black playwrights
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Read, Write, Revolt: The Root Launches the It's Lit! Podcast With Inaugural Guest Nikole Hannah-Jones
Autumn has only just begun, but 2020 has already been a study in contrasts: Some of us have taken to the streets, but even more of us spent an unprecedented amount of our time at home this year. Our discourse has unimaginably become even more divided, but we are holding our loved ones and ideals…
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Home Theater: One of the Most Anticipated Plays of the Chicago Theatrical Season Premieres Online
As the COVID-19 epidemic has derailed all of our lives, it has done unimaginable damage to the live entertainment industry, as festival season, concerts and theatrical productions have been unceremoniously postponed or canceled outright, leaving performers, directors, production crews and the venues themselves with gaping holes in their projected incomes. But as they say in…
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Translating Trauma: With a Pair of Powerful Plays, Director Wardell Julius Clark Explores the PTSD of Police Killings
“I like things that subvert the audience’s expectations,” actor/director Wardell Julius Clark told The Root when asked why he gravitates to certain narratives. “We’re going to the theater for a visceral emotional experience; to learn something about ourselves and about humanity.” Clark is at the helm of two very visceral and emotional productions making their…
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Are We Ready to Have a Constructive Conversation About Slave Play? (Because We Saw It for Ourselves, and Have Thoughts)
In the months since Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play upended the theater world (and many of our moral and historical sensibilities), moving from a sold-out run at the New York Theatre Workshop to Broadway, much has been written about its controversial narrative—some factual, some distinctly disingenuous (and some from the playwright himself). In fact,…
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'It Should Cost You Something': Playwright Jeremy O. Harris Sets the Record Straight on Slave Play as It Debuts on Broadway
Black art rarely emerges without controversy. Our creations are inherently political, specifically because this country never intended for them to exist in the first place. In fact, 400 years after the start of the transatlantic slave trade, our trauma is still so present, many of us would prefer to distance ourselves from that history altogether.…
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‘I Can’t Stop’: With Ms. Blakk for President, Moonlight Writer Tarell Alvin McCraney Campaigns as an Unlikely Candidate
“The most transparent way is the truth.” Tarell Alvin McCraney is telling me about the circuitous journey that led him and longtime collaborator Tina Landau to the real-life character of Ms. Joan Jett Blakk. That’s “two t’s, two k’s,” as she reminds us during her run for president at Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre, where McCraney…
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Behind Picket Fences: In Sam Kebede’s EthiopianAmerica, the American Dream Masks a Common Nightmare
There is palpable energy prior to a theatrical production; a current of excitement that buzzes through an audience anticipating new work on the stage. At the press night for EthiopianAmerica, the newest production from the Chicago-based Definition Theatre Company staged at Victory Gardens, there was also a profound feeling of family, as several members of…
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Stretching the Exquisite: Why Hearing Black Women’s Voices in Theater Is a Revolutionary Act
Big things were bubbling in Brooklyn two years ago. The year 2017 marked the 50th anniversary of Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, the first community development entity established in the United States. The nonprofit outfit has provided housing, employment, training and culture to residents of Bed-Stuy since 1967; 2017 was also the year the Restoration’s Billie Holiday…
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For Colored Girls, Forever: With a Stunning Revival and New Work, Ntozake Shange's Words Remain Timeless
“…bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/i haven’t conquered yet … my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender.” —Ntozake Shange, ‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf’ text For Colored Girls… first arrived on the scene in December…
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‘Racism Is a Soft Target’: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright Lynn Nottage on the Prescient Moment That Became Sweat
With the endless amount of political rhetoric currently in our orbit, it’s often easy to forget about the people behind it—not just the politicians themselves, but the countless people whose fears make their power possible. It’s the grim reality we faced in 2016 when fear became the battle cry fueling the ascendancy to the presidency.…