Trouble in Mind

Alice Childress

Paperback

Regular price$15.95With free membership trial$7.9750% off your first book+ Free shipping

In Stock– Ships within one business day

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

"A masterpiece . . . Trouble in Mind still contains astonishing power; it could have been written yesterday." --Vulture

Ahead of its time, Trouble in Mind, written in 1955, follows the rehearsal process of an anti-lynching play preparing for its Broadway debut. When Wiletta, a Black actress and veteran of the stage, challenges the play's stereotypical portrayal of the Black characters, unsettling biases come to the forefront and reveal the ways so-called progressive art can be used to uphold racist attitudes. Scheduled to open on Broadway in 1957, Childress objected to the requested changes in the script that would "sanitize" the play for mainstream audiences, and the production was canceled as a result. Childress's final script is published here with an essay by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, editor of TCG Illuminations.

Book Details

Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Publish Date: Jun 21st, 2022
Pages: 120
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.27in - 5.20in - 0.39in - 0.35lb
EAN: 9781636700151
Categories: • American - African American & Black• Women Authors• Subjects & Themes - Political & Protest

About the Author

Alice
Childress was a playwright,
actress, and novelist. She was the first Black woman to have a play
professionally produced in New York City. Childress's works include the plays Wedding
Band and Wine in the Wilderness, and the young-adult novel A Hero
Ain't Nothing but a Sandwich.

Praise for this book

"An original
play, full of vitality... Miss Childress has some witty and penetrating things to
say about the dearth of roles for Negro actors in the contemporary theater, the
cut-throat competition for these parts and the fact that Negro actors often find
themselves playing stereotyped roles in which they cannot bring themselves to
believe." --New York Times, 1955

"Sixty-six
years late and still on time, the play most of the moment is only now getting
the mainstream attention that it deserves. Alice Childress's 1955 Trouble in
Mind, a play about power and race in the theater, is a satire and tragedy
that deserves to be a classic." --New York Times, 2021

"In
Trouble in Mind, Childress fearlessly unmasks the theater's deeply
rooted racism. Something that the playwright struggled with in the '50s still
chimes loudly in the present day. In the aftermath of the country's racial
reckoning and amid the ongoing call for Black lives to matter, a predominantly
white-run American theater industry has finally held a mirror up to itself.
What the Great White Way is only fully recognizing now, Childress long ago
detailed in Trouble in Mind." --Variety