Moon Marked and Touched by Sun: Plays by African-American Women - Sydne Mahone ed.

Choice review October 1994
Mahone's collection of eleven excerpts entitled Moon Marked and Touched by Sun adds a unique, important perspective to the literature about contemporary theater, women playwrights, and African American women writers. Mahone combines her experience as dramaturge at Crossroads Theater Company with her Afro-matricentric perspective and knowledge of today's theater. As she states, the playwrights included in this volume represent the "most compelling, thought-provoking and stylistically fresh" voices in the vanguard of American theater. Playwrights included are Laurie Carlos, Kia Corthron, Thulani Davis, Judith Jackson, Adrienne Kennedy, Robbie McCauley, Suzan-Lori Parks, Aishah Rahman, Ntozake Shange, Anna Deavere Smith (recently nominated for a Tony award), and Danitra Vance. Each excerpt is preceded by an interview that includes discussion of vision and heroism, notes about the author and her work, a list of characters in the play, and an author's note. Mahone's readable introduction provides a useful context for this study of African American women's cutting-edge contribution to American theater. This collection introduces readers to innovative writing, African American women's work (excluded from most texts), and the dynamics of African American theater. Upper-division undergraduate; professional. D. S. Isaacs; Fordham University

9 Plays by Black Women - Margaret B. Wilkerson ed.

Library Journal review August 1986
This is a collection of plays by the major black women playwrights from 1950 to 1985. Though the plays are uneven in quality, they represent an important, underexplored group of theater voices. The editor's preface is a valuable survey of 20th century black women dramatists. Included are Beah Richards's A Black Woman Speaks, a landmark monologue; several strong dramas (e.g., Alice Childress's Wedding Band); and some successful experiments in form (e.g., Alexis DeVeaux's The Tapestry, Elaine Jackson's Paper Dolls). The weakest pieces are by the best-known writers and represent unfortunate choices by the editor: a scene from Lorraine Hansberry's Touissant and Ntozake Shange's Spell #7 . The best of these plays are not special pleading but put us in touch with real people struggling in a real world; they are of universal interest. Thomas E. Luddy, English Dept., Salem State Coll., Mass.

Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays Before 1950 - Kathy A. Perkins

Choice review April 1990
This anthology contains 19 plays written by 7 African-American women before 1950. Some are published here for the first time; others have not been easily available. Perkins has chosen the plays well, and her issue-oriented introduction places the women and their works in a literary and historical context. Her careful and scholarly prose cannot, however, fully prepare readers for the richness of the plays themselves. All are fascinating to read, and several seem produceable. Informative biographical notes accompany each group of plays. The most exciting discoveries are Zora Neale Hurston, May Miller, and Shirley Graham. To say so, however, is in no way to dismiss Georgia Douglas Johnson, Mary P. Burrill, Eulalie Spence, and Marita Bonner. It will come as a surprise to many that Hurston had a career in the theater, though her ability to write good dialogue will surprise no one who has read her novels. Miller is perhaps the most versatile of the group, and Shirley Graham (DuBois) the most professional. Contemporaries of white women playwrights Zona Gale, Rachel Crothers, and Susan Glaspell (one senses affinities of style, if not of subject matter), all of these African-American women have had to wait a long time to be acknowledged. Theater students, scholars, and practitioners are indebted to Kathy A. Perkins. An excellent five-page listing of plays and pageants, many newly discovered, will be a vital resource for scholars. There is also a good selected bibliography. Recommended for both academic and public libraries. -D. E. Abramson, emeritus, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women - Kathy A. Perkins

Black Thunder: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Drama - William Branch ed.

Publishers Weekly review January 1, 1992
Given the ferment in black theater since 1975, the period covered by this nine-play anthology, the offerings here are disappointing. The opening and closing plays, George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum and August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , are by far the best works included, the former a coruscating attack on the cliches of black popular culture, the latter a taut examination of the dynamics of a group of black musicians in the late 1920s. What comes in between alternates between family melodramas derivative of O'Neill and Lorraine Hansberry (Steve Carter's Eden ; Leslie Lee's The First Breeze of Summer ) and failed avant-gardism redolent of the Off-Broadway of the early 1960s ( General Hag's Skeezag by Amiri Baraka and The Taking of Miss Janie by Ed Bullins). At their worst, several of the plays here offer casual anti-Semitism (the Baraka and, in a more guarded context, the Bullins) or vicious homophobia (P. J. Gibson's messy Long Time Since Yesterday ) . Playwright Branch's introduction begins promisingly, with an account of the first African American theater ventures, but quickly degenerates into a catalogue of titles and dates.

Crosswinds: An Anthology of Black Dramatists in the Diaspora (paperback) - William Branch ed.

Crosswinds: An Anthology of Black Dramatists in the Diaspora (hardcover) - William Branch ed.

Library Journal review February 1, 1993
In his introduction to this collection of works by contemporary black playwrights, Branch (theater, dramatic literature, and communications, Cornell Univ.) traces the history of black--and all Western--drama back to the elaborate passion plays performed as part of ancient Nubian and Egyptian religious festivals. The relationship between religion and theater is part of the black dramatic heritage, he argues; also influential is the African tradition of the ``griot,'' a historian-storyteller. Crosswinds presents playwrights from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and the United States, including works by Wole Soyinka, Amiri Baraka, August Wilson, and Branch himself. Powerful and rich, this outstanding contribution to theater arts is recommended for contemporary literature and black studies collections.-- Howard E. Miller, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Missouri Lib., St. Louis

Black Heroes: Seven Plays - Erroll HIll ed.

Classic Plays from the Negro Ensemble Company - Paul Carter Harrison ed.

Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Plays - Harry Justin Elam ed.

Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance 1920-1940 - James Hatch ed.

National Black Drama Anthology - Woodie King ed.

New Plays for the Black Theatre - Woodie King ed.

Black Drama Anthology - Woodie King ed.

Black Theatre USA (paperback) - James Hatch ed.

Black Theatre USA (hardcover) - James Hatch ed.

Multicultural Theatre: Scenes and Monologs from New Hispanic, Asian, and African-American Plays - Roger Ellis, ed.

Multicultural Theatre II: Contemporary Hispanic, Asian, and African-American Plays - Roger Elis and Ted Zapel, eds.

Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Centuries - Jo Bonney, ed.

Out from Under: Texts by Women Performance Artists - Lenora Champagne, ed.