Biography

A veteran actor, playwright, and film director, Ossie Davis grew up in Waycross, Georgia and attended Howard University for three years before leaving to pursue an acting career in New York City with the Rose McClendon Players. Within a year he was inducted into the military. While stationed in Liberia in the Medical Corps and Special Services, he wrote several musicals. Upon his return to civilian service in 1945, he landed a role on Broadway in Jeb giving a performance that launched his professional career. He also met fellow performer Ruby Dee, his future wife and lifetime mate of over 50 years. Davis and Dee became legendary for their involvement in theater and civil rights and for their contribution to the American stage, television, and film industry. In black theater circles, they became known affectionately as “the first couple of black theater.” Davis and Dee worked together as actors on stage, screen, television (often appearing in the same shows), hosted television shows, starred in Broadway plays, and had fulfilling film careers. For five years they had their own radio series, The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Hour. Ossie Davis was also a playwright and director. His best-known play, Purlie Victorious (1961), was a satire on black and white stereotypes in the South. (Full Bio)

Plays

ALICE IN WONDER (1952)

Set in the 1950s during McCarthyism, an African American television actor is asked to testify before a congressional committee. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 8 (3f, 5m)

Characters: Sue, Mark, Alice, Joe, Bertha, Jay, Harkness, Photographer

Publication Info: Alice in Wonder. Alexander Street Press, 2003. (Link)

THE PEOPLE OF CLARENDON COUNTY (1955)

This play chronicles the momentous 1954 Brown v. Board decision, which actually began in a small rural community in South Carolina. We meet the courageous African-American parents who risked their lives to file the first legal challenge to segregation in the public schools—suing for an “equal” school bus for their children. Their case was later combined with four others as Brown v. Board. Ossie Davis wrote his 1955 play in celebration of the one-year anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 3 minimum (1f, 2m)

Characters: N/A

Publication Info: The People of Clarendon County: A Play. Third World Press, 2007. (Link)

WHAT CAN YOU SAY TO MISSISSIPPI? (1956)

What Can You Say to Mississippi? explores the backlash against Brown v. Board of Education throughout the south, with a focus on the state of Mississippi, with its high levels of poverty, low levels of education, and toxic levels of both vigilante and state-sanctioned racial violence.

Cast Requirement: 4

Characters: Narrator, 1st Voice, 2nd Voice, 3rd Voice

Publication Info: What Can You Say to Mississippi?. Alexander Street Press, 2003. (Link)*

MONTGOMERY FOOTPRINTS (1957)

Montgomery Footprints tells the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Beginning with the local laws that empowered city bus drivers to mistreat and arrest their Black passengers along with some precursors to Rosa Parks’ famous act of civil disobedience, the play chronicles the successful mobilization of Montgomery’s Black citizens and the rise of its leaders, Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cast Requirement: 4

Characters: Narrator, 1st Voice, 2nd Voice, 3rd Voice

Publication Info: Montgomery Footprints. Alexander Street Press, 2003. (Link)*

PURLIE VICTORIOUS (1961)

Purlie Victorious is set in an era when Jim Crow laws still were in effect in the American South and focuses on the traveling preacher Purlie Victorious Judson, who returns to his small Georgia town hoping to save the community's church and emancipate the cotton pickers who work on an oppressive plantation. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 9 (3f, 6m)

Characters: Purlie Victorious Judson, Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, Missy Judson, Gitlow Judson, Charlie Cotchipee, Idella Landy, Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee, The Sheriff, The Deputy

Publication Info: Purlie Victorious. Samuel French, 1961. (Link)

CURTAIN CALL, MR. ALDRIDGE SIR (1968)

A dramatic reading in one act highlighting the life and career of Ira Aldridge, the eminent black Shakespearean actor of the early 19th century. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 5 (2f, 3m)

Characters: Ira Aldridge, Voice #1, Voice #2, Voice #3, Voice #4,

Publication Info: The Black Teacher and the Dramatic Arts: A Dialogue, Bibliography, and Anthology. Edited by William R. Reardon and Thomas D. Pawley. Negro Universities Press, 1970. (Link)

Curtain Call, Mr. Aldridge Sir. Alexander Street Press, 1963. (Link)*

PURLIE (1970)

A musical based on the stage play Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis.

