By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011)
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is a seventy year journey through the life of Vera Stark, a headstrong African American Maid and budding actress, and her tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold onto her career. When circumstances collide and both women land roles in the same Southern epic, the story behind the cameras leaves Vera with a surprising and controversial legacy scholars will debate for years to come.
Ruined (2008) BUY
In war-torn Congo, Mama Nadi Keeps the peace between customers on both sides of the civil war by serving everything from cold beers to warm beds. This shrewd matriarch both protects and profits from the women whose bodies have become battlegrounds "ruined" by the brutality of government soldiers and rebel forces alike. This play is inspired by interviews conducted in Africa.
Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (2004) BUY, TCG
Fabulation is a social satire about an ambitious and haughty African-American woman, Undine Barnes Calles, whose husband suddenly disappears after embezzling all of her money. Pregnant and on the brink of social and financial ruin, Undine retreats to her childhood home in Brooklyn's Walt Whitman projects, only to discover that she must cope with a crude new reality. Undine faces the challenge of transforming her setbacks into small victories in a battle to reaffirm her right to be. Fabulation is a comeuppance tale with a comic twist.
Intimate Apparel (2003) BUY, TCG
The time is 1905, the place New York City, where Esther, a black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. Her skills and discretion are much in demand, and she has managed to stuff a goodly sum of money into her quilt over the years. One by one, the other denizens of the boarding house marry and move away, but Esther remains, lonely and longing for a husband and a future. Her plan is to find the right man and use the money she's saved to open a beauty parlor where black women will be treated as royally as the white women she sews for. By way of a mutual acquaintance, she begins to receive beautiful letters from a lonesome Caribbean man named George who is working on the Panama Canal. Being illiterate, Esther has one of her patrons respond to the letters, and over time the correspondence becomes increasingly intimate until George persuades her that they should marry, sight unseen. Meanwhile, Esther's heart seems to lie with the Hasidic shopkeeper from whom she buys cloth, and his heart with her, but the impossibility of the match is obvious to them both, and Esther consents to marry George. When George arrives in New York, however, he turns out not to be the man his letters painted him to be, and he absconds with Esther's savings, frittering it away on whores and liquor. Deeply wounded by the betrayal, but somehow unbroken, Esther returns to the boarding house determined to use her gifted hands and her sewing machine to refashion her dreams and make them anew from the whole cloth of her life's experiences.
Las Meninas (2002) BUY
Las Meninas is the true story of the illicit romance between Queen Marie-Therese (wife of Louis XIV) and her African servant, Nabo, a dwarf from Dahomey, and the hilarious consequences that scandalized the French court.
Mud, River, Stone (1998) BUY
An African-American couple vacationing in Africa takes a turn off the main highway and find themselves stranded during rainy season in the remnants of a grand hotel. The rundown colonial hotel's only inhabitants are a reticent bellhop and an outspoken white African businessman. As the rains continue, the guest list grows to include a Nigerian aid worker at wits' end and a Belgian adventurer wandering the landscape in search of meaning. The couple's comic and romantic adventure takes on absurd dimensions when the hotel guests are taken hostage by the angry bellhop. His demands are simple: He wants grain for his village and a wool blanket for his mother. The stakes increase when an international mediator arrives and tries to end the stand-off. The couple's relationship is tested by the volatile politics of Africa, and they learn what the hungry human spirit will do for food and a warm blanket.
Por'Knockers (1996) BUY
In New York City, a group of idealistic political activists stage a bold act of civil disobedience and must live with the devastating consequences.
Crumbs from the Table of Joy (1995) BUY
Recently widowed Godfrey, and his daughters Ernestine and Ermina, move from Florida to Brooklyn for a better life. Not knowing how to parent, Godfrey turns to religion, and especially to Father Divine, for answers. The girls absorb their new surroundings, but not necessarily religion. Lily, Godfrey's sister-in-law, shows up from Harlem, having promised her sister that if anything ever happened, she'd look out for the girls. Lily, while fascinating to her nieces, stands for everything Godfrey dislikes: communism, sexual freedom and the fight against racial discrimination. As the racial and social issues of the late 1950s escalate, personal issues between Godfrey and Lily explode, prompting him to walk out. A few days later, he returns, with a new wife—a white, German immigrant, Gerte. With Godfrey immersed in religion, Lily claiming to be a part of the new revolution, and quiet, stoic Gerte coming from the horrors of Germany, life in the household gets heated. Ultimately, Lily must leave, seeing as she's neither Godfrey's wife nor the girls' mother. Godfrey and Gerte keep the family together as best they can, but nothing lasts forever. Ernie, about to graduate from high school, gets a job offer from her father, but it's not what she wants to do. Instead, as a young woman in the dawn of a new age, she sets off for Harlem in search of her spiritual mother, Lily, and all of the causes she supposedly stood for during the "revolution."
Poof (1993) BUY
A housewife copes with life a few moments after her abusive husband spontaneously combusts, leaving a pile of ash on the kitchen floor.
