The Methuen Drama Book of Post-Black Plays

Bulrusher; Good Goods; The Shipment; Satellites; And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi; Antebellum; In the Continuum; Black Diamond

Eisa Davis, Christina Anderson, Marcus Gardley, Robert O'Hara, J. Nicole Brooks, Nikkole Salter, Danai Gurira, Diana Son, Young Jean Lee, Harry J. Elam, Jr., Douglas A. Jones, Jr., Harry J. Elam, Jr., Douglas A. Jones, Jr.

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781408173824
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781408176559
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

'Post-black' refers to an emerging trend within black arts to find new and multiple expressions of blackness, unburdened by the social and cultural expectations of blackness of the past and moving beyond the conventional binary of black and white.

Reflecting this multiplicity of perspectives, the plays in this collection explode the traditional ways of representing black families on the American stage, and create new means to consider the interplay of race, with questions of class, gender, and sexuality. They engage and critique current definitions of black and African-American identity, as well as previous limitations placed on what constitutes blackness and black theatre.

Written by the emerging stars of American theatre such as Eisa Davis and Marcus Gardley, the plays explore themes as varied as family and individuality, alienation and gentrification, and reconciliation and belonging. They demonstrate a wide-range of formal and structural innovations for the American theatre, and reflect the important ways in which contemporary playwrights are expanding the American dramatic canon with new and diverse means of representation.

Edited by two leading US scholars in black drama, Harry J. Elam Jr (Stanford) and Douglas A. Jones Jr (Princeton), this cutting edge anthology gathers together some of the most exciting new American plays, selected by a rigorous academic backbone and explored in depth by supporting critical material.

Section I

The New Black Family

Eisa Davis

Bulrusher

Bulrusher was first developed in readings at New Dramatists directed by the author and, later, by Seret Scott. Subsequent readings were hosted by The Cherry Lane (directed by Leah C. Gardiner), Hartford Stage (directed by Kate Whoriskey), Musefire (directed by Lorraine Robinson), and San Francisco Stage and Film (directed by Mark Routhier). Portland Center Stage workshopped the play in its JAW/ West Festival, where it was directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, with dramaturgy by Mead Hunter.

In March 2006, Bulrusher received its world premiere at Urban Stages/Playwrights’ Preview Productions in New York (Frances Hill, Artistic Director; Sonia Koslova, Managing Director; Lori Ann Laster, Program Director; Stanton Wood, Development Director). It was directed by Leah C. Gardiner.

Cast

In order of appearance

Bulrusher	Zabryna Guevara/Donna Duplantier
Madame	Charlotte Colavin
Logger	Guiesseppe Jones
Schoolch	Peter Bradbury/Darrill Rosen
Boy	Robert Beitzel
Vera	Tinashe Kajese

Scenic Design and Video/Projection Design	Dustin O’Neill
Lighting Design	Sarah Sidman
Costume Design	Kimberly Ann Glennon
Sound Design	Jill BC DuBoff

Original Songs Composed by Eisa Davis

Original Score Composed and Performed by Daniel T. Denver

Additional Guitar Music by Robert Beitzel

Choreography	Jennifer Harrison Newman
Fight Choreography	Denise Hurd
Stage Management and Board Op	Jana Llynn, Leisah Swenson, Sonia Koslova, Holly M. Kirk
Assistant Stage Manager	Stephen Riscica
Assistant Director	Ronald Francis Brescio

Characters

Bulrusher

Madame

Logger

Schoolch

Boy

Vera

Setting

Boonville, California, a small town in the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County, north of San Francisco, 1955. The set can be realistic, suggestive, or a combination of both. Water, live guitar, real oranges and apples are necessary.

Notes

Actual Boonville residents developed their own dialect of over 1,300 words and phrases at the turn of the last century. The language, called Boontling, was primarily devised to discuss taboo subjects and keep outsiders out. But Boontling also functioned to document town history, create unexpected value from the strange, and satisfy the residents’ overriding love of inventive talk.

The characters imagined here do not have a contemporary self-consciousness. They speak with energy and assuredness, in the rhythms of the self-made.

Act One

In the dark, the sound of dripping water – leaky faucet into a steel washtub. Then, a spot on Bulrusher, entirely wet, looking up into the sky. She wears a green dress. She talks to the river, reciting her first memory.

Bulrusher I float in a basket toward the Pacific, hands

blue as huckleberries. This air is too sweet,
this cold water a thin, foul milk.

The woman who bore me wrapped me,
gave me to the green of the Navarro,
named me silence. She prays

this river has studied time
and will never turn back
her secret skin, the mark

that stretched into life.
Forgiveness is an insect
that may one day draw my blood.

Catch me, I ask the power lines,
defying the fog’s quiet shroud. What is
a motherless daughter but pure will?

The river hears me and turns to molasses.
With a sharp bank through high shams,
I am born into a new language.

More drops falling quickly, becoming gradually slower as lights darken.

Madame It’s gonna happen.

Lights up on the back parlor of a brothel. Madame, Logger, and Schoolch are in the parlor. Madame wears a crucifix. Schoolch drinks tea. It is the Fourth of July.

Logger Oh you’re just sayin that.

Madame I’m gonna leave here, I tell you.

Logger Say that every summer.

Madame I mean it too.

Logger What about your business? What about alla us?

Madame Come the Apple Show, I’ll stay through the prize giving and then I’m a leave.

Logger Not even stayin for the dance? You love the dance.

Madame It don’t love me. End up hobbin by myself cause no one’s got the beans to say they know me. You, you don’t come and Schoolch dance too fancy. What’s for me.

Logger The music. They hire that band from Frisk to show all the Boont tunesters how it’s done.

Madame You never even been to the Apple Show dance!

Logger I heard it’s nice.

Madame From me! I’m the one told you it’s nice. But I can’t stay out my years here, Apple Show dance or not. Feel rain comin?

Logger Can’t smell it.

Madame We’ll ask Bulrusher when she get here what the river say.

Logger I want me sweet Michelle today.

Madame Sweet Michelle is flattened with the influenzy.

Logger Then young Elinor.

Madame She don’t like you.

Logger You don’t like me with her ’cause she do like me.

Madame Elinor ain’t the only one.

Logger Well I asked for sweet Michelle. Who else you got? Cory?

Madam...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section I: The New Black Family
• Section II: (Post-) Blackness by Non-Black Playwrights
• Section III: The Distant Present: History, Mythology, and Sexuality
• Section IV: Re-Imagining/Re-Engaging Africa
• Acknowledgments
• Footnotes
• A Note on the Author
• eCopyright