Biography

Bill Gunn was born in 1934 and raised in Philadelphia by his equally gifted parents, William Harrison, Sr., a musician and poet, and Louise Alexander, an actress who directed a local theater company. Gunn began his career as a theater and film actor, making his Broadway debut in the 1954 production of The Immoralist starring James Dean, and later appeared in The Member of the Wedding with Ethel Waters in 1955. Frustrated with the lack of creative control as an actor as well as the limited roles available to him, Gunn turned his attention to playwriting and directing his own original work. In 1959, he premiered his first play, Marcus in the High Grass, at the Theater Guild in New York. The success of his subsequent plays, Celebration (1965) and the one-act Johnnas (1968), allowed Gunn to pursue screenwriting. His early output includes his adaptation Kristen Hunter’s novel, The Landlord (1970).

Gunn was a pioneer of black filmmaking, and in 1970 he became the second black filmmaker to direct a film for a major studio with his directorial debut Stop, of which he also served as the film’s screenwriter, co-producer, and casting director. Shot on location in Puerto Rico, Stop’s controversial premise and X rating caused Warner Bros. to shelve the film, which remains unreleased to this day. (Full bio)

Plays

Johnnas (1968)

Johnnas is a coming-of-age story that takes place in 1930s Philadelphia.

Cast Requirement: 7+ (3f, 4m)

Characters: Hilly, Barney, Johnnas, Doctor, Teacher, Opening Vocalist, Judge and others

Publication Info: The Drama Review, Black Theatre Issue, Vol 12 (4), 1968.* (Link)

Johnnas, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

black picture show (1975)

JD and Alexander, father and son filmmakers who have achieved different measures of success, connect, spar and commune in Bill Gunn’s Black Picture Show. Originally premiering at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1975, Black Picture Show is a son’s elegy for his father, a poetic and tragic work about the struggle to maintain artistic and intellectual integrity in the face of the financial rewards and glamour of Hollywood.

Cast Requirement: 8 (6m, 2f)

Characters: Vocalist, J.D., Alexander, Norman, Hospital Attendants, Rita, Lily, Philippe, Jane

Publication Info: Black Picture Show. Reed, Cannon & Johnson Communications, 1975. (Link)

Black Picture Show, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

The Forbidden City (1989)

In Bill Gunn's final play, The Forbidden City (1989), the bonds of a middle class Black family in Philadelphia circa 1936 are tested by the specter of a tragedy that occurred many years prior in the Jim Crow south.  

Nick Hoffenburg Sr. and his wife Molly fled from the South to escape Jim Crow racism and danger and have settled in a racially mixed neighborhood in Philadelphia during the height of the Great Depression. There they are raising their sheltered teenaged son Nick Jr. who recites the poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar.  Nick Sr.'s work ethic has afforded a middle class existence for his family which allows Molly to be a homemaker.  Although Molly has a devoted husband and teenaged son who caters to her, she is distant to her husband and both physically and verbally abusive to Nick Jr. Molly's behavior stems from both the tragic death of her first born son, David, who suffered from diphtheria during his infancy and was denied treatment by white hospitals, and the pervasive terror of lynchings of Black men. The death of David continues to loom large over the family including Nick Jr. who yearns for independence from his wounded parents.

Poetic, yet haunting The Forbidden City is a timely depiction of a family struggling to emerge from the psychological trauma and violence inflicted on African Americans in the early 20th century that continues unbated to the present.

Cast Requirement: 11 (2f, 9m)

Characters: Nick Hoffenburg Jr, Molly Hoffenburg, Nick Hoffeburg Sr, Ivan Trumbull, Cupid Trumbull, Abel Trumbull, Loretta, Smitty, Whistlin’ Billy, David, Hodge

Publication Info: The Forbidden City. Theatre Communications Group, 1987. (Link)

The Forbidden City, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

Unpublished manuscript available at the Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture. (Link)

UNPUBLISHED

marcus in the high grass (1959)

Marcus’s mother dies when he is 7 years old and he moves “into the high grass”. At age 17 he returns to the family home in Virginia and learns the true story of his birth. From there he and his biological father, Felix, re-negotiate the terms of their relationship.

Cast Requirement: 12 (5f, 7m)

Characters: Jean, Margaret, Felix, Louise, Marcus, Wilson, Flossy, Dugan, Sammy, Evon, Louise (child), Marcus (child)

Publication Info: Unpublished manuscript available at the Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture. (Link)

Unpublished manuscripts available in the Billy Rose Theatre Division at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. One from 1959 (Link) and another from 1960 (Link).