Black Studies: Playwrights

We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury Tells the little-known story of the first genocide of the 20th century and takes place in a rehearsal room as a group of idealistic actors—three black and three white—attempt to recreate the extinction of the Herero tribe at the hands of their German colonizers. Eventually the full force of a horrific past crashes into the good intentions of the present, and what seemed a faraway place and time comes all too close to home.

An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins An Octoroon invites us to laugh loudly and easily at how naïve the old stereotypes now seem, until nothing seems funny at all. Jacobs-Jenkins is using a genre associated with exclamation points to ask questions not only about the portrayal of race in America but also about the inadequate means we have for such portrayals.

They Shootin! or I Ain't Neva Scared by Idris Goodwin Idris Goodwin's monologue is broken into three parts, each a poetic exploration of his perspective as a black man in Iowa City. The first retells his fear of being outside his home at midnight, the second shifts to how members of the white community react to his art as a black man, and the third paints a portrait of black men being gunned down and metaphorically hunted from a passing train.

Sweat by Lynn Nottage Nottage has written one of her most exquisitely devastating tragedies to date. In one of the poorest cities in America, Reading, Pennsylvania, a group of down-and-out factory workers struggles to keep their present lives in balance, ignorant of the financial devastation looming in their near futures. Set in 2008, the powerful crux of this new play is knowing the fate of the characters long before it's even in their sights.

Yellowman: My Red Hand, My Black Hand, Two Plays by Dael Orlandersmith In "Yellowman," Alma and Eugene find a love together that transcends racism and poverty; in "My Red Hand, My Black Hand," a young woman of Native American and African American heritage searches for her identity amid both races.

Letters to a Young Artist by Anna Deavere Smith

Brotherhood by Douglas Turner Ward

Four Black Revolutionary Plays by Baraka, Amiri Experimental death unit 1. -- A black mass. -- Great goodness of life. -- Madheart.

Five Plays by Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes Mulatto -- Soul gone home -- Little ham -- Simply heavenly -- Tambourines to glory.

The Bacchae of Euripides by Wole Soyinka

Homecookin': Five Plays by Clay Goss OurSides -- Homecookin' -- Andrew -- Of being hit -- Mars : monument to the last black eunuch.

Myth, Magic, and Farce: Four Multicultural Plays by Sterling Houston; Sandra M. Mayo (Editor) Contents: Introduction --High Yello Rose-- Isis in Nubia--Black Lily and White Lily--Miranda Rites

Hall Plays - 1 by Katori Hall ntroduction : the Memphis plays; Hoodoo love; Saturday night/Sunday morning; The mountaintop; Hurt village; Hoodoo love : musical score and lyrics.

The Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney McCraney's dramas of kinship, love, and heartache are set in the bayou of Louisiana and loosely draw on West African myths. In the Red and Brown Water charts the story of Oya, a fast and beautiful track star who must make difficult choices on her journey to womanhood. The Brothers Size dramatizes the struggle between brothers who have taken different paths.

The House That Will Not Stand by Marcus Gardley New Orleans, 1836. Following an era of French colonial rule and relative racial acceptance, Louisiana's 'free people of color' are prospering. Beatrice, a free woman of colour, has become one of the city's wealthiest women through her relationship with a rich white man. However, when her lover mysteriously dies, Beatrice imposes a six-month period of mourning on herself and her three daughters.

The Red Letter Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks Two plays expanding on Hawthorne's classic novel "The scarlet letter." In the blood: Hester La Negrita, an unapologetic mother of five illegitimate children, practices writing the alphabet to help herself "one day get a leg up." Fucking A: Hester Smith works the only job available to her, as an abortionist to the lower class, in order to save for a reunion picnic with her imprisoned son.

The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe Git on board -- Cookin' with Aunt Ethel -- The photo session -- Soldier with a secret -- The gospel according to Miss Roj -- The hairpiece -- The last mama-on-the-couch play -- Symbiosis -- Lala's opening -- Permutations -- The party.

Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of violence--which is loosely based on the notorious 1955 killing of Emmett Till--Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race. For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a "boy" like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. And centuries of brutality and fear, patronage and contempt, are about to erupt in a moment of truth as devastating as a shotgun blast.

Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange; Ifa Bayeza

Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson; Phylicia Rashad (Foreword by); John Lahr (Introduction by) Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson's decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century-an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson.

The Theme Is Blackness: "The Corner" and Other Plays by Ed Bullins Dialect Determinism (or the Rally) -- It Has No Choice -- The Helper -- A Minor Scene -- The Theme is Blackness -- The Man Who Dug Fish -- The Corner -- Black Commercial #2 -- The American Flag Ritual -- State Office Bldg. Curse -- One-Minute Commercial -- A Street Play -- Street Sounds -- A Short Play for a Small Theater -- The Play of the Play.

Les Blancs: the Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry by Lorraine Hansberry; Robert Nemiroff (Editor) Les blancs -- The drinking gourd -- What use are flowers?

Three Suitors: One Husband; [and] Until Further Notice by Guillaume Oyono-Mbia,

Caught in the Storm by Seydou Badian; Marie-Therese Noiset (Translator) A 1954 novel on the Westernization of Africa. What should one accept, what should one reject? The protagonists include a woman resisting an arranged marriage and a soldier who served in the French army in Europe.

Serial Black Face by Janine Nabers The year is 1979 and a serial killer in Atlanta is abducting and murdering young black children. Against a backdrop of fear and uncertainty, playwright Janine Nabers explores the emotional battleground where an African-American single mother wars with her teenage daughter, each coping in her own way with personal tragedy and loss. The volatility of their situation is intensified when a severely damaged and devastatingly handsome stranger becomes an integral part of their lives.

Detroit '67 by Dominique Morisseau nspired by American History takes the audience on a journey to 1967, in the city of Detroit. Motown music is getting the party started, and Chelle and her brother Lank are making ends meet by turning their basement into an after-hours joint. But when a mysterious woman finds her way into their lives, the siblings clash over much more than the family business.

Seven Plays of Koffi Kwahulé: In and Out of Africa by Judith G. Miller; Chantal Bilodeau (Translator)

Insurrection: Holding History by Robert O'Hara Robert O'Hara employs a language of wicked wit, of deliberate and immensely provocative outrageousness to speak to a vast, bloody, unapproachable outrage. He shatters the funereal hush that usually surrounds the representation of atrocity and holocaust, in the process waking his audience up.

Breath, Boom by Kia Corthron Breath, boom is a play that explores the life of a hardened New York gang member whose chief obsession is the creation of the perfect fireworks display. The author considers this marginal character's attitude to her own perilous existence.

Pretty Fire by Charlayne Woodard

I Am a Man by Oyamo

A Soldier's Play by Charles Fuller A black sergeant cries out in the night, "They still hate you," then is shot twice and falls dead. Set in 1944 at Fort Neal, a segregated army camp in Louisiana, Charles Fuller's forceful drama--which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 and has been regularly seen in both its original stage and its later screen version--tracks the investigation of this murder.

The Adrienne Kennedy Reader by Adrienne Kennedy; Werner Sollors (Introduction by)

Three Plays by Derek Walcott The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile

Love Conjure/Blues by Sharon Bridgforth LOVE CONJURE/BLUES places the fiction- form inside a traditional Black American voice/inviting dramatic interpretation and movement within the fit of a highly literary text—filled with folktales poetry haints prophecy song and oral history.

No Place to Be Somebody: A Black-Black Comedy by Charles Gordone Written over the course of seven years, the play explores racial tensions in a Civil Rights-era story about a black bartender who tries to outsmart a white mobster syndicate. In his final speech, in June 1995, delivered at the Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, Gordone described the play as being "about country folk who had migrated to the big city, seeking the urban myth of success, only to find disappointment, despair, and death."

Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays by Jean Lee Cole (Editor); Charles Mitchell (Editor); Zora Neale Hurston Eleven of Hurston's dramatic writings are being published together for the first time in this edited and annotated volume. Filled with lively characters, vibrant images of rural and city life, biblical and folk tales, voodoo, and the blues.