BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Aishah Rahman, playwright and educator, was born Virginia Hughes and brought up as a foster child in Harlem. She began writing plays in the sixth grade.

In 1968 she graduated from Howard University with a BS in Political Science. Seventeen years later she received a MA in Playwriting and Dramatic Writing from Goddard College. In the 1970's Rahman began teaching at Queens College and worked with CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). During this period she converted to Islam and changed her name.

Currently a Professor of English and Theatre Speech and Dance at Brown University, Rahman has taught at Nassau Community College in New York and Amherst College in Massachusetts. She has also served as the Director of the Playwrights Workship at the New Federal Theare, and is the founder and director of NuMuse, an annual journal of new plays.

In 1988, Rahman was awarded both a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.

PLAYS

"Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy"-1972

Based on the life of Billie Holliday. Book by Aishah Rahman, music by Archie Shepp. Produced by the Chelsea theatre in Brooklyn and directed by Paul Carter Harrison. An unpublished script of the play resides in the Hatch-Billops Collection.

"Transcendental Blues"-1976

Produced at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Centre in New York; directed by Kimaki Baraka. The play was nominated for an AUDELCO Award.

"Unfinished Women Cry in No Man's Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage"-1977

Directed by Bill Duke at the New York Shakespeare Company.

"Tale of Madame Zora"-1986

Produced by the Ensemble Theatre under the direction of Glenda Dickerson. The play is based on the life of Zora Neale Hurston.

"Mojo and the Sayso"-1987

First produced by the Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, NJ, directed by George Ferencz.

"Only in America"-1993

AWARDS