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The featured play is representative of the writer's work. For a more complete list of the plays by the writer, click on the playwright's name.
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PRODUCTION HISTORY"Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery" was originally produced at the Horizon Theatre in Atlanta in 1988. It has received more than 30 regional productions at theatres all over the country, including the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in California and the Source Theater in Washington, DC. CHARACTERS
SETTINGThe play takes place in a small southern town, a place where memories and dreams coincide, from the 1920's to the present.
PLAY STRUCTUREAct I Scene i-iv Act II Scene i-vi The play revolves around Daughter, who returns home after the death of Big Mama, her grandmother who raised her. The scenes, which combine storytelling, music, and dance, are a series of flashbacks to her childhood.
EXCERPT FROM THE PLAYThis excerpt is from the top of Act I scene i. Daughter: Colored folks as you know are the most amazing people on this earth. Big Mama raised me in the company of wise old black women like herself who managed to survive some dangerous and terrible times and live to tell about them. Their only admitted vice, aside from exchanging a little bit of no-harm-done gossip now and then, was dipping snuff. They were always sending me to Mr. Joe's grocery store to buy silver tins of the fine brown powder wrapped in bright colored labels with names like Bruton's Sweet Snuff, Georgia Peach and Three brown Monkies. One time, my mean old cousin Dee Dee told me that snuff was really ground up monkey dust, a delicacy in the royal palaces of Africa. (Dee Dee enters with straw in a cup. Daughter skips over to her, curious. They begin hand-clapping game, sing-song their responses.) Dee Dee: For real, girl! I ain't lying! all you got to do is try it. Daughter: What? Snuff? That stinky stuff? Dee Dee: Ain't you got no sense at all? Don't you know nothing? Daughter: How come you know so much? Dee Dee: Oh, I forgot you ain't been to the river yet. There's a lot of things you don't know. Daughter: Have you ever tried it? Dee Dee: What you think? Daughter: What it taste like? Dee Dee: With milk it taste just like a chocolate milk shake. What you do is mix three big spoons of monkey dust in a glass of milk and drink it through a straw, fast. If you drink it all you'll wake up and be real pretty. Like them African dancing girls we saw on TV. They drink it everyday. It'll make your teeth white too. It's a secret though, and you got to swear on the bible not to tell nobody. Daughter: All right.
PUBLICATION HISTORYpublished by Dramatic Publishing Company also in the following anthology:
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