Two new plays with black characters as central figures opened on Sunday. It will probably add more fuel to the ongoing debate about whether having a black family in the White House has prompted artistic directors and commercial producers to invite more African-American actors, writers and directors into their house.

At least 20 shows in which race plays a role have opened in New York since September. The two new shows are smaller, off-Broadway efforts, but the lack of diversity has been pretty much the same there, too. I haven't had a chance to see A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick, Kia Corthron's play at Playwrights Horizons that, according to what I've read, mixes theology and ecology in a story about an African student who moves in with a troubled African-American family in a drought-stricken rural community.

But I did catch the Godlight Theatre Company's production of In the Heat of the Night, a stage version of the iconic 1967 movie that starred Sidney Poitier as black police detective Virgil Tibbs who is drawn into solving a murder case in the still-segregated South. It's playing in the tiny black box theater at the 59E59 Theaters, and its young 10-member cast, several of them doubling and tripling up on roles, is so hardworking and sincere that I wish I could say that I liked the show. But, despite Joe Tantalo's arty staging and a strong performance by Sean Phillips as Tibbs, I couldn't figure out why they'd decided to make a play out of this story--which, as my husband noted when he refused to see it with me, has already enjoyed success as a novel, a movie and a TV series--if they didn't have anything new to say.