While reading this article, there were only a few challenges that I faced. First of all, there were times when I got confused as to what was being discussed and it took me awhile to figure that out. It was at the end of page four that I experienced my first challenge. I was reading about an all-black show called “Shuffle Along” and some minor details behind it. For example, how “Shuffle Along” followed a blackface tradition, and it introduced blacks in blackface. I was understanding what I was reading and understanding the explanation of how “Shuffle Along” was trying something new out, two black people falling in love on stage, and why certain people might feel uncomfortable being in the audience for this type of romance and show, but then, the article took a huge turn and started talking about someone, Savion Glover. I dove into this paragraph for a couple of sentences and then stopped, because I was completely confused as to what I was reading and where this was going and what it had to do with anything that I have already learned so far. I went back and read the second to last paragraph on the fourth page (the part of the article still detailing “Shuffle Along”) and then dove back into the Savion Glover paragraph. After reading it again, I decided that maybe it would be better to just continue reading on. So that’s what I did. Continuing on reading, it started to make sense as to how that paragraph related to what I had learned, but it was such a sharp change with no explanation, that I really struggled. That wasn’t the only time that I struggled either. It happened again one more time when all of sudden, the article changed to talking about Obama and movies of the day like “Ride Along”, and “Saturday Night Live”. I wrote on the side of the article that I printed out, “what does this have to do with anything?” I was really confused how we jumped from back before I was born, to just a few years ago. Again, I did the same thing; paused and went back and tried to figure out where this related and how it got there.
**image below** I decided to look up what the playbill of Shuffle Along would look like. I was really interested in it because I feel like a picture says a thousand words and I was hoping I would learn even more about Shuffle Along. Reading the article, it explains a lot about behind the scenes and the actors and dancers and musicians, but I feel like it missed out on some explanations that can be shared with a picture. I was surprised when I came across this image because this wasn’t what I had imagined in my head. I guess I kind of pictured a small theater with a few rows of seats, red curtains, the orchestra in the first few rows, and a few colored people on the stage. That’s at least what I had imagined throughout the reading. So seeing what seems like a white girl, dancing what kind of looks like could be the Charleston, and then a bunch of words, really took me by surprise. I never really thought someone white would be on the playbill since it talks of the blackface tradition being huge in Shuffle Along, but I guess I could also see why they might portray a white girl to drag in that white audience that they wanted to make Shuffle Along become a “white folks” play and drag in that so much wanted money.
