Use of Improvisation, Body Language, Poetry, and Singing in Langston Hughes’

Don’t You Want to Be Free?

By Thomas Maldonado

Usually, when the word theatre is mentioned, one pictures a grand stage
filled with elaborate lighting, intricate backgrounds, ostentatious

costumes, classical music, and eloquent dialogue. Add the word ‘Black

Theatre,’ and one will think of the same thing, only adding African-Americans as the main

characters enacting the story of hard times gone by. However, Do You Want to Be Free?,

Langston Hughes’ renowned play, thinks out of the box and brilliantly fuses improvisation,

body language, poetry, and singing to communicate the plight of African-Americans as a

means to educate and spread social awareness.

Improvisation, Hughes’ first ingenious usage, was not the norm for most plays in his

time, most followed a rigid storyline that introduced the audience to its story in set scenes. It

should be noted that the use of improvisation here does not suggest that Do You Want to

Be Free is impromptu, rather what is meant here is the basic freeness and randomness in

which the written dialogue is performed. The directions for the play are quite simple,

Hughes’ set the guidelines as, “[…] a bare stage, except for a lynch rope and an auction

block. No scenery and very few props. No special lighting. Only actors needed – and an

audience. There is no curtain, so a young man simply comes forward and begins to speak”

(Hatch and Shine 268). It is this simplicity that enhances the improvisation and brings
Hughes’ characters to life as he recounts the origins of the Black man and woman’s

beginnings in America history from slavery, to emancipation, to the Northern migration, and

then to his current times. Responsibility is placed on the actors to make the audience feel as

if they are in Africa during the taking of the first slaves or on the plantations of the dirty

South running from mobs of angry white men armed with weapons ready for a lynching.

Perhaps the best use of improvisation comes towards the end of the play when during a

dialogue between WOMAN and BOY, two of the fifteen nameless characters of the play, are

interrupted by a member of the audience who engages them about the futility of riots,

organizing student unions, and working with Whites, to which BOY exclaims, “We’re all in

the same boat! This is America, isn’t it? It’s not all colored. Not all White. It’s both” (Hatch

and Shine 282). Hughes drives home the point that racism and the social ills afflicting

Blacks includes Whites as well. It is this impressive technique of improvisation between

audience and performers that connects everyone in a communal form of not only enjoying

art, but also in understanding why they are connected to the performance.

Body language, the second usage employed throughout Hughes’ play, is the visual

element that holds the audience. With no backgrounds and few props, the use of body

language is imperative in setting up the scenes. In his introduction to The Bedford

Introduction to Drama, Lee A. Jacobus says of movement (body language), “We as readers

or witnesses are energized by the movement of the characters in a play. As we read, stage

directions inform us where the characters are, when they move, how they move, and
perhaps even what the significance of their movement is” (Jacobus 21). Every action is

exaggerated as can be seen in several direction notes from the text, in one scene, Hughes

describes an African couple together before their final moments of being taken into slavery,

“The BOY has drawn near the GIRL, and stands before her. She looks at him, takes his

hands, and they gaze into each other’s eyes” (Hatch and Shine 269). The wording is dull,

drab, almost unimaginative, and yet when preformed, one can see the boy and girl drawing

near to one another, lovingly, with fear still in their eyes, staring at one another as a sign of

despair, linking the audience with the real fear that must have permeated from an African

couple during those final shared moments. In another scene, Hughes describes a dramatic

tussle between overseer and a disgruntled servant:

The OVERSEER walks up to the YOUNG MAN and hits him in the mouth.

The YOUNG MAN stands as if in a daze, then he suddenly deals the

OVERSEER a blow that sends him reeling unconscious to the floor. There is

a crash of cymbals. Whistles. The far-off cry of a mob. The YOUNG MAN

looks for a place to hide. There is no hiding place. (Hatch and Shine 273)

This text, vividly violent, is more dramatic when preformed on stage. Physical confrontation

becomes art sending vibrations of brutality all across the theatre. The performers must be

exact with every movement, their timing is crucial, the crowd will only feel the reality of the

brawl based on how well body language is conveyed. The entire play relies on this usage to
drive home the point of how African-Americans were mistreated, abused, terrorized and

humiliated.

Coupled together in a harmonious fusion, poetry and singing are the third and fourth

usage that bring an important and unique element to Don’t You Want to Be Free? Without it,

a lot of the historical mini-stories that pervade the play would be lost in translation. Both

blend with each character’s dialogue, and in some instances are used to highlight the

various themes of love, hate, racism, oppression, injustice, and standing up for one’s rights

in the face of adversity. In one instance of the play, Hughes uses his character, YOUNG

MAN, to explain the historical origins of the Blues, saying:

The blues is songs folks make up when their heart hurts. That’s what the

blues is. Sad funny songs. Too sad to be funny, and too funny to be sad […]

Colored folks made up the blues! Listen! (Hatch and Shine 273)

He goes on to list the four types of blues that one can be afflicted with, like a spiritual doctor

examining the blues-sick patient: the family blues, the loveless blues, the left-lonesome

blues, and, last but not least, the morning-after-blues. YOUNG MAN ends by saying,

“Colored folks made the blues! Now everybody sings ‘em. We made ‘em out of being poor

and lonely. And homes busted up, and desperate and broke” (Hatch and Shine 276). Using

his unique style of poetry, Hughes cites poetic examples of each to drive the point that this

wonderful musical genre was the result of the negative experiences Blacks suffered during
and after Slavery. Nothing is more moving, however, than the singing used to showcase the

final scene where both Black and White, male and female co-workers come together to

strike against low wages, discrimination, and lack of employee benefits. Hughes ends the

play with:

As they sing, the audience joins with them, and various members of the

audience, workers, doctors, nurses, professional men, teachers, white and

black, come forward to link hands with the characters in the play until the

players and the audience are one. (Hatch and Shine 283)

This is pure propaganda at its best, giving one the correct assumption that Hughes was

more in line with WEB Dubois’ pro-political view of using art as a means of reaching the

masses than with Alain Locke’s pro-art view of leaving politics out of performance.

Improvisation, body language, poetry and singing are not only set elements of a

play, they are almost expected by audiences. When speaking of classical or modern theatre

the absence of any of these known elements may be seen as straying from tradition.

Langston Hughes was one of those playwrights who had the ability to stray from tradition

and reinterpret these elements in such a way as to innovatively tell the African-American

experience in a non-traditional form as a means of protest while still wooing and wowing the

crowd, Don’t You Want to Be Free? is a testament to the legacy of that successful

experimentation.
 Works Cited

Hatch, James V., and Ted Shine. Black Theatre USA.2nd. 1. New York: The Free Press,

1996. 266-283. Print.

Jacobus, Lee A.. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s,

2013. 21. Print.

Source: https://utep.academia.edu/ThomasMaldonado