Side by Side but not Eye to Eye: “Whiteness” and the Performance of Race in Tampa Cuban Immigrant Theater, 1886-1960

FAIN: FEL-282226-22

Kenya Carmen Dworkin
Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3815)

Research and writing of a book about theater and the Cuban community in Tampa, Florida, from 1886 to the 1960s.

Theater was one of the most popular forms of entertainment for immigrants in Tampa, Florida, between 1886 and the 1960s. Most of it was performed by immigrant Cubans and their descendants, many of them cigar makers, some of them playwrights themselves. The Cuban community’s preferred genre was farce. The variety that evolved in Tampa transposed its characters and scenarios from the streets of Havana to those of Ybor City, Tampa’s first and most important immigrant enclave. Stock characters and formulaic hilarity did not prevent these plays from modeling and reproducing the community’s values, promoting working-class unity, and exploring incipient Americanization. However, they also laid bare the veiled clash of two racist systems—one white Cuban, the other white Southern, and how this theater portrayed light-skinned Cubans in this community and their dark-skinned Cuban counterparts.