ACROSS TIME, A CELEBRATION OF BLACK WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS OF YSD. Yale Cabaret, 2021. by David Geffen School of Drama at Yale

The Planning Team Chair a.k. payne ‘23 (Playwriting) (FOLKS Leadership)

Members Benjamin Benne ‘22 (Playwriting) (BIPOC Connection Leadership)

Eric M. Glover, PhD, Assistant Professor Adjunct (Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism)

Tavia Hunt ‘23 (Acting) (BIPOC Connection Leadership)

Jisun Kim ‘22 (Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism) (BIPOC Connection Leadership)

FOLKS Leadership Planning Team Jason Gray ‘23 (Theater Management)

Kayodè Soyemi ‘23 (Acting)

Ashley M. Thomas ‘23 (Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism)

Stage Manager Alexus Coney ‘24 (Stage Management)

The Playwrights Shirley Graham Du Bois, Class of 1940 (1896-1977)

Shirley Graham Du Bois was born on November 11, 1896, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the only girl among six brothers.

Shirley Graham authored seven plays, Tom-Tom (1932), It’s Mornin’ (1940), Cold Dust (1938), Dust to Earth (1940), I Gotta Home (1942), Elijah’s Ravens (1940), and Track Thirteen (1940). In 1941, Shirley became the head of the USO in Fort Huachuca in Arizona. There she was “responsible for boosting the morale of Black soldiers and infusing entertainment into their lives; perhaps more importantly, she served as an advocate between the servicemen and the higher authorities within the military establishment.” This experience culminated in a 1942 article, “The Negro and World War II.” Two years later, she became field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where she traveled along the east coast assisting local leaders and recruiting new members. During this time, she transitioned from writing music and plays to writing children’s books. Her first biography was George Washington Carver: Scientist. She continued to write biographies of friend Paul Robeson, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Banneker, and Phyllis Wheatley.

After W.E.B. Du Bois’s death in 1963, she worked to develop a national telecommunications infrastructure in Ghana with Ghana Television. Shirley Graham Du Bois continued to work for PanAfricanism and Civil Rights until her death on March 27, 1977, in Beijing, China, after going there for breast cancer treatment.

NOTE: “Du Bois, Shirley Graham.” DuBoisopedia, 18 Dec. 2013, scua.library.umass.edu/duboisopedia/doku.php?id=about:du_bois_shirley_graham/.

The Playwrights Sharon Stockard Martin, Class of 1976

Sharon Stockard Martin, who graduated from YSD’s playwriting program in 1976, was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Her interest in theater began while she was a member of a children’s theater group in Tennessee. She said she was inspired by “The theater’s successful wedding of social awareness and entertainment and its effectiveness.” When she was at Yale, she studied with notable playwrights such as Adrienne Kennedy, Jack Gelber, Thomas Babe, John Ford Noonan, and E.L. Doctorow. She was a Shubert Fellow and received the O’Neill Award and the CBS Foundation Prize in Playwriting for the best student play in 1976. Her works include Proper and Fine: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Entourage (1970), Canned Soul (1974), which was produced at the Yale Cabaret, and Deep Heat (1975). Her play The Moving Violation (1976) received the John F. Kennedy Center Black Playwright Award in 1979. She earned a PhD in Cinema/Television Studies from the University of Southern California, and now teaches in Los Angeles.

NOTE: “Sharon Stockard Martin.” Center Stage: An Anthology of 21 Contemporary BlackAmerican Plays, edited by Eileen Joyce Ostrow. Sea Urchin Press, 1981.

The Playwrights Lynn Nottage, Class of 1989 Lynn Nottage graduated from the Yale School of Drama’s playwriting department in 1989, and remains the first and the only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. She is both a playwright and a screenwriter. Her notable works include, Intimate Apparel, Sweat, Ruined, Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Los Meninas, Mlima's Tale, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. Nottage also wrote the book for the world premiere musical adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Secret Life of Bees, with music by Duncan Shiek and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. She was most recently writing the book to the upcoming musical, MJ, featuring the music of Michael Jackson. She was also a writer and a producer on the Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee. Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, Steinberg "Mimi" Distinguished Playwright Award, PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, Merit and Literature Award from The Academy of Arts and Letters, Columbia University Provost Grant, Doris Duke Artist Award. Her other honors include the National Black Theatre Fest's August Wilson Playwriting Award, a Guggenheim Grant, Lucille Lortel Fellowship and Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University. She is also an Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at Columbia School of the Arts.

Christina Anderson, Class of 2011 Christina's work has appeared at The Public Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, Penumbra Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, and other theaters in the United States and Canada. Awards and honors: Inaugural Harper Lee Award for Playwriting, two PONY nominations, three Susan Smith Blackburn nominations, and Woursell Prize Finalist. Christina obtained her BA from Brown University and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama’s Playwriting Program. She's a resident playwright at New Dramatists, Epic Theatre Ensemble, and a DNAWORKS Ensemble member. Anderson was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, and while at Yale she was taught by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel. She has served as an Assistant Professor of Playwriting at Purchase College, and as the interim Head of Playwriting at Brown University.

The Playwrights Tori Sampson, Class of 2017 Tori Sampson, a native of Boston, MA, is proud to be from “The City of Champions” and even prouder to be a human rights activist and Black Woman storyteller. By introducing her daughter to the genius that was Carroll O’Connor, Tori’s mother opened her eyes to the art and power of comedy for “goodness sake”. And it was on and poppin’ from there. Today, Tori focuses her imagination on creating comedies for the stage. Her plays include If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons, 2019), This Land Was Made (Vineyard Theatre, 2018), and Cadillac Crew (Yale Repertory Theatre, 2019). Tori is a 2017-18 Playwright’s Center Jerome Fellow and a 2018-19 Mcknight Fellow. Her awards and honors include the 2016 Relentless Award, Honorable Mention; the 2016 Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting from The Kennedy Center; the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, Second Place; the Alliance Theater’s 2017 Kendeda Prize, Finalist; the 2018 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Finalist. Tori is currently working on commissions from Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, and Atlantic Theater Company. She holds a BS in sociology from Ball State University and an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama.