Cover sculpture by Virginia Cox

Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage

Aishah Rahman

Play Description

UNFINISHED WOMEN deals with the events in a home for unwed mothers on the last day of jazz musician Charlie Parker’s life, March 12, 1955. The play digs beyond statistics and sociological theories to find the unarticulated, half-understood longings of teenage mothers.

Production Info

Cast: 9 total (7 female, 2 male)
Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes

Categories: The Plays Tags: African American, 1950s

Reviews
About the Author(s)
About the Book
Special Notes
Productions

Press Quotes

“UNFINISHED WOMEN is an underground classic. It reaches beyond statistics and sociological theories to find the unarticulated, half-understood longings of teen-age mothers … The title implies the central conceit of the play: the juxtaposition of the Hide-A-Wee Home for Unwed Mothers (the unfinished women) and Pasha’s boudoir, where Charlie Parker (the ‘Bird’), the brilliant black saxophonist of years past, spent his last days. Many types of girls find themselves in this home: the child of middle-class upbringing who got ‘caught’; the innocent who was raped; the savvy, street-smart girl who let the music make love to her, as well as the strict nurse who turned her illegitimate child into a ‘niece.’ Charlie Chan, that stereotype of Oriental inscrutability, presides over all, a comment on the power of images in our society. The play focuses on that moment when the girls must decide whether to keep their babies or to give them up for adoption. Despite their fantasies of rescue by ‘caring’ young fathers, they must decide alone. Meanwhile, Bird slowly dies in the plush boudoir of his longtime mistress, trapped in a narcotic fog and the lost dreams of his exploited talent.” —From Margaret B Wilkerson’s introduction to the play in 9 Plays by Black Women

Author(s)

Aishah Rahman
Aishah Rahman was born in Harlem on November 4, 1936 and died December 29, 2014 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. An accomplished playwright and author, Aishah was a Professor of Literary Arts and taught at Brown from 1992 – 2011. A graduate of Howard University and Goddard College, Rahman, along with Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez, and others was active in the 1960's Black Arts Movement. She described her writing as adhering to a "jazz aesthetic" and was the author of numerous plays, including the dramas UNFINISHED WOMEN CRY IN NO MAN'S LAND WHILE A BIRD DIES IN GILDED CAGE, THE MOJO AND THE SAYSO, ONLY IN AMERICA, CHIAROSCURO and three plays with music, LADY DAY A MUSICAL TRAGEDY, THE TALE OF MADAME ZORA and HAS ANYBODY SEEN MARIE LAVEAU? Her plays were produced at the Public Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, BAM and theaters and universities across the United States. She served as director of playwriting at the New Federal Theater in New York. Among her numerous fellowships, grants and awards are a special citation from the Rockefeller Foundation of the Arts for dedication to playwriting in the American Theater. Her plays are distributed by Broadway Play Publishing. Chewed Water: A Memoir, the story of growing up in Harlem in the 1940s and '50s, was published in 2001 by University of New England Press.

Book Information

Publisher	BPPI
Publication Date	12/21/2011
Pages	40
ISBN	9780881454895

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:

First produced by The New York Shakespeare Festival

In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:

Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage is produced
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com