Alice Childress and Trouble in Mind
January 25, 2022
During our January 25th session, we looked at a number of clips and had also managed to locate a complete recording of Act I from one production and a partial recording of Act II from another.
To view this additional material please click HERE.
“The Black writer explains pain to those who inflict it. Those who repress and exclude us also claim the right to instruct us on how best to react to repression. All too often we follow their advice.”
... Alice Childress, 1984
Trouble in Mind Script.pdf... Selected Plays: Alice Childress, edited by Kathy A. Perkins (pp. 57-114)
Note: Once you 0pen the play, you may enlarge the print by clicking the plus sign at the bottom of the page.
Alice Childress, as quoted in Ms. Magazine (2011)"
We have cajoled, pleaded, tommed, protested, achieved, rioted, defied, unified … you name it! But white supremacists have dug their heels into the ground and will settle for nothing less than outright confrontation in the streets of America.
Alice Childress (1916-1994), an African American playwright "of the same generation as Lorraine Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun) and as well-known in her time, has been almost forgotten today. Both women were mentored by Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois, both lived and worked in New York, both were largely self-educated and they were good friends and colleagues. But apparently there's only room in the canon for one black woman, so while the wonderful Hansberry is featured in almost every major anthology of American drama, hardly anyone even recognizes Childress' name. Most of her plays are out of print." These words were written in Ms. Magazine in September of 2011.
Recently, however, you may have seen Childress in the news. One of her best known plays, Trouble in Mind, has finally made it to Broadway. In the interim, the 1955 play has been performed in many venues and always reaps positive reviews and interesting analyses; each revival is a reminder that both the author and her work remain powerful and relevant, as you will see as you scroll down the material on this page.
To read "Who's Afraid of Alice Childress?" Part 1, click HERE.
Access Part 2 by clicking the graphic below:
Trouble in Mind Original opening November, 1955, off-Broadway at the Greenwich Mews Theatre
To see other Trouble in Mind archival materials held at the New York Public Library's Billy Rose Theater Department, click HERE.
Click on the photo above to see the New York Times review. (You'll need to scroll down the document a bit.)
November 5, 1955
Trouble in Mind - Center Stage, The Pearlstone Theater, Baltimore, MD - February 2-March 4, 2007
From a Variety review of the Baltimore revival:
The stage assumes an astutely sociological function in Alice Childress’ rarely produced “Trouble in Mind,” and this incisive Center Stage production makes you wonder why the 1955 drama isn’t seen more often. The play initially seems to aspire to be no more than a period piece about a mostly African-American cast rehearsing a Broadway production, and it would be interesting if it did no more than evoke the immediate postwar era. One is gradually struck, however, by how bracingly prophetic the late playwright’s script turns out to be.
The following is taken from the program for Trouble in Mind, Baltimore 2007:
PB_TroubleinMind_NS.pdfTrouble in Mind - Arena Stage, Washington DC - September 9-October 23, 2011
"Written on the cusp of the Civil Rights Movement, Trouble in Mind explores the strained relationships of a newly integrated cast rehearsing a bold anti-lynching drama. As the actors’ prejudices collide, lead actress Wiletta Mayer must decide how much she will compromise her beliefs, her integrity, and her sense of identity for a Broadway role. With themes still hauntingly relevant today, Alice Childress’s potent and poignant play-within-a-play “still has the power to make one feel its anger and humor” (New York Times).
A 2011 Arena Stage revival of Alice Childress' 1955 meditation on race and the theatre. Click below to watch a few scenes.
Hilton Als, writing for The New Yorker (October 3,2011) introduces Alice Childress in an essay that includes a brief review of the Arena Stage revival.
"Originally produced in 1955 in Greenwich Village, but derailed on its path to becoming the first play by a Black woman to reach Broadway — a distinction that went to Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” four years later — it is only now getting the mainstream attention it deserves, in a Roundabout Theater Company production that does justice to its complexity." ... New York Times, November 4, 2021 (below)
Roundabout Theater October 29, 2021 - January 9, 2022
More Alice Childress ...
Alice Childress is highlighted in this review of a 2017 Alice Neel exhibition. Scroll down in the article to see the full portrait and its context. (The 1950 painting is at the Met though not on view.)
(9:06)
Valerie Curtis-Newton's speech on the power of the maid and playwright Alice Childress. (September 4, 2023)
Valerie Curtis- Newton is the University of Washington School of Drama Professor in Acting and Directing and Head of Performance. At time of the video she was an Artistic Associate at A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) where she oversaw the Hansberry Project, an African American theatre lab.
