France-Luce Benson
Playwright Biography
France-Luce Benson is a Haitian-American playwright and actress. After graduating with her BA in Acting from Florida International University, France-Luce moved to New York to pursue her career as an actress. However, when she moved to New York she found there were far less parts for her than she had anticipated, and unnerved by the lack of representation, began her transition into her writing career. France-Luce dedicated herself to honing her playwriting craft and graduated with her MFA in playwriting from Carnegie Mellon University. She then hit the ground running creating new work such as Boat People, The Devil's Salt and Deux Femmes on the Edge de la Revolution. A writer from an early age, France-Luce feels characters and themes for her work come to her organically, which she then uses to create her plays. Her work explores narratives that are often overlooked, those of immigrants and first generationers and how their lives are in actuality as compared to how they imagined it might be. She also explores family dynamics and how relationships can evolve and grow through hardship and triumph.
France-Luce has received many honors for her work, including being the Camargo Foundation Playwright in Residence, Recipient of Djerassi Resident Artist Fellowship, May 2017, Kilroys List Honorable Mention 2017, Miranda Foundation Grant Recipient 2017 and many more. Her work continues to give a voice to the voiceless and help share the stories and traditions of her Haitian culture, being featured prominently in a lot of her work.
Highlighted Play: Boat People
Synopsis
The Mason family fled Haiti for a better life in America, but what does that mean for them? Mitsy Mason struggles with her identity as she tries to distance herself from a culture that is all her parents have ever known. What Mitsy doesn’t realize is her family has risked everything and lost so much to follow the American Dream, but what they find is less than welcoming and backlash from their community for being “Boat People.” Through her family’s stories of resilience and coming to terms with her identity, Mitsy will learn that there is no shame in being who you are.
Through an Educational Lens
The topics discussed in this piece, such as immigration and how the United States treats immigrants, are so relevant in today’s world that this play could be used to explore those ideas in a political or current events class. This play could also be used in a Social Studies class as an access point to learn about the ethnic makeup of the United States and how important diversity is to our country and how the contributions of immigrants have helped build this nation. This play can also be helpful in teaching cultural identity and could perhaps be taught with a real-life component where students bring in things that represent their own cultural identity to share with the class.
Sample Audience
This play would work really well for high school students and even college students. It could be introduced in a drama classroom or would also work well in a history or politics classroom. This play explores a history that is woven into the fabric of our United States history and continues to be relevant and important in our current events.
Sample Activity: This Photo Tells A Story
- The teacher will use a progression of photos pulled from news stories that include immigrants coming to the United States from all over the world.
- The teacher will then ask the students to split up into groups depending on the class size and pick a photo from the photos that have been laid out
- The students will then have to create a story about the people who are featured in the photos.
What are their names and how old are they?
Are they coming together as a family or were they separated from their families and now traveling with strangers?
What are they hoping to find when they arrive in the United States?
What are they leaving behind?
And other questions such as this...
- The teacher will then ask the students to present their photo to the class, telling the story they have created for their photo.
- If the teacher has any historical information from the photos being presented, such as where the people are immigrating from, the time period, if they were seeking asylum, etc, they should then share that information with the class.
- This activity is to help the students relate to these photos and see the people in them as real people with real stories as opposed to just news images flashing across their televisions and phones. This activity is meant to teach the students that immigrating to this country can be very difficult and that no two people's stories or experiences are the same and it's important to be open to hearing everyone's stories.
Discussion Questions
1. What were your initial reactions and takeaways from this piece? Were there any moments that specifically stood out to you?
2. How would you teach this play in the classroom, considering how relevant this topic is in today’s world? Would you change the context of how you teach this play if you knew student’s in your class had familial experiences such as this? How would you teach it differently?
3. How do you feel this play discusses the idea of passing? Can you find some examples from the text that demonstrate passing?
4. How does the Mason family dynamic affect how the characters interact? Would you consider this a traditional or untraditional family structure?
5. History plays a big part in this play, Haitian history and the Haitian revolution, family history, immigrant history. What can this play teach us about why our history is so important to our families and to our country or countries?
6. Michel says “I wanted my child to be raise in America, but I never thought she would become American” – what do you think that means?
7. How would you describe the internal struggle happening to Mitsy? Do you think her father hiding her family history is informing how she feels about her identity and her culture?
Annotated Plays
Deux Femmes on the Edge de la Revolution
Synopsis: In the middle of the Haitian Revolution, two women are forced to realize that regardless how different they are, their stories are interwoven by a common thread. Cécile is a strong woman, born of African nobility and sold into slavery. Valentine is a French woman sold into marriage and struggling to find connection as she slips farther away from her family. Through blood and battle these two women are faced with a new reality, and fight to find their own truth as Haitian revolutionaries fight for their freedom.
