Presents plays by African American playwrights, including Robert Johnson's "Trick the Devil", Marsha Jackson's "Sisters", and Nubia Kai's "Harvest the Frost"

"Fine reading and a superb resource." -- Ms. "Highly recommended." -- Library Journal "Perkins has chosen the plays well, and her issue-oriented introduction places the women and their works in a literary and historical context." -- Choice "As well as being centered on the black experience, the plays in Black Female Playwrights are centered on the female experience." -- Voice Literary Supplement "Perkins' anthology is valuable for a number of reasons... Perkins' book (which includes a bibliography of plays and pageants by black women before 1950 as well as a selected bibliography of critical works) is a major help in providing access to [the world of black drama]." -- Theatre Journal The need to acknowledge these works was the impetus behind this volume. Perkins has selected nineteen plays from seven writers who were among the major dramatizers of the black experience during this early period. As forerunners to the activist black theater of the 1950s and 1960s, these plays represent a critical stage in the development of black drama in the United States.

Biographic information and a bibliographyof other plays follow each script, providing readers with added sources for study.

"When this landmark collection first appeared in the early 1970s, an exciting new generation of black playwrights had come of age in a startingly short time. Suddenly the boundaries between stage and life had been dissolved by writers determined to tell what it means to be black in the here and now of America as no white had ever really known it. The twenty-three plays in this collection vary enormously in mood, method, and mode of attack. There is harsh realism, high and low comedy, surreal displacement of time, place and personality, using original techniques that compare with jazz in their innovative power. All, however, have their foundations firmly rooted in the truth of the black experience. Uncompromising in their vision and power, this bold new generation of playwrights gave voice to the anger, passion and pride that shaped a movement, and continue to energize the American theatre today" --Back cover.

This anthology of nine contemporary plays (all produced between 1975 and 1990) actively confronts the racial realities of American culture and celebrates the African American experience with originality and meaning. Playwrights include George C. Wolfe, Leslie Lee, Steve Carter, Amiri Baraka, P.J. Gibson, William Branch, Alexander Simmons, Ed Bullins, and August Wilson.

'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.