Biography

Aishah Rahman was born in Harlem on November 4, 1936. An accomplished playwright and author, Aishah Rahman was a Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University from 1992-2011. A graduate of Howard University and Goddard College, Rahman, along with Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez and others was active in the 1960’s Black Arts Movement. She described her writing as adhering to a “jazz aesthetic,” and was the author of numerous plays, including the dramas Unfinished Women Cry In No Man's Land While a Bird Dies in Gilded Cage, The Mojo And The Sayso, Only in America, Chiaroscuro and three plays with music, Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy, The Tale of Madame Zora, and Has Anybody Seen Marie Laveau? Her plays were produced at the Public Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, BAM, and theaters and universities across the United States. She served as director of playwriting at the New Federal Theater in New York. Among her numerous fellowships, grants and awards are a special citation from the Rockefeller Foundation of the Arts for dedication to playwriting in the American Theater. Her plays are distributed by Broadway Play Publishing. Chewed Water: A Memoir, the story of growing up in Harlem in the 1940’s and 50's, was published in 2001 by University of New England Press. Rahman died on December 9, 2014 and she is survived by her daughter Yoruba Richen, a filmmaker. (Source)

Plays

LADY DAY: A MUSICAL TRAGEDY (1972)

An episodic, jazz-infused take on the life and death of Billie Holiday. With music by Archie Shepp.

Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy was originally produced by Chelsea Theater Center at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, October 17, 1972, under the musical direction of Archie Shepp and the dramatic direction of Paul Carter Harrison. Cast members included Cecelia Norfleet (as Billie), Rosetta Le Noire, Roger Robinson, Maxwell Glanville, Madge Sinclair, and Frank Adu.

Cast Requirement: 15+

Characters: Various (including Ronnie, Ricky, Sonny, Bullfrog, Flim-Flam, Mother Horn, Vi-Tones/Winos, Billie, and Mom)

Publication Info: Alexander Street Press* (link)

the LADY and the tramp (1976)

…the tale of Opal and Psyche, a young man and woman riding the bus to Harlem. The third character is a cellist on the on the bus who comments on the conversation between Psyche and Opal. Psyche, an actor, has disguised himself as a drunken bum the better to observe and hide from the world at the same time. In a drunken yet courtly manner, he offers a seat to the fashionably dressed Opal, who is reading a book entitled, "Toward An Androgynous Society." Opal is a successful designer of intersex clothes for the human body who lives on the upscale Convent Avenue. Ultimately, the two embrace, dance and they simultaneously kill each other. (Source*)

The Lady and the Tramp was produced in 1987 at the Westbank Theatre Cafe. The play was later revised and renamed Uptown!, part of Rahman’s Mingus Takes (3)

Cast Requirement: 3 (1f, 1m)

Characters: Opal, Psyche, Cellist

Publication Info: Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women. Edited by Amina Baraka and Amiri Baraka. Quill, 1983 (link)

unFINISHED women cry in no man’s lanD as a bird dies in a gilded cage (1977)

It is March 12, 1955: Decision Day for the young women at Hide-A-Wee Home for Unwed Mothers; and the last day of musician Charlie Parker’s life.

Unfinished Women… was first produced in 1977 by New York Shakespeare Festival. Directed by Bill Duke.

Cast Requirement: 9 (7f, 2m)

Characters: Charlie Chan, Master of Ceremonies; Wilma; Paulette; Consuelo; Mattie; Midge; Head Nurse Jacobs; Charles Parker, Jr., Musician; Pasha, A European Lady

Publication Info: Plays. Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., 1997 (link)

9 Plays by Black Women. Edited by Margaret B. Wilkerson. New American Library, 1986 (link)

Alexander Street Press* (link)

tale of madame zora (1986)

A blues musical about Zora Neale Hurston. "The drama is conceived in the medium of a folktale acted out by Happy Sweet, the Chief Story Teller or Liar as well as other members of the community. Set in the context of a Lie Swapping Festival in 1963 on a back porch in Hurston's birthplace, Eatonville, Florida. Community storytellers vie for an opportunity to tell something about Zora, while the archrival of Happy Sweet, the naughty blues diva, Cora Mae Johnson, insists on telling the more controversial parts of Zora's life." (Source*)

The Tale of Madame Zora was first produced in 1986 by the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Directed by Glenda Dickerson.

Cast Requirement: 5+ (2f, 3m)

Characters: Black Herman, Cora Mae Johnson, Doctor Mo, Happy Sweet, The Spirit of Zora, Community (Inhabitants of Eatonville)

Publication Info: Alexander Street Press* (link)

THE MOJO AND THE SAYSO (1989)

The Mojo and the Sayso is inspired by the 1973 killing of a ten-year-old boy by a New York City police officer. In the play, "a 10-year-old boy, Linus has been killed. Each member of his family has found a different way to deal with surviving. For the father, Acts, a dream car he's built is an all-consuming preoccupation. The tossed-away scraps he finds for it in junkyards are transformed into classy, priceless parts. The car is his mojo: a symbol that connotes good fortune brought about by mysterious powers. The mother, Awilda, retreats into religious fanaticism...and an older brother, Walter, who calls himself Blood, has become a righteous gunman, beyond fear." (Source*)

The Mojo and the Sayso was originally produced by Crossroads Theatre Company in 1988 under the direction of George Ferencz.

Cast Requirement: 4 (1f, 3m)

Characters: Awilda, Acts, Blood, Pastor

Publication Info: Plays. Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., 1997 (link)

Moon Marked and Touched by Sun: Plays by African American Women. Edited by Sydné Mahone. Theatre Communications Group, 1994. (link)

ONLY IN AMERICA (1997)

ONLY IN AMERICA is set in an imaginary Animal Bureau of Civil Rights in Washington DC, and was written, in part, in reaction to Anita Hill’s testimony about working with Clarence Thomas.

The play was first produced in 1997 by Perishable Theatre in Providence, RI, under the direction of Mark Lerman, with Nehassaiu deGannes, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Marilyn Dubois, and Semenya McCord.

Cast Requirement: 4 (3f, 1m)

Characters: Cassandra, Oral, Lilli, Scatwoman

Publication Info: Plays. Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., 1997 (link)

Alexander Street Press* (link)

Anybody Seen marie laveau? (1999)

An opera that "examines the protean nature of race through a tale of ethnicity, religion, and romance in ante-bellum New Orleans." 

Rahman's opera libretto is a quasi-historical fantasy set on the eve of the Civil War when New Orleans was occupied by Union forces. The principal characters, are Marie Laveau, a Creole with Native American, Haitian and French blood and Voodoo Queen who is a devout Catholic, and High John the African. Opposed to Laveau are the General Only, the Federal Commander who believes there are only two races, white and black, and High John the African who scorns both mixed bloods and whites. Each cherishes pure ethnicity while Marie is caught in the middle with a desire to be herself, a combination of ethnicities. Interwoven in the battle between Marie Laveau and High John for the Voodoo Throne in New Orleans is a story of assimilation versus separation and an ancient battle of the sexes.  (Source*)

Anybody Seen Marie Laveau? was originally developed with composer Akua Dixon as The Marie Laveau Opera. It was produced in 1999 by New World Theater at the University of Massachusetts.

Cast Requirement: 10+

Characters: Three Women Who Compose the Creole Voice of Marie Laveau; General Ben Only; Prudence Only; High John the Conqueror; High John’s Four Wives; Papa Antoine; Washington Jefferson the Third; Bras Coupe; Armand Le Noire; Mary Ellen Pleasant; Papa Legba/St. Anthony; Ogun/St. Peter; Shango/St. Barbara; Erzulie/St. Cecilia; Townsfolk

Publication Info: Alexander Street Press* (link)

Chiaroscuro (2000)

Subtitled “a light and dark skin comedy,” Chiaroscuro is set on a cruise ship peopled by black singles where “pretty” means light-skinned, and all the men are dark, and Papa Legba, the African trickster spirit, is disguised as a ship steward.

Cast Requirement: 7 (4f, 3m)

Characters: Jim Jackson, Mrs. Jennings, Mamie Jackson, Walt Gilbert, Mrs. Robinson, Harry Williams

Publication Info: Chiaroscuro. Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., 1996 (link)

Alexander Street Press* (link)

MINGUS TAKES (3) (2003)

MINGUS TAKES (3) consists of three one-acts: Speaker’s Head, If Only We Knew, and Uptown! (formerly The Lady and the Tramp) It is dedicated to Charles Mingus Jr’s ingeniousness, his humor and revolutionary spirit, and his great contribution to American classical music more commonly labeled jazz. In Speaker’s Head, a speaker introduces his concepts on America’s “eminent world domain.” In If Only We Knew, An African immigrant in New York describes how he was shot by police. In Uptown!, a drunk tramp named Psyche strikes up a conversation with Opal on the bus. At first she’s very wary of him. But gradually Psyche’s penetrating insights begin both to unnerve and intrigue her.

Mingus Takes (3) was produced (under the title “Three One Acts”) by Perishable Theatre in Providence, RI, under the direction of

Cast Requirement: 7 (1f, 4m)

Characters: Speaker, Narrator, Aboulaye, Musician, Psyche, Opal, Musician

Publication Info: Mingus Takes (3). Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., 2003 (link)

UNPUBLISHED

TRANSCENDENTAL BLUES (1976)

“A poetic drama that takes place in the fevered mind of a 35 year old Wilma on the occasion of her younger lover's abandonment...and she careens over the thwarted relationships in her life beginning as a child with her foster parents." (Source*)

Transcendental Blues was originally produced in 1976 by the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center at Manhattan Theater Club under the direction of October 17, 1972, under the direction of Kimako Baraka, with cast members Starletta DuPois, Count Stovall, Richard Gant, Akin Babutunde, Madeline Murray, Erick Berg, Yvonne Warden, Peter Wise.

Cast Requirement: 8 (3f, 5m)

Characters: N/A

Publication Info: Manuscript version of play is available in the "Aisha Rahman plays, 1976-1985" collection which is part of the Negro Ensemble Company Records archives in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture.