Fathers and Sons
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
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“FATHERS AND SONS contains many pungent exchanges, and a meaningful subject: the estrangement of fathers and sons through several generations of African-American men and how it might be healed. The omnipresent phantom Benard Goodwater is the bad daddy incarnate — a trumpet-toting, be-bopping ne’er-do-well, who serves as a jive Greek chorus. He was clearly a lousy father to his haunted son Leon. And Leon returned the disfavor to his own offspring Marcus, by becoming a coke-sniffing, child-neglecting womanizer himself. In FATHERS AND SONS, the two living relations, and the ghostly one, confront one another during a family crisis … Bradford’s dialogue can sizzle and sting, and he exhibits a real flair for sexy romantic banter. That gift is exploited in the more intimate, sensuous scenes … Clearly, the playwright wants to explore how a man like Marcus can overcome a legacy of parental neglect and misogyny to forge a committed marriage — and maybe even a reconciliation with his father.” —Misha Berson, Seattle Times
Author(s)
Michael BradfordMichael Bradford is an award-winning director and professor of dramatic arts at the University of Connecticut. Bradford's work has been produced Off-Broadway at the American Place Theatre, and elsewhere in New York at the Lark Developmental Theatre, The Flea, The Access and the NADA Theatre. Regionally he has been produced at the Lorna Littleway Theatre, Louisville, KY and ETA Creative Theatre, Chicago, IL. He has received the Manhattan Theatre Club Playwright fellowship, the LARK Theatre Writers Residency and the New York Stage and Film Residency, New York. His plays have received readings and work-shops at the Manhattan Theatre Club, LARK Theatre, the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Connecticut Repertory Theatre, the Steppenwolf Theatre and the Actors Theatre of Louisville. His play, LIVING IN THE WIND, received over ten AUDELCO Theatre award nominations, and WILLY'S CUT AND SHINE was recently published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc and produced at the ETA Creative Theatre, Chicago, Il.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 6/5/2017 |
| Pages | 60 |
| ISBN | 9780881454208 |
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:
World Premiere by A Contemporary Theatre, Seattle, WA, in 2008
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
A PREFACE TO THE ALIEN GARDEN takes a hard look at the gangsta lifestyle in present-day Kansas City.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Play Description
MIRAGE, so like “marriage” in its spelling and some pronunciations, is about how much more interesting mundane situations could be if people would only apply themselves.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)Short Drama (about 10 minutes)
Single Set
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
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
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
SINCE AFRICA chronicles the relationship between a Dinka refugee from Southern Sudan and three Americans — a North Shore socialite, her daughter, and an African American Deacon — who help him acclimate to Chicago’s unfamiliar urban surroundings. A look at American culture through the eyes of an African, this play explores the tensions between blacks and whites, Africans and African Americans, the devout and the non-religious.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
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
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
TELL PHARAOH is the story of Harlem, our nation's foremost black community.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary 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
$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
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