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is a seventy year journey through the life of Vera Stark, a headstrong African American Maid and budding actress, and her tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold onto her career. When circumstances collide and both women land roles in the same Southern epic, the story behind the cameras leaves Vera with a surprising and controversial legacy scholars will debate for years to come.
Ruined (2008) BUY
In war-torn Congo, Mama Nadi Keeps the peace between customers on both sides of the civil war by serving everything from cold beers to warm beds. This shrewd matriarch both protects and profits from the women whose bodies have become battlegrounds "ruined" by the brutality of government soldiers and rebel forces alike. This play is inspired by interviews conducted in Africa.
Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (2004) BUY, TCG
Fabulation is a social satire about an ambitious and haughty African-American woman, Undine Barnes Calles, whose husband suddenly disappears after embezzling all of her money. Pregnant and on the brink of social and financial ruin, Undine retreats to her childhood home in Brooklyn's Walt Whitman projects, only to discover that she must cope with a crude new reality. Undine faces the challenge of transforming her setbacks into small victories in a battle to reaffirm her right to be. Fabulation is a comeuppance tale with a comic twist.
Intimate Apparel (2003) BUY, TCG
The time is 1905, the place New York City, where Esther, a black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. Her skills and discretion are much in demand, and she has managed to stuff a goodly sum of money into her quilt over the years. One by one, the other denizens of the boarding house marry and move away, but Esther remains, lonely and longing for a husband and a future. Her plan is to find the right man and use the money she's saved to open a beauty parlor where black women will be treated as royally as the white women she sews for. By way of a mutual acquaintance, she begins to receive beautiful letters from a lonesome Caribbean man named George who is working on the Panama Canal. Being illiterate, Esther has one of her patrons respond to the letters, and over time the correspondence becomes increasingly intimate until George persuades her that they should marry, sight unseen. Meanwhile, Esther's heart seems to lie with the Hasidic shopkeeper from whom she buys cloth, and his heart with her, but the impossibility of the match is obvious to them both, and Esther consents to marry George. When George arrives in New York, however, he turns out not to be the man his letters painted him to be, and he absconds with Esther's savings, frittering it away on whores and liquor. Deeply wounded by the betrayal, but somehow unbroken, Esther returns to the boarding house determined to use her gifted hands and her sewing machine to refashion her dreams and make them anew from the whole cloth of her life's experiences.
Las Meninas (2002) BUY
Las Meninas is the true story of the illicit romance between Queen Marie-Therese (wife of Louis XIV) and her African servant, Nabo, a dwarf from Dahomey, and the hilarious consequences that scandalized the French court.
Mud, River, Stone (1998) BUY
An African-American couple vacationing in Africa takes a turn off the main highway and find themselves stranded during rainy season in the remnants of a grand hotel. The rundown colonial hotel's only inhabitants are a reticent bellhop and an outspoken white African businessman. As the rains continue, the guest list grows to include a Nigerian aid worker at wits' end and a Belgian adventurer wandering the landscape in search of meaning. The couple's comic and romantic adventure takes on absurd dimensions when the hotel guests are taken hostage by the angry bellhop. His demands are simple: He wants grain for his village and a wool blanket for his mother. The stakes increase when an international mediator arrives and tries to end the stand-off. The couple's relationship is tested by the volatile politics of Africa, and they learn what the hungry human spirit will do for food and a warm blanket.
In New York City, a group of idealistic political activists stage a bold act of civil disobedience and must live with the devastating consequences.
Crumbs from the Table of Joy (1995) BUY
Recently widowed Godfrey, and his daughters Ernestine and Ermina, move from Florida to Brooklyn for a better life. Not knowing how to parent, Godfrey turns to religion, and especially to Father Divine, for answers. The girls absorb their new surroundings, but not necessarily religion. Lily, Godfrey's sister-in-law, shows up from Harlem, having promised her sister that if anything ever happened, she'd look out for the girls. Lily, while fascinating to her nieces, stands for everything Godfrey dislikes: communism, sexual freedom and the fight against racial discrimination. As the racial and social issues of the late 1950s escalate, personal issues between Godfrey and Lily explode, prompting him to walk out. A few days later, he returns, with a new wife—a white, German immigrant, Gerte. With Godfrey immersed in religion, Lily claiming to be a part of the new revolution, and quiet, stoic Gerte coming from the horrors of Germany, life in the household gets heated. Ultimately, Lily must leave, seeing as she's neither Godfrey's wife nor the girls' mother. Godfrey and Gerte keep the family together as best they can, but nothing lasts forever. Ernie, about to graduate from high school, gets a job offer from her father, but it's not what she wants to do. Instead, as a young woman in the dawn of a new age, she sets off for Harlem in search of her spiritual mother, Lily, and all of the causes she supposedly stood for during the "revolution."
Poof (1993) BUY
A housewife copes with life a few moments after her abusive husband spontaneously combusts, leaving a pile of ash on the kitchen floor.
