Historic Portsmouth: Facing up to American Minstrelsy
By J. Dennis Robinson, Posted Feb 15, Fosters.com
It has been a rough week of research here. Shocking, embarrassing, and sad. I’m working all this year on a history of the performing arts in Portsmouth, from the city’s settlement to the present day, and I’m loving the trip. But facts can tear up the page like bullets.
Truth is, the most popular form of mass entertainment in America in the late-1800s was blackface minstrelsy. White actors and musicians, their faces blackened with burnt cork, were as familiar to audiences as television sitcoms or rock and roll today. A typical show opened with dancing, joking and singing, followed by slapstick routines, a “plantation skit,” or a parody of a popular stage play.
During the two decades that the Peirce family owned the new Music Hall, at least 30 different minstrel teams took the stage in Portsmouth. Companies like Duprez & Bendids Gigantic Minstrels lured audiences with troupes that promised to be mammoth, mastodon, famous, operatic, gigantean, cool, spectacular, monster, and magatheria. For many New Englanders, their only contact with African culture was the mocking, racist stereotypes they saw at minstrel shows, read in books and magazines, or heard in popular songs.
