole.”

In the summer of 1994, the Disney Corporation considered building an American history theme park in Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb close to the nation's capital. Many American historians opposed the plan, citing the inability of a theme park to capture the reality of American history and the inappropriateness of a Disney park as a location for the racial violence and oppression in...