The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the 21st Century

by Harry J. Elam Jr. (Editor), Robert Alexander (Editor), Suzan-Lori Parks (Contributor)

This major new anthology collects new work by important artists which explore the context of African American drama in 21st century America. The plays included are:

In the Blood by Suzan-Lori Parks
An examination of a homeless black women and her children based on The Scarlet Letter.

Civil Sex by Brian Freeman
A look at the intersections of civil rights on the life of activist Bayard Rustin.

The Dark Kalamazoo by Oni Faidi Lampley
A tale of isolation and rediscovery as a young black co-ed comes of age during a journey to Africa.

King Hedley II by August Wilson
Some forty years after Wilson's 1995 play Seven Guitars, Ruby, the main character from that play, her grown son King, and his wife and best friend draw Wilson's searing portrait of the 1980s in the same backyard.

Insurrection: Holding History by Robert O'Hara
The lives of a young gay college student and his 189-year-old great-great-grandfather are transported back to the time of the Nat Turner slave rebellion.

Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage
An interracial romance threatens to divide a black family set during the Harlem Renaissance.

A Preface to the Alien Garden by Robert Alexander
A study of the gangsta life style in present day Kansas City.

A Rhyme Deferred by Kamilah Forbes and Hip Hop Theatre Junction
An Afro-centric update of the Cain and Abel story.

Slanguage by Steven Sapp and Universes
Rhyme, roots, rhythm and storytelling to a hip hop beat.

Harry Elam, Jr. is the Director of Graduate Studies for Drama at Stanford University. He has directed numerous plays, including works of August Wilson, who is the subject of his forthcoming book.

Robert Alexander is the author of I Ain't Yo' Uncle, Servant of the People and The Last Orbit of Billy Mars. Mr. Alexander is currently in residence at D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

Genres: Plays

604 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2002

Reviews

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid anthology, and although some of these plays are now available on their own or in other editions, The Fire This Time is still the only place you can find some real gems. In addition, Elam and Alexander's new anthology (this is their second one) is a great picture of new Black writing from the early 21st century, including – as their previous anthology, Colored Contradictions, did – many formally experimental texts.

Suzan-Lori Parks' In the Blood opens the collection. This is, allegedly, somehow based on The Scarlet Letter, but its links seem tenuous to me. This is formally interesting, but for me it didn't really head anywhere that felt interesting or critically engaging.

Brian Freeman's Civil Sex, on the other hand is a fascinating documentary theatre piece about the gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. As far as I know, you can't find this play in any other publication, so the fact that this play is so illuminating and so generous on its own makes this anthology a must-have.

Oni Faida Lampley's The Dark Kalamazoo is a really fascinating African-American-in-Africa story, that is told in a first-person way that I found engaging and very smart.

I could write here about August Wilson's King Hedley II and Robert O'Hara's Insurrection: Holding History, but both are available elsewhere. I love both of these plays with all of my heart, and although I have more to say about both of them and how brilliant they are, I usually lack the words for how great I think these texts are.

The editors have grouped Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage in the same sub-group as the previous two plays, but it is rather hard to see why. Crumbs is a sweet-and-salty memory play slash coming-of-age narrative set in mid-century New York. As with all of Nottage's plays, this early one has finely drawn, compelling characters and an experimentally Brechtian approach. It's enjoyable, and it has also been published in a different TCG collection where it is the main title.

The final three plays are "hip-hop theatre". Elam and Alexander include them here as examples of a new genre that is just breaking into the scene. I enjoyed Universes' Slanguage, a portrait of life in the Bronx and other places in Nueva York because it avoided narrative and focused on the brilliance of its language and rhythms. I was less impressed with Alexander's own A Preface to the Alien Garden, which I found stilted and phony, and Kamilah Forbes and Hip Hop Theatre Junction's A Rhyme Deferred, which had mythic aspirations but which I thought was overinvested in juvenile concerns about authenticity and selling-out.

[Stacey Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feb ~ Crumbs From the Table of Joy, Lynn Nottage does an excellent job of capturing the voices of a family struggle to make their own individual voices heard.

Apr ~ In The Blood - Deep work, the truth about those which society wishing to ignore.

Apr ~ Slanguage - Nice mixture of different poetical voices coming together.

[Maja]

Check out this anthology, for a hard-to-find print of Robert O'Hara's "Insurection: Holding History", bringing light on Nat Turner.
Suzan-Lori Parks is also there, as well as August Wilson's "King Hedley II"...some favorites.