Through an educational lens: In an educational setting this play could be used as a great entry point to introduce the Haitian Revolution. This play would be accessible in a drama or history classroom, and a great piece to work on for interdisciplinary teachers. The play discusses the history of the Haitian Revolution, slavery, Haitian gods and goddesses and the rich cultural landscape of Haiti. In an artistic context this play would be great for partner scene work or to introduce the idea of dramaturgy and doing historical research about the piece they’re working on.
Fati’s Last Dance
Synopsis: Fati’s relationship with dance, much like with her family, is complicated. Dance is something that is so important to Fati’s family, and Fati is a very talented dancer, but after the loss of her father she cannot bring herself to dance without painful memories. When Fati’s father is being honored with an award posthumously, Fati’s family is simultaneously thrilled and confronted with the underlying issues they soon realize did not resolve with his passing. With his presence, Fati’s father’s love and light help to bring the family closer together the best way he knows how, through dance.
Through an educational lens: This play could be used as a great entry point in a drama classroom to talk about body image, loss and grieving, and the idea or inspiration to follow your dreams. Fati's relationship with her body, how she sees herself, and how others see her are highlighted in this play. This would be a way to open up a conversation about how we see ourselves versus how we think others see us and how we can learn to love ourselves and be happy in our own skin. Fati and her family are also dealing with the loss of a loved one, which can often be a difficult subject to talk about with young students, but the way this play talks about remembrance of a loved one and how to hold them in your hearts even when they've passed on sends a beautiful message about how we can honor those we love, both living and passed on. Lastly Fati's story is one of strength, both inner and the strength that comes from a loving community around you.
Comprehensive List of Work
Full Length Plays
Deux Femmes on the Edge de la Revolution (Kilroys List 2017)
Boat People (Kilroys List 2015)
The Devil’s Salt
Fati’s Last Dance
D gme of luv n chnc
Floating Under Water
Ascension
Silence of the Mambo
One Act Plays
Detained (Commissioned by the ACLU, currently in development)
Showtime Blues
Risen From the Dough (Winner of the Samuel French OOB Festival 2016)
The Talk
Bright Lights, Tent City
Freedom Sea
Noplace, Somewhere
Da Beat Trap
Plays for Young Audiences
Aftershock
Melanin
Film & TV
Wynwood Dreamers (Pilot)
SISTAS SLIM (Comedy Pilot)
Healing Roots (Feature length screenplay) (Winner of Alfred P. Sloan Grant)
Anthologies Featuring France-Luces’ Work
Sam French OOB 41stEdition
The City Theatre Anthology 2015
Bricolage Urban Scrawl 2005-2015
48 Hours… in Harlem
Monologues for Men and Women of Color, Routledge Press
Additional Resources
Bibliography
- Benesch, S. (1992, March 3). U.S. policy does not stop Haitian boat people. St. Petersburg Times, p. 3A. Available from NewsBank: https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/0EB57E166C445DF7.
- Clerge, O. (2014). Balancing stigma and status: racial and class identities among middle-class Haitian youth. Ethnic & Racial Studies, 37(6), 958–977. https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/10.1080/01419870.2012.748209
- Daniel, Y. (1980). THE POTENCY OF DANCE: A HAITIAN EXAMINATION. The Black Scholar, 11(8), 61-73. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/stable/41068017
- D.S. Burch, A. (1997, February 6). Quiet Writer Pens Passionate Plays Her Drama Of Haitian Life Aims To Educate, Compel, Move. Miami Herald, The (FL), p. 1F. Available from NewsBank: https://infoweb-newsbank-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/0EB4D6736A64A1CF.
- J. P. Linstroth, Alison Hall, Mamyrah A. Douge-Prosper, & Patrick T. Hiller. (2009). Conflicting Ambivalence of Haitian Identity-Making in South Florida. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 10, Iss 3 (2009), (3).
- Katz, J. M. (2017). Seeing Is Believing. Smithsonian, 48(4), 77–87.
- Oswald, L. (1999). Culture Swapping: Consumption and the Ethnogenesis of Middle‐Class Haitian Immigrants. Journal of Consumer Research, 25(4), 303-318. doi:10.1086/209541
- Reuber, A. (2011). Voodoo dolls, charms, and spells in the classroom: Teaching, screening, and deconstructing the misrepresentation of the african religion.Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 4(8), 7-18.
- Roundtree, C. V. (2017). Caught Between Myself and Society: The Story of Unraveling Identity and Accepting Authentic Self. Vermont Connection, 38, 129–136.
- Taber, RD (2015), Navigating Haiti's History: Saint‐Domingue and the Haitian Revolution. History Compass, 13, 235–250. doi: 10.1111/hic3.12233.