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
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. GULLIVER REDUX explores what happens to Lemuel Louis Gulliver when he is not elected president. He goes into seclusion and winds up in the poorest country in the world, which has a dictator for life, but is led back to his origins, Chicago's Great South Side and into a confrontation at the Million Men and Women Convocation March.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary 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
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
Inspired by true events: on a Tennessee hilltop, heroes in training meet in secret. All are changed. Some change America.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 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
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
ONLY IN AMERICA is oracular, mythic, wicked satire, with outrageous humor and provocative subject matter. In this play, Aishah Rahman achieves a synthesis of Jazz and secular speech, as she creates a language for America’s “invisible women.” ONLY IN AMERICA is set in an imaginary Animal Bureau of Civil Rights in Washington DC, and was written, in part, in reaction to Anita Hill’s testimony about working with Clarence Thomas.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (3 female, 1 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 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
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
$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
$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
A white widow is assaulted; an angry mob is at the jail house door, screaming “Lynch him!” The only way to untangle the truth about the events is for the accused, Christopher C Davis, to look into the events that have led him to a tree stump in Athens, Ohio, in the year 1881.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male, 1 female and 2 males are black)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes