Zora Neale Hurston, Polk County

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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 white musicals of commercial Broadway. By the time she wrote Polk County in 1944, Broadway was

1033 words

Citation: Huneycutt, Keith. "Polk County". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=26812, accessed 19 March 2024.]

26812 Polk County 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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