- 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. is 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.
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
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–$15.95Play 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
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
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
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
$15.00–$15.95Play 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–$15.00Play 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–$15.00Play 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)