Cast Requirement: 8+ (4f, 4m)

Characters: Ol’ Cap’n, Purlie, Lutiebelle, Charlie, Gitlow, Church Soloist, Idella, Missy, Singers, Dancers

Publication Info: Purlie: A Musical Based on the Play Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis. Samuel French, 1971. (Link)

ESCAPE TO FREEDOM (1976)

Ossie Davis' enlightening and entertaining play focuses on the boyhood of Frederick Douglass, who—despite being born into enslavement—grew up to become an abolitionist, orator, and the first African American man to hold a diplomatic office. Much of the plot centers on Fred's struggle to learn to read, the surest way to freedom. Designed specifically for young audiences, the play frequently employs direct address and features several songs of the period, to be sung a cappella. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 7 (2f, 5m)

Characters: Frederick Douglass, Black Boy, Black Man, Black Woman, White Woman, White Boy, White Man

Publication Info: Escape to Freedom. Puffin Books, 1976. (Link)

LANGSTON (1982)

Poet Langston Hughes visits a church basement where a drama group is rehearsing one of his plays, and uses the actors to recreate scenes from his early life. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 9 (4f, 5m)

Characters: Langston Hughes, Black Man, Black Woman, White Man, White Woman, Black Girl, Black Boy, White Girl, White Boy

Publication Info: Langston. Delacorte Press, 1982. (Link)

UNPUBLISHED

The Union democracy built (1957)

The Union Democracy Built is a full-length dramatic-musical production based on the highlights in the history of Retail Drug Employees Union, Local 1199. (Source - Classix)

Cast Requirement: N/A

Characters: N/A

Publication Info: An audio recording of the performance was released on vinyl in 1957. (Link)

The montefiore story (1959)

The Montefiore Story is a a dramatization of Local 1199’s successful crusade to organize hospital maintenance workers at the Bronx-area hospital. (Source - Classix)

Cast Requirement: N/A

Characters: N/A

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

the unfinished business (1960)

The Unfinished Business celebrates the legacy of labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, highlighting Randolph’s dedication through word and deed to “the unfinished business of democracy.” Written by Davis, the piece ends with a poem by Langston Hughes, written specifically for the occasion.

The piece was written (though not performed) for Local 1199’s 1960 Negro History Celebration, at which Randolph was a guest speaker. (Source - Classix)

Cast Requirement: N/A

Characters: N/A

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

freedom over me (1961)

In this playlet, a man is torn between his employer and his daughter, a student activist staging a sit-in at the lunch counter of the department store where he is Chief Porter. (Source - Classix)

Cast Requirement: 4 (1f, 3m)

Characters: Homer, Mr. Strickland, Alice, Fred

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

BINGO! (1985)

A full-length musical based on William Brashler’s book Bingo Long’s Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings about the rise and fall of a black baseball team of the 1930s. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 7+ (1f, 6m)

Characters: Country Joe Calloway, Lonnette, Sallee Boggs, Bingo Long, "Pops” Foster, Louis Keystone, Leon Price

Publication Info: N/A

Paul Robeson, all american (1998)

A brief musical-dramatic piece examining the highlights and struggles in Paul Robeson’s life and career. (Source - Classix)

Cast Requirements: 7

Characters: Paul, Essie, and various

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

A LAST DANCE FOR SYBIL (2002)

A high stakes struggle for power and economic freedom entangles the lives of two families — an African-American family struggling to keep its small Harlem bank afloat and a WASP family whose fortune can collapse if it loses access to the oil now controlled by a poor young West African nation. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 10 (2f, 8m)

Characters: Sybil BenCompson, Anson Cryder-Anson, Papa Oba, Mlolu Obatusi, Potts BenCompson, Pellice BenCompson, Dunlester John, Elesia Cryder, Enoch Cryder, Balog-Wina

Publication Info: N/A