Noon Day Sun
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
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Wendy and Brian Sims, self-described ‘night school loners from Fort Wayne,’ on a roll at the big Detroit auto trade show of 1957, have just been crowned ‘Autorama Couple of the Year.’ With Brian’s career in orbit as his company’s leading salesman of automotive accessories and plate glass, and lovely, Southern-belle Wendy basking in the glow of her burgeoning pregnancy, these two ‘comers’ are destined to realize their American dream of ‘making ourselves out of nothing.’ Or are they?” —Naomi Siegel, Montclair Times
Author(s)
Cassandra MedleyCassandra Medley's most recently produced plays include: CELL, Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon 2011, DAUGHTER, Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon 2009, NOON DAY SUN, August, 2008, Diverse City Theatre Company — Theatre Row, New York City and RELATIVITY, a commission from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ensemble Studio Theatre, 2004. RELATIVITY, produced by Kuntu Rep. of Pittsburg, Southern Rep. of New Orleans, 2007, the Ensemble Studio Theatre, May, 2006, the St. Louis Black Repertory Theatre – February, 2006, and the Magic Theatre in San Francisco in June, 2004. CELL is published in the anthology Outstanding One-Act Plays — 2012, Dramatists Play Service. DAUGHTER published by Broadway Play Publishing, 2012. RELATIVITY won the 2006 Audelco August Wilson Playwriting Award and was featured on Science Friday, National Public Radio, and published by Broadway Play Publishing. RELATIVITY was featured in online radio broadcast of the play, Los Angeles Repertory Theatre – February, 2008. NOON DAY SUN was nominated for the 2008 August Wilson Playwriting Award. NOON DAY SUN is published by Broadway Play Publishing, Marathon 2004-06. Ms. Medley has also the received the 2004 Going to the River Writers Life Achievement Award, 2002 Ensemble Studio Theatre 25th Anniversary Award for Theatre Excellence, the 2001 Theatrefest Regional Playwriting Award for Best Play, the 1995 New Professional Theatre Award, and the 1995 Marilyn Simpson Award. She was a 1989 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award in Playwriting and won the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Playwright Award. She was the 1986 recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant and a New York State Council on the Arts Grant for 1987. She teaches playwriting at Sarah Lawrence College, has taught at New York University, and has also served as guest artist at Columbia University, the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop and Seattle University. Cassandra worked as a staff writer for ABC Television: One Life to Live – 1995 – 97. She is a playwright member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, and New River Dramatists.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2/1/2007 |
| Pages | 80 |
| ISBN | 9780881453225 |
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 at TheatreFest Theater, Montclair NJ
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
BONDAGE takes place pre-Emancipation on a small island in the Caribbean. With the onset of puberty, Zuri must use her wits to outsmart the twisted desires of a drunken master and a sadistic mistress on a haunted plantation. Hierarchies of race and gender collide in this AfroSurreal tale of an enslaved girl who dares to follow her own instincts toward liberation by any means.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (4 female, 1 male, 2 of the female characters should always be played by black actors or those who identify as biracial/black)Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$0.00–$15.95
Play Description
In the first years after World War II the author of Animal Farm is chaperoned during an American book tour by a fetching young woman, whose job is to dissuade Orwell from telling Americans why he is a proud socialist.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male, 1 male bit part)Full Length Drama (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00
Play Description
When a rookie cop is suspected of murdering a young black kid in the neighborhood playground, District Attorney Harrison Just sets out to discover the truth and along the way finds himself standing between an approaching battle between the community he is a part of and the city that he serves.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (4 female, 5 male, all characters, except 1 male, are African American)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
In the early 1950s, a psychologist sets out to write the definitive book on THE SEX HABITS OF AMERICAN WOMEN. Meanwhile, his wife is having an affair with his former student, his daughter can’t find love, and all his theories refuse to go unchallenged. Juxtaposed to the action in the 1950s is a present-day videographer making a documentary on precisely the same subject.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (5 female, 3 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
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
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
In NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY a black bartender in New York City attempts to outwit a white mobster syndicate. The play received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Charles Gordone’s Pulitzer signified two firsts: he was the first African American playwright to receive a Pulitzer, and NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY was the first Off-Broadway play to receive the Pulitzer.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (5 female, 11 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
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
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Romance in middle age can be complicated while balancing children, ex-spouses, jobs, and ambitions. In this charming tale, a working-class couple falls in love and struggles to maintain a relationship without giving up their old dreams, habits and commitments. Ophelia is a go-getter and fiercely devoted to the idea that her children become professionals, while Louie is a gregarious family man who just wants to build a home. The play paints a real, gently humorous portrait of contemporary love and its trials.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (1 female, 1 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 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
$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
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
