Pecong
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
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Victory Gardens Theater did not simply present a world premiere of a new play on Thursday night. It conjured a new life for a myth that is more than 2,000 years old. And it did so with such stunning and completely realized theatricality that it seemed as if all the talent involved in the project has suddenly ripened and burst apart. The play is called PECONG. And although at first its Caribbean island setting seems far from the ancient Greece as a globe will permit, it turns out to be not just one of the most astonishingly powerful retellings of the Medea story, but one of the most faithful. In moving this classic tale of sexual possession and bloody revenge to another continent, playwright Steve Carter has rediscovered its meaning. Sex and power are the focus of PECONG, and the struggles come in all varieties. At the center there is the battle between man and woman in the ferocious relationship of Mediyah (the Medea character), the sorceress, and Jason Allcock, the shallow womanizer whom she falls madly in love with and cedes all her power to, only to be crassly dumped. Hell hath no fury like this woman scorned. But there are also wars among women, between brother and sister, between those of light and dark skin tones and, of course, among men. (In the Carnival scene a ‘pecong,’ or verbal battle of insults hurled in rhymed verse, is played out in great style by Mediyah’s brother, dressed as a rooster, and her lover, dressed as a ram.) PECONG is Carter’s most ambitious and beautifully written play to date — full of humor, passion, high drama and low comedy.” —Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
Author(s)
Steve CarterHorace E. "Steve" Carter, Jr. was an American playwright, best known for his plays involving Caribbean immigrants living in the United States. Mr. Carter received the Living Legend award at the 2001 National Black Theatre Festival. He was Victory Gardens Theater's first playwright-in-residence beginning in 1981 and has also served as playwright-in-residence at George Mason University. Carter's PECONG (winner of the Joseph Jefferson award for New Work) premiered at Victory Gardens in the 1989 – 1990 season and received subsequent productions at London's Tricycle Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and Newark Symphony Hall. His plays EDEN (winner of an Outer Critics Circle award, an Audelco award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award ) and NEVIS MOUNTAIN DEW received Midwest premieres, and DAME LORRAINE, HOUSE OF SHADOWS, SHOOT ME WHILE I'M HAPPY, SPIELE '36 OR THE FOURTH MEDAL and ROOT CAUSES all premiered at Victory Gardens. Mr. Carter died at the age of 90 in 2020.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 5/1/1993 |
| Pages | 112 |
| ISBN | 9780881451078 |
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 the Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago
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
Upcoming and Recent Productions
Nonprofessional
Related Plays
$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
$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
$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
Subtitled “a light and dark skin comedy,” CHIAROSCURO is set on a cruise ship peopled by black singles where “pretty” means light-skinned, and all the men are dark, and Papa Legba, the African trickster spirit, is disguised as a ship steward.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (4 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 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
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
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. In GULLIVER, Lemuel Louis Gulliver travels the globe releasing hostages and securing their votes with the help of Swift Ink, his production company.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 110 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
$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
Play Description
At his funeral, Eustace Baylor and his two families examine the tattered cloth of their lives. They find that if you would take one last look, you should take one first look.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (7 female, 4 male)Short Drama (about 30 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes