Set in the legendary Parisian café Les Deux Magots in 1953, LES DEUX NOIRS reimagines the meeting between Native Son author Richard Wright and essayist/activist James Baldwin. It explores the tension between Baldwin’s searing critiques of Native Son and Wright’s unbridled indignation in response—a confrontation between two mighty African-American artists, with echoes of a present-day […]
Veralynn Jackson knows hair, she knows her neighborhood, and she also knows that the invention of the Jheri Curl marks the end of the world. When she takes a job in Mr. Kim’s Korean-owned Black beauty supply store and the posters start talking to her, Veralynn might finally come to know her true calling.
A HIT DOG WILL HOLLER centers around a popular online political & social commentator who is forced to examine her legitimacy when agoraphobia prevents her from physically engaging in the very activism she boasts about on the internet. When a boots-on-the-ground community organizer invades her space, they must both deal with manifestations of fear arising […]
EIGHT TALES OF PEDRO begins in 17th century Mexico, as Pedro and his companion travel from a small port town into the fabled Veracruz, telling stories while following Pedro’s one true love. Meanwhile, in the present day, in a van full of Mexican immigrants, Peter crosses a border into an unfamiliar country, while his companions […]
2023 Pulitzer Prize in Drama Finalist In the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act, an unlikely family carries invented biographies and poems of longing on an arduous journey from rural Taishan to Angel Island Detention Center, in hopes of landing in San Francisco. Intimate and epic, THE FAR COUNTRY weighs the true cost of selling […]
After committing an unforgivable crime, Leroy is granted one final wish: a chance to make amends with his long-lost lover, Berta. Their reunion swells from a quarrelsome conjuring of the past to an impassioned plot to escape their impending fate.
Sabrina Jackson cannot cope with the death of her son by a White cop. Rather than herald the Black Lives Matter movement, Sabrina retreats inward, living out a comic book superhero fantasy. Will Sabrina stay in this dream world or return to reality and mourn her loss?
Bina’s family grows the finest apples in all of Korea. But when war forces her to flee her home, Bina is alone in the world with just six precious apples to her name. Can these meager possessions help her find her family? Join Bina on her spirited journey that ranges from the heartbreaking to the […]
Original songs by Ifa Bayeza. THE BALLAD OF EMMETT TILL is the first play in The Till Trilogy, a three-play cycle exploring the epic saga of Emmett Till and the birth of the modern Civil Rights Movement. With music and magic, Ifa Bayeza’s Edgar Award-winning drama recounts the last two weeks of Emmett Till’s life […]
This haunting, provocative play sheds light on the similarities between racism and homophobia in Nazi Germany and the American South when a black, gay, transgender prisoner escapes Germany only to find themselves embroiled in the racially-charged hotbed of 1939 Atlanta, Georgia. -from Playwrights Horizons
THAT SUMMER IN SUMNER is the middle drama in The Till Trilogy, a three-play cycle exploring the epic saga of Emmett Till. While the first play, The Ballad of Emmett Till, is the story of the boy, That Summer in Sumner explores the 1955 trial of his killers. While drawing upon trial transcripts, contemporaneous news […]
BENEVOLENCE is the third play in The Till Trilogy, exploring the epic saga of Civil Rights icon Emmett Louis Till, the Chicago teenager whose fateful trip to Mississippi in the summer of 1955 is believed by many to mark the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement. BENEVOLENCE explores the transformation in the Mississippi Delta […]
If You Want To Be Comfortable, Don’t Get On Robert O’Hara’s Rollercoaster
Playwright Beaufield Berry on Channeling Her Ancestors Through Playwriting
In Conversation with Abby Rosebrock
Martyna Majok’s Legacy Has Only Just Begun
Cori Thomas, author of LOCKDOWN, talks about her past, who inspired her characters, and more.