max theodore's Reviews > Selected Plays

it is some kind of failure of the education system and my own reading that this is the first i've read of alice childress, because my god. what a nimble and piercing set of plays. ranked in order of my personal favorites:

Trouble in Mind (1955)
WILETTA: Henry, I want to be an actress, I've always wanted to be an actress and they ain't gonna do me the way they did the home rule! I want to be an actress 'cause one day you're nineteen and then forty and so on... I want to be an actress! Henry, they stone us when we try to go to school, the world's crazy.
a play within a play: a theatrical company trying to put on a show about lynching. key word trying; the play is bad. for a script that's just a bunch of people sitting around their own scripts, this is blitz-fast and it made me fucking CRAZY BONKERS IN THE HEAD. everyone in the world should read trouble in mind you can find a pdf on google.com it will take you like two hours and it makes me froth and foam at the mouth

Wine in the Wilderness (1969)
TOMMY: They got to callin' me Tommy for short, so I stick with that. Tomorrow Marie... sound like a promise that can never happen.
hard to describe this one; it's a one-act on art and misogynoir and class and the relationships between men and women, but it's also just really really enjoyable to read. tommy i adore you so much. (view spoiler)[this is the last play in the collection, and after reading the first four, i definitely wasn't expecting this one to end on a final glimmer of hope. but it's such a perfect ending note. (hide spoiler)]

Florence (1949)
MAMA: Do tell! What shame has she got?
MRS. CARTER: It's obvious! This lovely creature... intelligent, ambitious, and well... she's a Negro!
MAMA [waiting eagerly]: Yes'm, you said that...
this one is very short and it punched me in the face. how is this the first play childress ever wrote. what the hell and fuck. everything down to the staging in a train station with a black/white seating divide... oh i'm crazy

Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White (1966)
JULIA: We the ones built the pretty white mansions... for free... the fishin' boats... for free... made your clothes, raised your food... for free... and I loved you—for free.
on an interracial relationship that hasn't become a marriage, because it's south carolina in 1918. what got me about this one was how clear it is that julia and herman adore each other, and how that still doesn't mean herman understands what it's like to live as a black person in america. many, many things going on in this one, and i'm not sure the pacing worked for me personally, but i should probably read it again.

Gold Through the Trees (1952)
OLA: All my life I have hoped to see freedom, isn't it strange that the only way to gain equality is to die? I should so love to see it. I have dreamed of being here, alive when that day comes.
i think i didn't get the full effect of this play, because the stage directions indicate that huge parts of it rely on set, costume, and music, and i am reading a script. so the rapid switching of time periods and locations jolted me more than it carried me along. that said, the last scene is about the anti-apartheid movement in south africa and it made me want to actually bawl. childress solos again

anyway. recommended if you're into theater or plays about women or plays about black women specifically or plays that are good or writing that is good