"Black Drama, Second Edition contains the full text of 1,310 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard-to-find, or out of print. James Vernon Hatch, the playwright, historian, and curator of the landmark Hatch-Billops Collection of black drama, is the project's editorial advisor. More than a quarter of the collection will consists of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Alice Childress, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others. The database covers key writings of the Harlem Renaissance, works performed for the Federal Theatre Project, and plays by critically acclaimed dramatists of the 1940s. The collection includes musical comedies, domestic dramas, folk dramas, history plays, anti-slavery plays, one-act plays, and other works. Many were published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, others have never before been published or performed. The plays explore themes including civil rights, desegregation, and a wide range of ideologies - integrationist and separatist, revolutionary and nationalist. While the collection is strong in social and political drama, it also covers domestic drama and satires. The collection includes works by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Ed Bullins, Phillip Hayes Dean, Ted Shine, Aishah Rahman, Paul Carter Harrison, James Baldwin, Alica Childress, Rita Dove, Charles Fuller, Ron Milner, Sonia Sanchez, Melvin Van Peebles, Joseph Walker, Richard Wesley, Adrienne Kennedy, and many others"--About the Database.
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