So I'm like having this moment in my life. I'm about to graduate. I'm really trying to figure out what I'm going to do next, so I've been searching the interenet and finiding interesting things online and in other random places. One of the interesting things is how little I know about the oppurtunities I have as ablack actor. That is something I need to know. I need to know what is out there. Who's doing what, who did what, what can be done. I just need to know as that is vital to me as a black actor. Information like that seems to be hard to come by. Especially beign a black actor in Louisiana. If you don't know, you have to be the one to find it out. Well I'm starting with the plays. Most of us black actors, myself included, have no idea of what we have done or what we are doing in regards to theatre. I wanted to make a little list of shows I've found online. I'll try to add a picture for each from random productions of the hsow, just to show another element, bring it to life.
The First Breeze of Summer By Leslie Lee
"Obie Award winner and Tony-nominated “Best Play,” Leslie Lee’s rarely seen drama reveals a turbulent time in three generations of an African-American family. One hot June weekend, the family matriarch reflects on the lessons of her own youth and the three lost love affairs that shaped her life and her family while the conflict between her two teenage grandsons and their father comes to a head. The New York Times called the play, “wonderfully moving,...touching and terrifying"
http://www.courttheatre.org/season/show/the_first_breeze_of_summer/
The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson
A piece about the cilvil rights movement, that has characters that resemeble Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The play is centered around a mother who let's her daughter use a White Only restroom and placed under a citizen's arrest by a white man for doing so.
Ruined by Lynn Nottage
From Lynn Nottage, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of such plays as Fabulation and Intimate Apparel, comes this haunting, probing work about the resilience of the human spirit during times of war. Set in a small mining town in Democratic Republic of Congo, this powerful play follows Mama Nadi, a shrewd businesswoman in a land torn apart by civil war. But is she protecting or profiting by the women she shelters? How far will she go to survive? Can a price be placed on a human life?
Intimate Appearal
The time is 1905, the place New York City, where Esther, a black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. Her skills and discretion are much in demand, and she has managed to stuff a goodly sum of money into her quilt over the years. One by one, the other denizens of the boarding house marry and move away, but Esther remains, lonely and longing for a husband and a future. Her plan is to find the right man and use the money she's saved to open a beauty parlor where black women will be treated as royally as the white women she sews for. By way of a mutual acquaintance, she begins to receive beautiful letters from a lonesome Caribbean man named George who is working on the Panama Canal. Being illiterate, Esther has one of her patrons respond to the letters, and over time the correspondence becomes increasingly intimate until George persuades her that they should marry, sight unseen. Meanwhile, Esther's heart seems to lie with the Hasidic shopkeeper from whom she buys cloth, and his heart with her, but the impossibility of the match is obvious to them both, and Esther consents to marry George. When George arrives in New York, however, he turns out not to be the man his letters painted him to be, and he absconds with Esther's savings, frittering it away on whores and liquor. Deeply wounded by the betrayal, but somehow unbroken, Esther returns to the boarding house determined to use her gifted hands and her sewing machine to refashion her dreams and make them anew from the whole cloth of her life's experiences
Superior Donuts by Tracey Letts
The play focuses on the relationship between despondent Arthur Przybyszewski, a former 1960s radical who owns a rundown donut shop in Uptown, Chicago, and Franco, his energetic but troubled young African American assistant who wants to update the establishment with lively music and healthy menu options. Dialogue scenes are separated by monologues in which Arthur discusses his past and reminisces about the city as it was in his younger years.
Passing Strange by Stew
A young black musician travels on a picaresque journey to rebel against his mother and his upbringing in a church-going, middle-class, late 1970s South Central Los Angeles neighborhood in order to find "the real". He finds new experiences in promiscuous Amsterdam, with its easy access to drugs and sex, and in artistic, chaotic, political Berlin, where he struggles with ethics and integrity when he misrepresents his background as poor to get ahead. Along with his "passing" from place to place and from lover to lover, the young musician moves through a number of musical styles from a background of gospel to punk, and then blues, jazz, and rock. He finally returns home.
Before It Hits Home by Cheryl L. West
Wendal, a jazz musician who has never managed to make it big, has just been diagnosed with having the AIDS virus. To a string of questioning doctors, he indignantly denies having had any sexual relations with others but by the end of the first act we see him in two simultaneous bedroom scenes, one between him and his fiancee, Simone, who is pregnant, and one between him and his male lover, Douglas, who is actually a married man and father. In these combined scenes, Wendal's denial and confusion are painfully obvious as he tries to hide the truth about his health from both of his partners; he seems especially intent to hide from Douglas the extent of his undisclosed promiscuity. In the second act, Wendal has drifted away from both Simone and Douglas, unable to sustain the lies that had been keeping his two worlds apart and in balance. He returns home to his mother and father, but upon confiding the truth to them, he is abandoned by his mother who, in a wrathful explosion of raw emotion, indicts Wendal for immorality and takes with her his teenage son from a previous marriage. Wendal's father, however, overcomes his facade of masculine pride and takes up caring for Wendal in his final days, eventually enacting a tentative reconciliation between the family members only in time for Wendal to die. The final image of the play lingers as Simone reappears, her own health and the life of her unborn child in question.
Blues For Mister Charlie by James Baldwin
Blues for Mister Charlie is based on the case of Emmett Till, a young black man who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The murderer was subsequently acquitted. The play is cyclical in its structure, opening and ending with the killing of Richard while occasionally utilizing a series of flashbacks to establish the reasons for Richard’s death. This structure allows for a focus on issues such as race, sex, and Christianity.
Dutchman by Amiri Baraka
The action focuses almost exclusively on Lula, a flirtatious white woman, and Clay, a young black man who ride the subway in New York City. Lula boards the train munching an apple, an allusion to the Biblical Eve. After Lula bends over in front of Clay in an obvious sexual come-on, the two characters engage in a flirtatious conversation throughout the long train ride.
Lula then begins to insult Clay, implying that somehow he is not "really" black because he is college educated, wears a three button suit and because his "grandfather was not a slave". She is now dancing in the train and ridicules Clay by asking him to join her and "do the nasty. Rub bellies". Clay, who initially does not respond to the provocation, rises up in extreme anger, menacing the other riders, telling Lula that she knew nothing about him, referring to her and other white people as "ofays". Forcing her on her seat next to him he slaps her twice and tells her that the neuroses of black men can be cured with her murder. He asks his leave and expresses his pity that it wouldn’t work out between them. As he bends over to pick up his books, Lula stabs him into his chest in full view of the other (both white and black) riders who do nothing to stop the attack. She then instructs everyone else to help her throw his body out of the train and get off the subway at the next stop.
The play ends on a chilling note; Lula approaches another well-dressed black man in the exact same way that she approached Clay. As the train conductor enters the compartment, dancing “soft-shoe”, Lula watches his movements.
Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith
The play is a series of monologues attained from interviews Anna Deavere Smith did with people involved in the Crown Heights crisis. Each one is titled with the person’s name as well as a key phrase from each interview, which tries to sums up what that person was trying to say or an important aspect of their monologue. There are a total of 29 monologues in Fires in the Mirror and each one focuses on a different character’s opinion and point of view of the events and issues surrounding the crisis. Plot, as defined by David Rush in A Student Guide to Play Analysis, is “the deliberate selection and arrangement of the incidents that the playwright presents” (35). Throughout Fires in the Mirror, every monologue is referring to the same crisis and incidents surrounding, and while they do each have something in common, they are uniquely different. Fires in the Mirror does not follow the typical seven parts of a well made play. The seven parts include: a state of equilibrium, an inciting incident, a point of attack, the rising action, the climax, a resolution, and finally a new state of equilibrium. Instead, Fires in the Mirror is a collection of individual monologues, brought together by Anna Deavere Smith. And while there is no linear plot with developing characters throughout its entirety, there is some logic to how Smith lays out and clumps together the monologues.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Tennesse Williams
This is not technically an African American play, but in 2008 Debbie Allen got an all star cast of African American actors and flipped the script on this theatre classic.
Fucking A by Susan Lori Parks
The story centers around a woman named Hester Smith who works as an Abortionist. Her body was branded with the letter “A” so she can be disgraced with her occupation. Her son was sent to jail by the wife of the Mayor, so Hester is continually making small payments so she can see him and have a picnic with him. The play starts with Hester talking to her friend Canary Mary about her son and how’s she’s working hard to save up and also writing letters to him. Canary tells Hester about her relationship with the Mayor, and it turns out the Mayor has been cheating on his wife (who they call the First Lady), with Canary. To both of their delight, she also tells Hester how the First Lady isn’t able to bear a child and the Mayor’s ready to leave her. Canary is confident that the Mayor will choose her, while Hester is left daydreaming about the day she can see her son again. A couple scenes later Canary walks through a park and ends up meeting an escaped convict named Monster. She notices he has a scar on his arm, and after a few exchanged words she continues on her way. The scene changes to a bar where three hunters are spouting at each other about how each of them is going to be the one to catch Monster so they can get the bounty. Hester arrives at the bar to find Scribe, so he can write her a letter to send her son, but while there she meets another man named Butcher who takes a liking to her. Meanwhile, Monster meets a very emotionally broken First Lady in the park, they exchange some kind words, and in the end she asks if she can kiss him. He says yes, and they kiss. The next day Hester arrives home, and she is met by Monster who broke into her house. He robs her of some of her money and runs off, but Hester is relieved he didn’t take her other hidden money. The next day comes and Hester’s payments have finally added up to enough for her to have a picnic with her son. She sits at the prison waiting for him, getting all the food ready. The guard brings out a prisoner called Jail Bait and she’s ecstatic to finally have seen her son. She embraces him but he is more interested in the food than he is in her. She tries to get him to show her the scar she gave him on his arm when he was first taken away to prison, but he is too busy eating the food. Half way through the meal she finally finds out that Jail Bait is indeed not her son. He claims that he killed her son in prison, and upon finding this out Hester is frozen with shock. Jail Bait finishes eating and begins to rape Hester, but she is still too stunned to resist.
The next scene opens with the First Lady finding that she is in fact pregnant, but with Monster being the only feasible father, she wants to abort the child. In the meantime, Hester is bent on revenge against the First Lady for putting her son in prison in the first place. So she conjures up a plan with Canary and Butcher to kill the First Lady. The next day Canary and Butcher bring a very groggy First Lady to Hester’s house. Shortly thereafter, the First Lady is killed by Hester and Butcher and Canary leave. Just after they leave, Monster runs into the house because he’s being chased by the Hunters. Hester and Monster talk but after she sees the scar on his arm she knows that he is her son all along. The Hunters’ dogs bark in the distance but they become louder. Monster tells Hester that if he is caught they will not kill him but torture him mercilessly. He tells her to kill him, and at first she thinks he’s kidding. The dog barks get louder and the Hunters get nearer, and she finally decides that to save him from pain he must kill him. She goes to him and slits his throat like a pig, which is the least painful way. The Hunters enter and see that he is already dead, and although they are disappointed they still drag his body away because there is “still fun to be had” [3]. Hester stands alone in her house for an instant, but soon gets her abortion tools and goes into the other room to continue her work.
Livin' Fat by Judi Ann Mason
Here is a comedy for and about Blacks written by a talented Black writer. The Cooper family is poor but happy. Father Calvin supports them by holding down two jobs. Mama, a revivalist lady, also works as a cleaning woman. There's also Big Mama the grandmother, a teenage daughter and son David Lee, a recent college graduate who's had to take a job as bank janitor. While he's working, the bank's robbed by two white men in Batman masks. In their haste they drop a bundle, David picks it up, it's $50,000! So he buys presents for the family and uses some of it to give himself a new start and to get married. When the family finds out where the money came from, their scruples are tested but they finally agree that the Lord works in mysterious ways and this time he's working for them.
Jar the Floor by Cheryl L. West
A quartet of black women spanning four generations makes up this heartwarming dramatic comedy. The four, plus the white woman friend of the youngest, come together to celebrate the matriarch's ninetieth birthday. It's a wild party, one that is a lovable lunatic glance at the exhilarating challenge of growing old amidst the exasperating trials of growing up.
