The National Ethiopian Art Theater (NEAT) in New York was a short-lived “little theater” group and school that promoted playwriting and dramatic performance by blacks. Organizers and teachers of NEAT included Anne Wolter and Henry Creamer. Theophilus Lewis, an ardent supporter of black theater who was the foremost drama critic during the Harlem Renaissance, noted the first public performance (19 June 1924) of students from NEAT’s school in his theater column for The Messenger. The program featured dance numbers as well as choral singing.

According to Lewis, NEAT’s ultimate goal was to build a school and a theater in the Broadway district. Although Lewis supported the goal of creating an organization to feature black dramatic talent, he encouraged the group to locate its theater in Harlem, where it could benefit from the support of blacks in the community in addition to focusing on developing black dramatists and actors. Lewis commented favorably on NEAT’s attempt to bring drama to the stage during a time when musicals were the most popular form of stage entertainment.

The lack of black playwrights who focused on dramatic works (instead of musicals and comedies), however, meant that NEAT and other black little theater groups frequently performed dramas written by whites. The public’s taste for low comedy and imitations of white tastes in drama often dictated the types of works presented by black theater groups. Lewis also noted NEAT’s practice of using brown-skinned women in dance performances when the norm for most shows was light-skinned women in dance choruses. Critics noted other performances by NEAT, including a presentation of three one-act plays at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem on 15 October 1924. The author and critic George Schuyler (1924) praised “Cooped Up” by Eloise Bibb Thompson as a “play written by one who knows life and the ingredients of real drama.” The evening’s performances also included “Being Forty” by Eulalie Spence and “Bills,” which Schuyler dismissed as an unfunny comedy. Both Eloise Bibb Thompson and Eulalie Spence were students at the NEAT school. The National Ethiopian Art Theater School disbanded in 1925. Other black little theater groups of the 1920s and 1930s included the Tri-Arts Club, the Inter- Collegiate Association, the Sekondi Players, the Krigwa Players, and the Aldridge Players.