- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“… Robert Alexander’s A PREFACE TO THE ALIEN GARDEN is a heart-thumping, gut wrenching peek into one small pocket of drugs, gangs and violence … the poetic beauty of Alexander’s script … Alexander’s language is sharp, quick and clever …” —Terry Byrne, Boston Herald
“… PREFACE is nothing less than a testament to what theater can do (and what T V and movies can’t), which is to stir something ineffable in your soul and transport you to a place where human potential can be raised and then dashed on the rocks. This tragic awareness that the theater can induce is achieved too rarely and seldom. But, as one of the play’s characters might say, PREFACE has ‘the juice.’ Playwright Robert Alexander has stated that he wrote his ‘gangsta’ play as a cautionary tale for his child, but his play is more than social commentary. And, yes, it’s filled with words that many will find offensive. But that is just one element in the language of this play which riffs and scats like the best bebop or hiphop. Filled with metaphor, imagery and rhyming syntax, Mr Alexander’s drama is one of sheer urban poetry … the play itself is brave and brilliant. The stark light that it shines forces acknowledgement of our shared world and challenges us all to do better.” —Bill Oakes, Bay Window
“… the soaring poetry of some of the rap duels and the plaintive speeches of Lisa and Rick as they bid to discover a way to escape their fates are testimony to Alexander’s authentic talent, expressed with an authentic voice …” —Laurence J Sasso Jr, The Observer
Author(s)
Robert AlexanderRobert Alexander is the author of 29 plays, including SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE, I AIN'T YO' UNCLE, A PREFACE TO THE ALIEN GARDEN, and THE LAST ORBIT OF BILLY MARS. His plays have been produced by Trinity Rep, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the Mark Taper Forum, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Hartford Stage, San Diego Repertory Company, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Mr. Alexander has received grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has a B.A. from Oberlin College, and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa where he was a Patricia Roberts Harris Fellow.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Originally produced by Trinity Repertory Company, Providence RI
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95 
Play Description
Race and science collide in Cassandra Medley’s trenchant drama. Claire is a melanin scientist. She believes people of color are genetically superior — physically, mentally, in every way. Her daughter Kalima, a molecular geneticist at Johns Hopkins, knows otherwise, but to discredit her mother would destroy the relationship that each woman values the most. Forced to choose between science and family, between her future and her family, Kalima must decide where her loyalties lie.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
THE GULLIVER TRILOGY presents the adventures of its hero, Lemuel Louis Gulliver, Citizen Candidate of the World, an extraordinary everyman, whose picaresque life begins in 1942 on Chicago's great South Side. In GULLIVER, Lemuel Louis Gulliver travels the globe releasing hostages and securing their votes with the help of Swift Ink, his production company.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Jacqueeda needs four dollars and sixty cents to go to her mother’s boyfriend’s funeral, and buy him a headstone. She needs to make a detour to the racetrack to earn the rest of the money. She is looking for help from her friend Poppy. Poppy is looking for Jacqueeda, because he has learned from the scriptures that are the New York Post that a local Deacon has won the lottery. This transpires on the street corner where the Deacon’s Lincoln Continental is parked. They try to accomplish their tasks early in the morning while; Canute, a West Indian man, goes about working his many jobs, including caring for Muhammad’s rug, and Sister Berring tries to build a shelter, for someone. This play also has music cascading down onto the street corner, from eight televisions in windows above. The play is a new look at a secularized service about a search for service.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00 Play Description
T’Wana Jepson has been bit before. And scratched. And kicked. And punched. And called every dirty word in the book. But so has her coworker and play mama, Miss Georgia. It comes with the territory as a nurse’s aide caring for patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia. You learn to not take it personal and to lean on your co-workers for support. But after T’Wana is attacked by the patient in E 204, something happens that threatens the bonds of trust and friendship.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (3 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00 Play Description
Set in a black barbershop in Arkansas, 1955, WEST MEMPHIS MOJO sings the unsung heroes of the blues tradition. A young songwriter, working as a shoeshine boy, collaborates with the shop owner and a small-time recording artist to create new blues tunes. Amidst racial tensions and the politics of the white-owned music industry, this play explodes with the conflicts surrounding each character's pursuit of the American dream.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Described by the New York Times as “a threatening portrait of urban insanity. A drug lord is king, corruption is endemic and parents instill offspring with perverse values. In Mr Brown’s Coney Island, everything is for sale.”
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 125 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Wendy, whose secret birth name is Zena, is a negro-identified woman who is passing for white. Suddenly, on a white hot day in August, she crosses paths with her black husband from the past.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
On the night in 1939 when Count Basie is to be the first black performer at the Palomar Ballroom next door, a pair of Bimini Baths attendants are tasked with cleaning up a stranger fished out of the La Brea Tar Pits.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 60 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
An African American college professor who is feeling stuck both in his life and in his world of words meets a female African American student who comes to represent for him a dangerous kind of renewal and redemption, one that leads to tragedy for two disparate families.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (3 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 115 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Alma tries to reckon with injuries suffered by her beautiful daughter, Monique, while serving in the U.S. military in Iraq — injuries so severe that she no longer has a face.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 female)Short Drama (about 40 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
1963. Jackson, Mississippi. Robert-Earl Monroe wants Civil Rights Activist Medgar Evers off his once quiet street. But his plans are jeopardized when his sixteen-year-old daughter, Robbie, returns home from jail, newly politicized and eager to stand on the front lines of the Movement. Act Two jumps back in time to 1959, to the last time Medgar Evers set foot in the Monroe household for Robbie's 13th birthday. Battle lines are drawn — daughter against father, husband against wife, sister against sister, and neighbor against neighbor. MISSISSIPPI examines the tensions and complications within families and among neighbors in the years leading up to the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male, doubling)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes