Old-Time Nigger Minstrel Show

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 31

Old-Time Nigger Minstrel Show

E of the highlights of the Auckland Festival Variety Concert staged by the NZBS last year was a nigger minstrel show. Written and produced by Ian Watkins, of 1ZB, it proved such a howling success that 13 more shows were recorded. Called Gentlemen, Be Seated, these are to be broadcast from the ZB stations on Saturdays at 7.0 p.m., starting on April 27. It is many years now since a minstrel show was on stage in New Zealand, Ian,Watkins told The Listener. The idea of reviving one came two years ago from John Griffiths, 1ZB’s station manager, who had seen several minstrel shows produced for radio in Australia. He therefore asked Ian to prepare one for the ZB. network’s Christmas Night programme. The 1ZB

minstrels next appeared at Auckland’s Birthday Carnival, where they were again well received. In America nigger minstrels enjoyed a spell of popularity. stretching 60 years from about 1830. The performers were not Negroes but white men with blackened faces, cracking jokes in a Negro dialect, singing, playing the banjo and the bones, and dancing. Stephen Foster was one of several composers whose songs the minstrels sang. Now such favourites as "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair," "Old Black Joe," "Ring, Ring de Banjo," "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee," and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen" have been arranged for New Zealand’s own minstrel show by the pianist and conductor, Oswald Cheesman. Gentlemen, Be Seated: The Old-time Minstrel Show, stars Peter Gwynne and Keith Bracey as Rastus and Sambo, Ian Watkins as Mr Interlocutor, Oswald Cheesman as Uncle Ivory and many other radio artists, including the Stardusters. 2