Plays Written by Carlyle Brown:
ACTING BLACK
AMERICAN FAMILY
ARE YOU NOW OR HOW YOU EVER BEEN…
A PLAY BY BARB AND CARL
DARTMOOR PRISON
THERAPY AND RESISTANCE
A BIG BLUE NAIL
TALKING MASKS
FINDING FISH
THE HISTORY OF RELIGION
THE MASKS OF OTHELLO: A THEATRICAL ESSAY
THE NEGRO OF PETER THE GREAT
THE FULA FROM AMERICA: AN AFRICAN JOURNEY
Synopses:
Acting Black – Part spoken word, part stand-up comedy, part Ted Talk complete with PowerPoint presentation, Acting Black is a 60-minute solo show created to inspire open and honest conversations about race and diversity. Using the power of art to investigate difficult concepts Acting Black takes us to the roots of American racism and its consequences for all of us by exploring the evolution of the Black stereotype, tracing the birth of its beginning from a single individual on a specific night in Louisville, Kentucky in 1828 to the racial conflicts we still endure to this day. Acting Black provides its audience with a context and the critical tools to engage in the most important part of its presentation and that is the facilitated discussion that follows the performance, usually lasting for 30 to 45 minutes. This discussion may be customized and structured in specific ways to meet the needs of sponsoring organizations and entities.
American Family – Set in Alabama in 1964, the play opens on the playground where Mary Ellen Collins last saw her mother. At just nine years old, Mary Ellen had been taken away by her long-absent father after her mother was deemed unfit for marrying a black man. Now a young adult, Mary Ellen has finally read the letters her mother sent to her over the years since that separation. From those letters, she learns about half, mixed race brother, born after she was taken away, and reaches out to meet him for the first time. Once back at the playground she encounters her nine-year old self where she interrogates her painful past.
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been… – Written and Conceived by Carlyle Brown; A fictional account of the demons and dilemmas faced by Langston Hughes while attempting to write a poem on the night before his appearance before the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations on Un-American Activities led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
A Play by Barb and Carol – In March 17, 2017, Playwright Carlyle Brown’s wife and dramaturge Barbara Joyce-Rose-Brown had a stroke leaving her with right side weakness and unable to speak. A dramaturge had lost her access to language. A playwright had lost his dramaturge. As a way of dealing with their situation they decided to write a play. This is that play.
Dartmoor Prison – Carlyle Brown’s riveting play takes us to Britain’s most notorious holding pen for prisoners of war and domestic criminals during the War of 1812. There we meet “King Dick,” an African American sailor whose life at sea has provided him with remarkable personal freedom at a time when millions of enslaved Africans are still held in bondage. Captured by the British, King Dick becomes the absolute ruler of a segregated prison yard. But when a group of American prisoners from a nearby white yard ask him to join forces with them to celebrate the 4th of July—an event forbidden by their British captors—King Dick must confront the broader meaning of freedom and patriotism, and whether he and his fellow black sailors can find a home somewhere beyond the sea.
Therapy and Resistance – Set in 1968, Therapy and Resistance tells the story of the Viet Nam War draft resistance movement and the attempts of one draftee to get a deferment as a manic-depressive schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies.
A Big Blue Nail – A Faustian tale that examines explorer Robert Peary, whose fame as the first man to reach the North Pole obscured the contributions of Matthew Henson, his African American cohort who could rightfully claim the title. Now at the end of his life with the estranged Henson knocking at his door, Peary is swept into a surreal nightmare on the chaotic Polar Sea, the coast of Maine and the terrifying landscape of his guilt ridden mind.
Talking Masks – An evening of six short plays written for Obie-Award winning actress Louise Smith. Six plays, six female characters and the masks they wear to conceal their true identities. The plays are The Human Voice, a mistress saying good-bye to her lover for the last time; Runaway Honeymoon tells the tale of a slave couple where the light skinned wife pretends to be her husband’s white world; The Diva Makes Her Entrance takes place back stage in the waning days of burlesque; Mother Love is the interrogation of a murderess mother; and The Talking Mask where aging woman morns the fading of youth and beauty.
