Human Rites
Play Description
Michaela, an African American dean at a major American university, summons Alan, a renowned professor of cultural psychology, in response to student protest over his controversial paper on female initiation rites in sub-Saharan Africa. But dormant feelings from an affair years earlier turn a heated argument over science and cultural pluralism into a knock-down, drag-out fight. Rozin's provocative play shatters the ivory tower of academia, upending questions of privilege and Western morality.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Fast-paced and riveting … be prepared to have your eyes opened, your own pre-conceived notions debunked, and your head left spinning … I highly recommend it.” —Broadway World
“HUMAN RITES soars with mind-blowing ideas.” —Broad Street Review
“When Westerners decry the practices of other cultures, and campaign for change, they may mean well. But are they really spreading enlightenment, or shame? Who gets to decide whether an initiation rite is barbaric or an exemplary form of bonding? Are there any cultural absolutes, or are all cultural norms equally valid? This constellation of questions animates Seth Rozin’s crafty and invigorating play, HUMAN RITES.” —Julia Klein, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Plays like HUMAN RITES — thoughtfully written and thought-provoking — are what keep a lot of people, myself included, eagerly going to the theater.” —WHYY-FM
“It’s so refreshing to experience a play that relentlessly challenges its audience to rethink its assumptions, about both big-picture issues and the human characters wrestling with them.” —Indianapolis Business Journal
Author(s)
Seth RozinSeth Rozin is the author of more than a dozen plays, including MEN OF STONE (produced by Theater Catalyst, nominated for a Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play), MISSING LINK (produced by InterAct Theatre Company, nominated for a Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play), REINVENTING EDEN (produced by InterAct), BLACK GOLD (National New Play Network rolling world premieres at InterAct, Phoenix Theatre, Prop Thtr, Arts West), TWO JEWS WALK INTO A WAR… (National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere at Florida Stage, New Jersey Rep, Writers Theatre of New Jersey, Shadowland Stages, Unicorn Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, InterAct, Florida Studio Theatre, Geva Theatre, Barter Theatre, Jewish Theatre of Grand Rapids and New Repertory Theatre), THE THREE CHRISTS OF MANHATTAN (produced by InterAct), and HUMAN RITES (produced at Phoenix Theatre & InterAct; winner of the 2018 Brown Martin Philadelphia Award). Seth also wrote the book, lyrics and music for a musical ENTITLED A PASSING WIND, which received its premiere at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts’ inaugural Philadelphia Inernational Festival of the Arts in 2011. He is the recipient of two playwriting fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, NNPN's Smith Prize, as well as a new play commission from the Foundation for Jewish Culture. Seth is the founder and Producing Artistic Director of InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia, where he has directed over 50 productions, including 30 world premieres, and has twice served as President of National New Play Network.
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 produced by Phoenix Theatre, Indianapolis, Indiana,
Bryan Fonseca, Producing Director
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
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
$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
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
$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
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
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
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
$0.00–$15.95 Play Description
In 1950, in a small Southern town of Durham, Georgia, Louis, a prominent black businessman, is murdered in the middle of the street. The regulars inside Willy's Cut and Shine Barbershop all witness the murder and watch the murderer casually stroll to his car. The question among the men in the shop, the dead man's brother, the elders, and the young men just returning from World War II, is what is to be done. To this we add a Sheriff who abdicates responsibility, a young gambling junkie back home from Chicago, ghosts from the battlefields of France and Germany, a murderer who wants more than the dead man's blood, and the possibility of a soul's redemption or destruction. At the end of this drama, every character must decide what they are willing to do to see another sunrise.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (9 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
$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
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