The Goodman Theatre, Chicago

1996

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Play/Drama

16

4

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Notes: -

Synopsis: Chronicles the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Back to Africa movement of the 1920s. Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant to the United States, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). At a time when W.E.B. Du Bois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were arguing that African Americans should claim their full rights as US citizens, Garvey was pushing for a separate black sovereign nation in the African state of Liberia.

Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago, USA >>>

1991

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

105 min

Adaptation

7

3

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Notes: adaptation of Jean Toomer's 1923 novel of the same name.

Synopsis: A patchwork of stories, poems, and dramatic interludes, the novel was considered a landmark work of the Harlem Renaissance, the period of artistic blossoming in the 1920's when black intellectuals began to explore their identity. The play brings the novel to life by featuring 10 actors in nearly 40 roles in a blend of drama, dance and music including old spirituals and a capella songs connected by the lyrical, rhythmic, vaguely hallucinatory voice of the author.

Seattle Repertory Theatre, TYA contract

1992

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in International Plays for Young Audiences, edited by Roger Ellis, Meriwether Publishing, Ltd.

2000

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

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cast of 5

Notes: -

Synopsis: This play questions people's perspective of Christopher Columbus; his life, his deeds, and his relationship with the native Taino tribe whose life and customs Columbus documented when he arrived in the Americas. City of Gold explores the idea that Columbus was neither a glorified hero nor an evil conqueror, but a multi-faceted human who was caught in a difficult, complex situation.

Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago, USA >>>

2004

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

120 min

Play/Drama

2

1

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Notes: -

Synopsis: the story of John Newton Templeton, an ex-slave who attended Ohio University and graduated in 1828, thirty-five years before the end of slavery. When John Newton Templeton is unexpectedly freed after his master's death, he migrates to the free state of Ohio where he meets the Presbyterian minister Robert Wilson, an avowed abolitionist. Wilson, who had taken on the challenge of serving as president of the then fledging Ohio University, saw the opportunity to use the promising young ex-slave to prove to the pro-slavery factions in America that African-Americans were capable of the same academic excellence as whites. President Wilson brings Templeton to his home in Athens, Ohio where Templeton works as the president's personal "student servant" while attending classes. Although Templeton excels in most areas of study, his achievements in other areas are quite different than what Wilson had wanted, needed, and expected. In this play about race, culture, and the differences between education and assimilation in America, Wilson is forced to reevaluate his abolitionist views and Templeton is forced to examine the reason he was chosen to be the "first."

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Samuel French, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

3

1

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Notes: -

Synopsis: story of two brother who exist in radically different social milieus

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Notes: -

Synopsis: -

Victory Gardens Studio Theater, Chicago, USA >>>

1989

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

95 min

Play/Drama

4

1

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Notes: An early version of Jelly Belly won the 1985 Cornerstone Playwriting Award and was produced by Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul in1986

Synopsis: Jelly Belly is a powerful story of a convict returning from a brief prison stay to resume his position as the neighborhood kingpin. In the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote Jelly Belly offers an unremittingly bleak portrait of inner-city life and the enormous pressure on working-class black men to be gangsters.

Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago, USA >>>

2000

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Dramatic Publishing

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

120 min

Play/Drama

3

3

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Notes: -

Synopsis: a fictional account inspired by the actual events surrounding the 1928 marriage of W.E.B. Du Bois's daughter Yolande to one of Harlem's great poets, Countee Cullen. The marriage marked the height of the Harlem Renaissance and was viewed as the perfect union of Negro talent and beauty. It united the daughter of America's foremost black intellectual, cofounder of the NAACP and publisher of Crisis Magazine, with a young poet whose work was considered to be one of the flagships for the New Negro movement. The play opens as jazz bandleader, Jimmy Lunceford, pursues a willing but apprehensive Yolande. She demurs, insisting that she and Jimmy be married in a manner consistent with her stature. Meanwhile, Du Bois tries to convince Countee Cullen to take a wife of great breeding, stature and education. When Countee realizes that Yolande appears to possess all of the attributes outlined by the elder Du Bois, he sets out to win her affection. When Yolande is forced to choose between her passion for Jimmy and marrying Countee, her overwhelming devotion to her father overpowers her heart. The marriage is a triumph of pomp and pageantry, but fails to be a union of man and woman. Finally, Yolande and Countee go their separate ways: Countee travels to Paris with his close friend Harold Jackman and Yolande goes back to Jimmy only to find that she is no longer wanted.

The People's Light and Theatre Company, Malvern, Pa

2001

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Dramatic Publishing

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

3 acts 2hr 40 min

Play/Drama

6

3

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Notes: Translated into Croatian for Croatian Radio, 1998

Synopsis: Three generations of notorious Dumas appear in this swashbuckling play filled with tales of war, sword fights, masked balls and romantic escapades. General Thomas Dumas, the son of a French aristocrat and a black servant woman, was one of Napoleon's most prized generals. After suspecting Napoleon of being self-centered and covetous, the French-African General was denounced by Napoleon, branded a defector, disavowed, and consequently died penniless. Years later, his son, Alexander Dumas père, author of The Three Musketeers, lives a life as daring and full of intrigue as the characters in his own plays and novels. While père indulges in scandalous intrigue and occasional debauchery, his son, Alexander Dumas fils, struggles to come to terms with his father's apparent immoral lifestyle, his own racial heritage, and rumors of his grandfather's defection. Dumas fils' conflict is complicated further when a mysterious slanderer defames Dumas père's literary integrity as well as his African heritage. To satisfy his son, Dumas père challenges the mysterious slanderer to a duel at a masquerade ball where the three Dumas meet and the true identities of all are revealed.

The Acting Company

2001

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

130 min

Adaptation

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Notes: stage adaptation and reinterpretation of the Mark Twain novel of the same name

Synopsis: It is the story of the two sons of Judge Driscoll, the chief citizen of Dawson's Landing, Missouri. Tom is his legal heir and the child of his wife; Chambers is his child by the slave girl Roxy. When Driscoll threatens to sell Roxy's son , she switches the babies in their cradles. The two boys grow up with each other's identities - creating a situation both richly ironic and ultimately tragic.

Indiana Repertory Theatre

2002

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

3 acts 3 hours

Adaptation

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Notes: adaptation of the Theodore Dreiser novel of the same name

Synopsis: It is the story of Carrie Meeber, an impressionable young girl who leaves the insulated confines of rural Wisconsin in the early 1900's and enters the throbbing, amoral world of the big city. Soon her yearning for an honorable life and for lasting love is compromised. Each attempt to reconcile her dreams with reality forces Carrie into ever-more tangled affairs until she is forced to contend with the deep and driving forces of American culture, its restless idealism and its glamorous material temptations.

Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago, USA >>>

1997

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Samuel French, London

1999

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

105 min

Play/Drama

4

2

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Notes: -

Synopsis: A promising young musician, Eugene Taylor, comes of age in the midst of Chicago's Southside jazz scene of the 1950's with musical royalty Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane as his role models. Having embarked on a six month European tour, he returns 15 years later after being seduced by the European's appreciation of jazz and the love of a Viennese woman. While abroad he hears of the race riots of the sixties, but not until he returns does he witnesses the devastating results; the black flight to the suburbs and the decline of the inner city neighborhood which was once his home. In a move to resolve both his absence and his current existence, Eugene goes on a crusade to save the Sutherland Show Lounge, once a mecca of Chicago's south side jazz scene.

Repertory Theatre of St. Louis' Imaginary Theatre Company

1987

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Plays In Process, Theatre Communications Group, New York

1988

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

For Schools, 50 min

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2

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Notes: aka Tales of Africa

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Takunda's world is turned upside down when her father is arrested for his political activities in the turbulent Rhodesia of 1973. A coming of age story for our complex times, Takunda carries a message of hope and courage. The play employs authentic African folk tales and songs, an ensemble of four black actors, and the lively art of storytelling.

St. Louis Black Repertory Company

1991

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

105 min

Play/Drama

5

2

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Notes: -

Synopsis: a play about the social and political issues that plague America. Richard is a young black writer whose patron, a white business man, abruptly withdraws his financial aid when Richard's writings turn to world issues rather than the "black issues" the politically correct patron wishes to support. After blaming the world's ills on larger entities such as corporations and figure heads, Richard ultimately discovers something about himself and personal responsibility.