Zora Neale Hurston, Polk County

Keith Huneycutt (Florida Southern College)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.5: African American Writing and Culture of the United States.
Vol. editors: Philathia Bolton (University of Akron), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), A Yemisi Jimoh (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2005

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Zora Neale Hurston collaborated in 1944 with Dorothy Waring to create the musical drama Polk County: A Comedy of Negro Life on a Sawmill Camp with Authentic Negro Music in Three Acts (Hemenway, 1977: 298). Waring apparently contributed minimally. Waring's husband, Stephen Kelen-d'Oxylion, had arranged for a November 1944 Broadway production, which was cancelled, and the play debuted in 2002, long after Hurston's death. Polk County is remarkable for its rich texture and originality. According to Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell,

Hurston's later plays, which featured an easy blend of song and dialogue, ran counter to the structured scenes with abrupt Tin Pan Alley interpolations found in the …

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1033 words

Citation: Huneycutt, Keith. "Polk County". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=26812, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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