Finding Fish – Finding Fish takes place in a future where food is scarce and the oceans have been nearly depleted of fish. But one fisherman on the Maine Coast keeps bringing in the catch. Could his luck have anything to do with his strange new wife? Does his despondent father know anything? The people in power would do anything to find out, especially “The Committee,” who has sent the fisherman’s brother to reel in him and his secrets. Nature and weather are central characters in this drama about sustainability through the lens of one family’s struggles.
The History of Religion – From memoir to myth, from Sugar Hill to the Caribbean, The History of Religion takes us through time and space to examine humanity’s relationship with faith, bringing us face-to-face with the most essential of human questions: who are we, where do we come from, and what will become of us? In a world full of sorrow and suffering, what makes life worth living? Set against a musical backdrop by multi-instrumentalist Victor Zupanc with guitarist Joseph Cruz and percussionist Tony Paul, playwright/performer Carlyle Brown calls us to worship, taking the audience on a journey from mystery to revelation and back again.
The Masks of Othello: A Theatrical Essay – The Masks of Othello: A Theatrical Essay traces the evolution of Shakespeare’s The Moor of Venice from a character portrayed by white actors assuming masks of blackness to a role that has become the exclusive property of the black actor. In this play, the play The Tragedy of Othello is itself the central character as we followed it through the ages in the performances of some of the greatest actors throughout time. From Burbage in the Elizabethan era, Betterton in the Aldridge and Edwin Booth in the 19th Century and Paul Robson and Laurence Olivier in the 20th Century. And then there are the critics through the ages who struggle mightily to make the play conform to the values and customs of their times. Who is Othello? Is his visage in the color of his skin or is it in our minds?
The Negro of Peter the Great – Based on an unfinished novella by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, inspired by the experiences of his maternal great-grandfather, Ibrahim Petrovich Hannibal in the court of Peter the Great. A story of a kidnapped African prince and the 18th century Russian Czar. A tale of honor, betrayal and a quest for home.
The Fula From America: An African Journey – Based on Carlyle’s own travels in West Africa, The Fula from America is the story of one African-American’s search for an African Identity. Set in 1981, the traveler sets off on a journey that takes him to Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Sierra Leone. From deep in the bush to the corridors of the African elite, he discovers friendship, generosity, poverty, wondrous beauty and civil war. As his adventures unfold, he finds himself on the boundary of the African-American hyphen where the question arises: how much of him is African and how much is American?
Bio:
Carlyle Brown is a playwright/performer, curator and artistic director of Carlyle Brown & Company based in Minneapolis. His plays have been produced at theatres across the country and internationally. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and a Life Time Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center. He has received numerous commissions, fellowships and awards including 2006 Black Theatre Network’s Winona Lee Fletcher Award for outstanding achievement and artistic excellence, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2010 Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theatre, a 2010 United States Artist Fellowship a 2018 William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater and a 2019 Hellen Merrill Award recipient. A scholar and historian, Brown has been an artist in residence or visiting professor at several colleges and universities, and has worked as a museum exhibit writer and story consultant. He curated the 2018 Cultural Diaspora Residency at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France and The Afro-Atlantic Playwrights’ Festival at The Playwrights’ Center July 12-14, 2019. His solo shows include The Fula from America: An African Journey, Therapy and Resistance, The History of Religion and Acting Black: Demystifying Racism, created to inspire open and honest conversations about race and diversity. He serves on the board of directors of The Playwrights’ Center and is a trustee of The Camargo Foundation. He is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Illusion Theater in Minneapolis.
Website: www.carlylebrownandcompany.org
* Please note that some titles are handled by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing, Broadway Play Publishing, and Playscripts.com. Please ask if you don’t see a particular play.