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WILLIAM WELLINGTON MACKEY |
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Nationality: USA Email: n/a Website: n/a |
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Literary Agent: n/a |
William Wellington Mackey is from Louisiana and attended Southern University in Baton Rouge. After graduation in 1958 he taught high school in Miami, Florida. With money earned during summers as a waiter and bellhop in the Catskills, a job Cab Calloway helped him land, he entered the University of Minnesota, where he earned a master's degree. While working as a recreational therapist at the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo, Mr. Mackey completed his first full-length play, BEHOLD! COMETH THE VANDERKELLANS, begun when he was a graduate student at Minnesota. The play, an attack on the black bourgeoisie done in avant-garde manner, was performed by the Eden Workshop, the Negro theater group in Denver, in 1965. COMETH THE VANDERKELLANS, which is particularly satiric of a Negro college president and his family, has attracted a great deal of attention.
Plays by William Wellington Mackey
Behold! Cometh The VanderKellans | ||
| 1st Produced: | Eden Workshop, Denver | 1965 | ||||
Company: | n/a | |||||
| 1st Published: | I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page. | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #70699 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | full length Play/Drama | |||||
| Parts: | Male | - | Female | - | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | - | |||||
Synopsis: | an attack on the black bourgeoisie done in avant-garde manner | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Billy Noname | ||
| 1st Produced: | Truck and Warehouse Theatre, New York | 1970 | ||||
Company: | n/a | |||||
| 1st Published: | R E Richardson Productions, NY, | ISBN/ASIN: | ocr-9545 | |||
| Music: | Original cast recording: Original Cast Records (9545) 1970 | doollee no | #61937 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | Musical | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 8 | Female | 7 | ||
Parts other: | optional chorus | |||||
Notes: | Music and lyrics by Johnny Brandon; book by William Wellington Mackey | |||||
| musical play has a 'vividly exultant vitality and a varied and delightful score by Johnny Brandon that make it genuinely exciting to watch" -Richard Watts, New York Post. It is the odyssey of a now successful black American writer who, having found his own place In the sun, is deeply troubled that his voice is perhaps not clearly heard with those of his brothers who demand Freedom now" To find out where he should go from here he retraces his life from the day of his conception in a street rape in Bay Alley, a southern ghetto, on the night Joe Louis became heavyweight champ of the world in 1937. Most of the joy - and there is plenty of it - Is in the good and powerful songs. This all black musical is so buoyant that its effect lasts several hours after the house lights come up." -Edith Oliver, New Yorker. | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Family Meeting | ||
| 1st Produced: | 25 Jan 1972 | |||||
Company: | Jarboro Players | |||||
| 1st Published: | Dramatists Play Service, NY, | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #21889 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | satire One Act | |||||
| Parts: | Male | 4 | Female | 4 | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | Avant-garde in style, this biting, satire, employs brilliant theatricality to probe into the conflict between middle-class blacks and their less fortunate brothers | |||||
Synopsis: | The place is Heavenly Heights, U.S.A., where a flourishing black capitalist and his family enjoy the gaudiest blessings of material success, while regarding the poor black people of Goodbread Alley with disdain. The irony of their attitude is enhanced by the casting of black actors as white and white as black, with roles reversed as the play progresses; until all are merged at a point of soul stirring catharsis as the need to recover a stolen humanity is made undeniably and powerfully clear. | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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Requiem For Brother X | ||
| 1st Produced: | Off Broadway | - - - | ||||
Company: | n/a | |||||
| 1st Published: | I don't think it has been published. Try emailing Playwright or Agent where listed at top of page. | ISBN/ASIN: | - | |||
| Music: | - | doollee no | #70700 | |||
To Buy This Play: | If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies | |||||
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Genre: | n/a | |||||
| Parts: | Male | - | Female | - | ||
Parts other: | - | |||||
Notes: | - | |||||
Synopsis: | A ghetto family gathers, they vent their anger and frustration on each other - but it is an old spiritual that binds them together | |||||
Further Reference: | - | |||||
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