Black Voices: News, Culture & Community from Across the Nation
- Playwrights are unsung heroes who wear many hats to move productions from idea to stage, driving Black storytelling and cultural impact.
- Oscar Micheaux pioneered race films, boldly answering Birth of a Nation with Within Our Gates, depicting lynching as terrorism.
- August Wilson's Pulitzer-winning cycle revolutionized American theater; plays like Fences and The Piano Lesson shaped generations.
Black people are PhD-level experts on drama. And no, I’m not talking about daily drama, relationship drama, J-O-B drama, or racial drama. Sure, we have more than enough of all that drama, but I’m referring to drama in the arts.
Our authors, playwrights, directors, and thespians have blessed the world with some of the most soul-stirring stories, scenes, stage plays, and performances in the history of history. Below, I’m focusing on playwrights (with one exception), because they’re kinda the unsung heroes of the arts community. We all know actors’ faces, even if we don’t know their names. Film directors, especially if they’re really good, often become celebrities in their own right. But few people show real love and deference to playwrights who often wear multiple hats to move their productions from idea to action, including writer, director, producer, promoter, key grip, best boy, wardrobe coordinator, therapist, Uber driver, stunt double, etc.
Listed below are just a few who deserve way more love.
Lorraine Hansberry
How baller is it to create a timeless classic before you hit 30 years old? Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun,” not only gave a major shout-out to the New Negro Movement (Harlem Renaissance), taking its name from the poem “Harlem” by legend Langston Hughes, it debuted on Broadway when Hansberry was 29, which means she was crafting her classic while in her mid-20s. Shingles and cancers ravaged her body and cut short a promising career that was headed in very revolutionary directions.
Oscar Micheaux
Long before Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay, there was Oscar Micheaux, a self-described “Race Man” who made “Race Movies,” movies specifically designed to push back against that racist bullsh*t that portrayed Blackfolk in the most stereotypical, demeaning ways possible. Micheaux, whose “eleventeen-thousand” movies covered every genre and every topic imaginable, all had one thing in common – uplifting Black humanity by showing us as what we were and are; human beings with the same traits, faults, talents, hopes, and dreams as any other people. Any Black director over the decades worth their salt had paid homage to Micheaux by recognizing that without him, they would not be. And just check out the who-who list of legends Micheaux worked with. Incredible. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention one of his boldest moves. After the hyper-racist movie “Birth of a Nation” celebrated the KKK as American heroes saving white womanhood from savage Black brutes, and inspired white domestic terrorist acts every time the movie played (as well as helping to resurrect the KKK), Micheaux produced a response movie that pushed back against that “Birth of a Nation” nonsense. While that racist flick celebrated lynching and violence against Blacks as a glorious and honorable act, Micheaux’s movie “Within Our Gates” literally depicted a lynch scene for what it was – terrorism. And he did that in 1920, when he could have been lynched for doing much less than calling out whites on their inhuman violence.
August Wilson
Whether you know his name or not, Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson is often the favorite playwright of your favorite playwright or favorite actor or favorite director. Yes, the brother has had that kind of impact on a generation. And if you don’t believe me, ask Viola Davis… or Denzel… or Houston’s own up-and-coming superstar playwright, ShaWanna Renee Rivon, who received a grant from Houston Art Alliance to do an “August Wilson in the Park”-themed production. “Fences,” “Jitney,” “The Piano Lesson,” and “Seven Guitars” are just a sampling of Wilson’s game-changing work.
Ntozake Shange
For countless Generation X members, the person most responsible for pulling us into local theater productions was Ntozake Shange and her work… see, I don’t even have to type it, because you’re already saying the name in your head – “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf.” How many people can say their first anything (play, books, song, etc) was a classic? Very few. But Shange can.
Thomas Meloncon
Though probably best known for his work “The Diary of Black Men,” Houston-born Kashmere HS alum Thomas Meloncon has a whole litany of plays worthy of our time and attention: “The Drums of Sweetwater,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Four Songs in the Key of Love,” “Jump the Broom,” and more. A graduate of TSU, and an educator on that campus and elsewhere, Meloncon’s plays often deal with relationships between Black men and Black women. In fact, the playwright, poet, educator and activist once said, “The most revolutionary thing a Black man can do is love his woman.” Respect.
But Wait, There’s More
Also, check out the works of these sensational talents: Amira Baraka (Leroi Jones), Langston Hughes, Alice Childress, Pearl Cleage, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Adrienne Kennedy, George C. Wolfe, Lynn Nottage, Katori Hall, Suzan-Lori Parks, Samm-Art Williams, Ed Bullins, OyamO, Douglas Turner Ward, Charles Fuller, Norma J. Thomas, Anna Deavere Smith, Ron Milner, Keith Glover, Kia Corthron, Vy Higginson, and any and every playwright featured by The Ensemble, including the Ensemble’s very own Eileen J. Morris.
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