Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage
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
- 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 RahmanAishah 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:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Upcoming and Recent Productions
Nonprofessional
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
Sharon and Billy, sister and brother, are typical adolescents growing up in a tract home in 1950’s Southern California. But when fifteen-year-old Sharon finds herself pregnant, their adolescence comes to an abrupt end.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary 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–$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
$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
$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
Play Description
A tragicomical look at the current state of our country, with a special nod to the American habit of mispronouncing “Nuclear,” “Acapulco,” “Realtor,” and “Inauguration.”
Production Info
Cast: 1 total (1 female)Short Comedy (about 10 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
$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
$15.00
Play Description
JUNETEENTH STREET is the journey of a family, a church, and a community after the death of their patriarch and head pastor. His loss not only leaves the family reeling, but now the community and church are at risk of being torn down due to gentrification promoted by one of their own.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male, all characters are African American)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
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
$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