Crumbs From the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage
Recently widowed Godfrey, and his daughters Ernestine and Ermina, move from Florida to Brooklyn for a better life. Not knowing how to parent, Godfrey turns to religion, and especially to Father Divine, for answers. The girls absorb their new surroundings, but not necessarily religion. Lily, Godfrey's sister-in-law, shows up from Harlem, having promised her sister that if anything ever happened, she'd look out for the girls. Lily, while fascinating to her nieces, stands for everything Godfrey dislikes: communism, sexual freedom and the fight against racial discrimination. As the racial and social issues of the late 1950s escalate, personal issues between Godfrey and Lily explode, prompting him to walk out. A few days later, he returns, with a new wife—a white, German immigrant, Gerte. With Godfrey immersed in religion, Lily claiming to be a part of the new revolution, and quiet, stoic Gerte coming from the horrors of Germany, life in the household gets heated. Ultimately, Lily must leave, seeing as she's neither Godfrey's wife nor the girls' mother. Godfrey and Gerte keep the family together as best they can, but nothing lasts forever. Ernie, about to graduate from high school, gets a job offer from her father, but it's not what she wants to do. Instead, as a young woman in the dawn of a new age, she sets off for Harlem in search of her spiritual mother, Lily, and all of the causes she supposedly stood for during the "revolution."
Streamers by David Rabe
Not a full African American production, but has strong roles for Males. I did a scene of this play in an acting class.
The last in his Vietnam War trilogy that began with The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones, it focuses on the interactions and personal conflicts of a group of soldiers preparing to ship out to fight in the Southeast Asian conflict. Among them are middle class African American Roger, upper class Manhattanite Richie, who is struggling with his sexual orientation, conservative Wisconsin country boy Billy, and fearful loose cannon Carlyle, a streetwise black. In charge of their barracks are abrasive alcoholic Sgt. Cokes, who already has served overseas, and aggressive Sgt. Rooney, who is anxious to get into combat.
The Other Cinderella by The Black Ensemble Theatre (???)
In The Other Cinderella, Cinderella was born in the projects, the Brothers are from the hood, the Stepmama works at the post office, the Step-Sisters are ghetto fabulous and the Fairy Godmama is from Jamaica. In this Kindom everybody's got soul! The laughs are nonstop when the King declares that his son must find a wife.
Broke-ology by Nathan Louis Jackson
The King family has been experiencing broke-ology for some time, but things have gotten especially rough in recent years and even staying alive is getting to be an almost insurmountable challenge. Loving mother Sonia (April Yvette Thompson) died of cancer. Hardworking patriarch William (Wendell Pierce) has MS -- which is rapidly worsening. Son Ennis (Francois Battiste) works multiple jobs to support his wife and new baby.
When younger son Malcolm (Gaius Charles) returns from college for the summer, it is clear that the question of how to take care of Dad is going to put strains on all three King men, especially with Malcolm's hopes of going to graduate school.
The Brother Sister Plays (Trilogy) By: Tarell Alvin McCraney
Part 1: In The Red and Brown Water
Part 2: The Brothers Size
Part 3: Marcus: Or the Secret of Sweet
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When The Rainbow is Enuff By: Ntozake Shange.
Sty of the Blind Pig by Phillip Hayes Dean
The place is Chicago's south side and the time the 1950s, just before the civil rights movement began to burgeon. Alberta, unmarried and in her thirties, shares an apartment with her mother, Weedy, an old-fashioned black woman who finds solace for her troubles in religion. Their constant visitor is Uncle Do, a sporty, down-on-his-luck gambling man who is the despair of his strait-laced sister, Weedy. Then, unexpectedly, a wandering street singer, Blind Jordan, comes to their door, searching for a woman he once knew. The others are puzzled and even frightened by their visitor, but Alberta offers to help him in his quest, and when they are alone, all the emotional and sexual frustration struggling within her bursts forth in a scene of tremendous eloquence and power. Out of the unsettling nature of their encounter comes estrangement between mother and daughter, which subsides to an uneasy truce when Blind Jordan departs—leaving behind a disturbing awareness of much that has been lost or changed, and of much greater change still to come.
The Bow Wow Club By: Levy Lee Simon
The Bow Wow Club is a serious comedy about friendship, love, responsibility, and survival. Five teenage friends reunite after 20 year to reconnect emotionally and through discovery, revelation and realities, they are forced to choose between their stunning and fundamental differences or the undeniable power of their lifelong bond. Lee Simon’s riveting tale of what happened to The Bow Wow Club once they left the security of the streets, as insecure a place as one could imagine. It shows their hopes, their dreams, their disappointments, their successes and the surprising changes that took place in their lives as they found acceptance and compromise in the modern world to be as big an adversary as any rival gang they had faced in their prime.
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