Black Female Playwrights

EMG: You mentioned how it was significant for you to work on A Raisin in the Sun given its early roots in New Haven and the fact that original director Lloyd Richards served as artistic director of Yale Rep and dean of Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1991. Why?

CC: I treat New Haven as sacred ground because Lorraine and Lloyd worked on this play here at the Shubert Theatre in 1959. To think what a herculean task it was to get this play to Broadway. It is something that I am very mindful of. I feel very privileged to be working on A Raisin in the Sun at Yale Repertory Theatre, and I am super excited to reinvestigate this amazing, amazing play. We talk about standing on the shoulders of our ancestors. I could not think of a more accurate description of how I feel about being fortunate enough to direct this play.

AMT: Speaking of Lorraine Hansberry—she was both an artist and an activist. What exactly comes to mind when you think about that and how does her life have resonance with you?

CC: She was a tremendous trailblazer with foresight and grace. Lorraine Hansberry was the embodiment of the warrior/artist. Her arena was the theater, and her weapons were these beautiful stories she crafted. They serve much like other classic plays. They remind us of our humanity and force us to look at the underbelly of life. Lorraine Hansberry was relatively young when she wrote A Raisin in the Sun— another aspect to this beautifully complex woman. She was able to give voice and fully thought-out arguments to several compelling issues: classism in the Black American community; progressive women defying the norms of the time; abortion; a love story between a man and a woman at a crossroads in their relationship; even the difference between the African experience and the Black American experience. These are thorough, holistic, and viable arguments, and I have yet to see another text that can stand up to that.

AT: What do you want the audience to walk away with from this production of A Raisin in the Sun?

CC: This production is timed perfectly. Writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates are making a case for reparations, and at the core of this dialogue is how our ancestral wealth has been stolen from Black Americans by denying us access to housing. The “bootstraps” myth is one that appears all throughout the Western canon. I hope my audience can realize that Walter Lee has been tantalized by this capitalistic dream that we continually perpetuate. I also want them to see these are not people to be pitied. There is a strong love—love that great authors and musicians have written and sung about over the history of the world, that keeps this family together. That love starts with Lena Younger. Even in the face of adversity and trying times, she’s able to maintain love. That’s something I especially want to highlight in our production. The Youngers may be poor financially, but they’re rich in other aspects. AMT: How do you keep yourself engaged and excited as an artist?

CC: I’m a husband, a father, and an artist. As a Black man on my life’s journey, it becomes more important for me to interrogate a text. Finding out what’s underneath it excites me. I wonder, “What are we talking about? What’s really at the core of it?” I’m very fortunate to be working at Columbia University, and I’m very fortunate to see my students’ work. Going to Yale Cabaret and seeing how people are deconstructing stories and reinventing stories gets me excited, especially with how technology is being used today. We’re finding out what theater really is about. It’s been around longer than social media and movies. Theater will probably withstand whatever we throw at it.

AMT: What advice would you give to aspiring artists?

CC: Find your voice and try not to be an echo of someone else. Your stories matter, and we need you in the field. It’s definitely not easy, but creative thinking right now is at such a premium. I think the theater model is actually one that a lot of companies are starting to use: getting highly skilled people together for a short period of time to make something. That is theater. That’s what it’s about.

CARL COFIELD directed Twelfth Night (Yale Rep); One Night in Miami (Rogue Machine Theater; Denver Center Theatre Company; Los Angeles NAACP Award, Best Director); A Raisin in the Sun (Two River Theater Company); Henry IV Part 2 (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Disgraced (Denver Center); The Mountaintop (Cleveland Play House); Dutchman (Classical Theatre of Harlem/ National Black Theatre); Antigone, The Tempest, and Macbeth (Classical Theatre of Harlem). He was associate director for The White Card by Claudia Rankine, directed by Diane Paulus (American Repertory Theater), and Camp David by Laurence Wright, directed by Molly Smith (Arena Stage); and he directed a reading of Camp David for President and First Lady Carter (The Carter Center). Acting credits include Manhattan Theater Club (Ruined), Berkeley Rep, Alliance Theatre, Arena Stage, The Shakespeare Theater, Intiman Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Milwaukee Rep, Alabama Shakespeare, McCarter Theatre, The Acting Company, The Studio Theatre, and many others. Carl is the Associate Artistic Director of Classical Theatre of Harlem. He teaches at New York University and The New School. Education: M.F.A., Columbia University. carlcofield.com

A Literary Family Tree of Black Women Playwrights

The crown of Lorraine Hansberry’s literary family tree of Black women playwrights reaches high, and the roots run deep across space and time. A legacy of Black women playwrights anchors her to the soil and feeds not only her creative work but also the generations of future playwrights she inspires to tell stories of their own. The origins of Black women writing for the theater look backward at slavery and freedom and reach forward into the #blacklivesmatter age and on to a truly more perfect union. However, racism and sexism made it hard—and continue to make it hard—for Black women playwrights to climb to the top and make it onto the professional stages that mark success—those of regional theater, Off-Broadway, and Broadway.

Plays by and about Black women reflect a variety of styles and substances, by turns dramatic and funny, and ranging from folk drama influences and realism in the past to more experimental techniques in the present. Playwrights take up matters of Black community, Black Nationalism, private and public spheres, self-definition, and selfdetermination, as well as issues of economics, gender, politics, religion, romance, and violence in everything from full-length dramatic works to one-acts to pageants.

Hansberry’s literary family tree includes notable Black women playwrights who took the stage before and after her. If you are looking for historical and contemporary plays by and about Black women, you may start with Hansberry in 1959 and find daring women before her, after her, and into the future.

—ERIC M. GLOVER

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