Biography

Musicologist, director, playwright, novelist and political activist Lola Shirley Graham was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1896. At thirteen, she wrote her first editorial to an Indianapolis paper protesting racial discrimination after she was denied access to a YWCA swimming pool…She traveled often for her education, attending The Sorbonne in France, Columbia University, Howard University, the Institute of Musical Arts in New York City, and she later received her master’s degree in fine arts and music history at Oberlin College in 1935. She also later spent time studying playwriting at Yale University, worked toward her PhD at New York University, and taught at two other institutions. A prolific writer, she saw the debut of her first major theatrical work, Tom-Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro, while she was still attending Oberlin College in 1932. Considered to be the first opera by an African-American woman with an all-Black cast, Tom-Tom was hailed by critics but did not make it to New York because of the stock market crash later that year.

Graham married W.E.B. Du Bois in 1951, and she became an invaluable partner and defender of Du Bois. Civil rights work and individual leadership in fledgling third parties made them targets of anti-Communist efforts in the United States. With the sustained persecution the pair faced, they emigrated to Ghana, where W.E.B. Du Bois died in 1963. In Ghana, Graham Du Bois continued to work in the arts and helped create the nation’s first television system. After civil unrest in Ghana, Graham Du Bois moved to Egypt, where she continued to speak and write about anticolonialism and the cause of Pan-Africanism. She continued to travel the world for speaking engagements until her death in China in 1977. (Full Bio)

Plays

Tom-Tom: an epic of music and the negro (1932)

Her opera Tom-Tom, billed as an "An Epic of Music and the Negro", attempted to show the ties between the blues in Harlem and the music of Africa. In a wide sweep encompassing centuries, Graham transports the audience from the jungles of Africa before the freemen were enslaved to the plantation where they toiled, and then to the scenes in Harlem. She even manages to introduce Marcus Garvey's back to Africa movement. With singers in the cabarets, dancers in African costume, and the orchestra playing jazzy tunes; the production was an immense success. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 6+ (3f, 3m)

Characters: Voodoo Man, The Mother, The Boy, The Girl, The Mammy, The Leader, The Preacher, The Captain, Extras

Publication Info: Roots of African American Drama: An Anthology of Early Plays 1858-1938. Edited by Leo Hamalian and James V. Hatch. Wayne State University Press, 1991. (Link)

I GOTTA HOME (1939)

The setting is based on Graham's own experience of growing up in the home of a minister. Rev. Elijah A. Cobb, described by the author as the "last line of simple souls who, having hear 'the call to preach, does nothing else." His wife and children suffer the tyranny of people like Dr. Caleb Green, the presiding elder, "one of the hierarchal leftovers from the days overseas." The news that the revered sister, Mattie Cobb, is returning home rich with an inheritance sets in motion a comedy of errors, laying bare the hypocrisy of the church people and creating hilarious situations. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 21 (8f, 11m, 2any)

Characters: Reverend Elijah J. Cobb, Mrs. Cobb, EJ, Mirah, Toussant, Lilacs, Ben-Hur, Sister Saboy, Sister White, Brother Perkins, Dr. Calab Green, Mrs. Swan, Miss Hall, Butch Johnson, Mattie Cobb, Jasper Jones, Leo, Brother Pugh, A Policeman, Two Reporters

Publication Info: I Gotta Home. Alexander Street Press, 2005. (Link)*

Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays Before 1950. Edited by Kathy A. Perkins. Indiana University Press, 1989. (Link)

IT’S MORNING (1939/1940)

It's Morning, a one-act play set on a plantation on the eve of Emancipation, is reminiscent of a Greek Tragedy. The slave women serve as the Greek chorus, describing the scene and then commenting on the development. It deals with a theme of a mother murdering her young daughter rather than seeing her sold into slavery. (Source) 

Cast Requirement: 14+ (8f, 6m)

Characters: Cissie, Rose, Millie, Phoebe, Jake, Aunt Sue, Fess, Sally, Pete, Mrs. Tilden, Sam, Uncle Dave, Soldier, Grannie Lou, Several Other Slaves

Publication Info: Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays Before 1950. Edited by Kathy A. Perkins. Indiana University Press, 1989. (Link)

Track Thirteen (1940)

Track Thirteen, a radio play, is a suspenseful comedy about train porters and their superstitions. The action takes place on train 27 out of Chicago that is rescheduled to leave on track 13. An African American Porter waits for the impending disaster but as it turns out, number thirteen brings him luck, for he wins a $5,000 reward for his help in the capture of a disguised bank robber on board. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 21+

Characters: Woman, Clerk, Red Cap, Man, Elizabeth, Frances, Newsboy, Porter, Speck, 1st Man, 2nd Man, 3rd Man, Conductor, Englishman, Tom, Mother, Jones, Drunk, 1st Californian, 2nd Californian, Dr. Locke, Voices

Publication Info: Lost Plays of Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940. Edited by James V. Hatch and Leo Hamalian. Wayne State University Press, 1996. (Link)

Dust to Earth (1941)

Dust to Earth–a revised version of her play Coal Dust, which was produced in 1930 at Morgan State College and then revived at Karamu House in 1938–was produced at Yale in 1941. The play in three acts, set in a West Virginia mining town, deals with "issues such as illegitimacy, a brother-sister relationship, miscegenation, and class conflict." (Source)

Cast Requirements: 20+ (9f, 11m)

Characters: Brick, Anthony Clayton, Leslie Clayton, Bill Mcknight, Frank Murray, Pat Flanagan, Norah Flanagan, Joe Flanagan, Tom Carnes, Ella Carnes, Tony Kristoff, Lena Kristoff, Marianna Kristoff, Bessie Johnson, Fleecy Brown, Ccarrie May Brown, Booker Washington Brown, Frank Burns, Miners

Publication Info: Dust to Earth. Alexander Street Press, 2005. (Link)*