- 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
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
In the future, after the global ecological disaster, so much that makes life worth living has been outlawed. One family refuses to submit. Will their small act of rebellion lead to a future where science no longer dominates humanity but serves it?
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (4 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 110 minutes)
Multiple Sets
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
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Set “well in the past” on a fictional Caribbean island, the play tells the story of a sorceress who falls madly in love with a shallow womanizer.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (5 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 140 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
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. Among the issues addressed in LEMUEL are racial segregation, quality of education, assassination of American leaders, abuse of political power, and the needs of the poor and oppressed.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (4 female, 5 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
POLICE BOYS explores the conflict and tensions between a group of police officers and the community they’re sworn to serve
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (2 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 195 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Marcus, his father Leon, and grandfather Bernard confront a history of absence, mistakes, mistrust, and broken promises as they strive to redefine themselves as fathers and sons.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (1 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
With an important piece of legislation pending, treatment for a serious illness about to begin, and engagement to a woman half his age in the balance, a first-term City Councilman in Washington, D.C. is visited by his two adult sons, the younger one a gay man who must find a way to come out to his father, the older one an ex-football star who’s been living out of the country and out of touch for nearly twenty years. Both sons, in addition, carry a long-held tacit agreement that is destined to explode in their father’s face.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 
Play Description
On the docks of late 18th-century Rhode Island, two runaway slaves, Adjua and Dembi, plan a desperate and daring run to freedom. When a chance encounter triggers an unexpected collision of worlds, painful truths are uncovered, and the brutality of past crimes spills into the next generation.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$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
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
UNFINISHED WOMEN deals with the events in a home for unwed mothers on the last day of jazz musician Charlie Parker’s life, March 12, 1955. The play digs beyond statistics and sociological theories to find the unarticulated, half-understood longings of teenage mothers.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (7 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
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