Black Female Playwrights

The need to acknowledge these works was the impetus behind this volume. Perkins has selected nineteen plays from seven writers who were among the major dramatizers of the black experience during this early period. As forerunners to the activist black theater of the 1950s and 1960s, these plays represent a critical stage in the development of black drama in the United States.

Kathy A. Perkins developed new courses in African/African Diaspora theatre in addition to non-Western theatre courses. Perkins has designed on Broadway and at regional theatres. She is the recipient of such design awards as NAACP Image Award, National Black Theatre Festival Award, and was a nominee for the L.A. Ovation Award. Internationally, she has designed in Switzerland, Austria, and South Africa.

Perkins edited Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950, Black South African Women: An Anthology of Plays, African Women Playwrights, Alice Childress: Selected Plays and Telling Our Stories of Home: International Performance Pieces by and about Women.  She coedited Contemporary Plays by Women of Color (ATHE 1996 Outstanding Theatre Book Award) and Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women. She is a senior editor for Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance.

• Publisher: ‎Indiana University Press (October 01, 1990)
• Language: ‎English
• Paperback: 300 pages
• ISBN-13: ‎9780253206237
• Item Weight: ‎1 pound
• Dimensions: ‎9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• BISAC Categories: Music, Film & Performing Arts, Literary Fiction