Research Guides
Fine Arts Libraries Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Research Guide: Plays & Print Sources
Highlighting existing diversity and anti-racist resources in the Fine Arts Libraries
Plays
Disgraced by
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. From the author of Homeland Elegies, a "sparkling and combustible" play (Bloomberg) about identity in America after September 11. "Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings. But watching these characters rip into these forbidden topics, there's no arguing that they make for ear-tickling good theater." --New York Times
ISBN: 9780316324465
The Mountaintop by
Winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play 2009, The Mountaintop is a historical-fantastical two hander, set at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where at 6.01pm the following day - April 4, 1968 - Martin Luther King will stand on the balcony to greet a crowd and be shot dead. The night before his assassination King retires to room 306 in the now famous motel after giving an acclaimed speech to a massive church congregation. When a mysterious young maid visits him to deliver a cup of coffee, King is forced to confront his past and the future of his people. Katori Hall's light touch presents a lively mood with hints of surrealism and fantasy, but also a clear-eyed view of the man behind the legend. She depicts King as a real man with vanity and the odd adulterous lapse, but nevertheless inspirational and capable of effecting momentous societal shifts. Portraying rhetoric, hope and ideals of social change, The Mountaintop also explores the constraints of being flawed and human in the face of inevitable death.
ISBN: 9781408147030
A Raisin in the Sun by
"Never before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic." This Modern Library edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff.
White by
"Gus is an artist. Vanessa is an actress. Gus wants to be presented in a major exhibition for artists of color, so he hires Vanessa to perform as Balkonaé Townsend, a brash and political artist that will fit the museum's desire for "new voices." Everything is great, until Balkonaé takes over and Gus has to deal with the mess he's made. This plays spins out of control as it explores issues of race, gender, sexuality, and art"--Page [4] of cover.
ISBN: 9780822238133
Plays
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf by
A theatrical celebration, in verse and prose, of being female and black incorporates the triumphs, joys, griefs, and losses of black women in America.
ISBN: 9780613135528
The White Card by
A play about the imagined fault line between black and white lives by Claudia Rankine, the author of Citizen. The White Cardstages a conversation that is both informed and derailed by the black/white American drama. The scenes in this one-act play, for all the characters' disagreements, stalemates, and seeming impasses, explore what happens if one is willing to stay in the room when it is painful to bear the pressure to listen and the obligation to respond. --from the introduction by Claudia Rankine Claudia Rankine's first published play,The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible? Composed of two scenes, the play opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for the up-and-coming artist Charlotte. Their conversation about art and representations of race spirals toward the devastation of Virginia and Charles's intentions. One year later, the second scene brings Charlotte and Charles into the artist's studio, and their confrontation raises both the stakes and the questions of what--and who--is actually on display. Rankine'sThe White Card is a moving and revelatory distillation of racial divisions as experienced in the white spaces of the living room, the art gallery, the theater, and the imagination itself.
ISBN: 9781555978396
