Blues Aesthetics and Black Women Playwrights

The following are excerpts from just a sampling of Black Women Playwrights. Please select
one excerpt that resonates with you, or perhaps challenges/mystifies/ inspires you, and bring
it with you along with one of the August Wilson PIANO LESSON monologues.

From Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage:

MRS DICKSON: It tough Esther for a colored woman in this city. I ain't got to tell you that.
You nimble with your fingers, but all Corinna Mae got be her honey-colored skin. And you
good and smart and deserve all the attention in that room, but today's her day and all I ask
is that you come toast her as I know she'd toast you. Put aside your feelings and don't say
nothing about Sally's piano playing, the girl trying. For God's sake, this is a party not a wake.

************

ESTHER: I wanted to be held. (Distracted.) I thought if... He ain't come home last night. I
sat at the sewing machine all night, trying to make something, I just kept sewing together
anything I could find until I had a strip a mile long, so long it fill up the apartment. (A
moment. Mayme runs her fingers along the fabric of the jacket.) Do you know where he is,
Mayme?

***************

ESTHER: I ain't really Mrs. Armstrong, am I? I been holding on to that, but that woman ain't
real. We more strangers now than on the eve of our wedding. At least I knew who I was
back then. But I ain't gonna let you hurt that woman. No! She's a good decent woman and
worthy. Worthy!

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From Stick Fly by Lydia Diamond:

CHERYL: I was really cute. And you couldn't see me, and love me, and want me? How come
you couldn't see yourself in my eyes? How come you couldn't feel like you was put here to
protect me? How they rate? But I just didn't matter? And you still don't see me. Me. Me. Your
daughter? The first man who loves you is supposed to your father. You were supposed to
love me first. And best. And how can anyone ever love me right if you couldn't love me first?

******
 From Stick Fly by Lydia Diamond:

DAD: There isn't a single one of you that hasn't kept secrets or made mistakes. So you
kids think carefully if you want to start throwing stones up in this house. Pretty much from
the second they bring you ingrates home from the hospital, every waking moment is spent
trying to keep your asses safe and provided for. Are your teeth straight? I did that. Did you
get any degree from any school that you wanted? I followed the rules. I worked hard. I
supported the household. I gave you everything. You are equipped.

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From Death of the Last Black Man in the

Whole Entire World by Suzan Lori-Parks

BLACK WOMAN WITH FRIED DRUMSTICK: Yesterday today next summer tomorrow just
uh moment uhgo in 1317 dieded thuh last black man in thuh whole entire world. Uh! Oh.
Don’t be uhlarmed. Do not be afeared. It was painless. Uh painless passin. He falls twenty-
three floors to his death. 23 floors from uh passin ship from space tuh splat on thuh
pavement. He have uh head he been keepin under thuh Tee V. On his bottom pantry shelf.
He have uh head that hurts. Don’t fit right. Put it on tuh go tuh thuh store in it pinched him
when he walks his thoughts don’t got room. Why dieded he huh? Where he gonna go now
that he done dieded? Where he gonna go tuh wash his hands?

*****

BLACK MAN WITH WATERMELON: We sittin on this porch right now aint we. Uh huhn.
Aaah. Yes. Sittin right here right now on it in it ainthuh first time either iduhnt it. Yep. Nope.
Once we was here once wuhduhnt we. Yep. Yep. Once we being here. Uh huhn. Huh.
There is a Now and there is a Then. Ssall there is. (I bein in uh Now: uh Now bein in uh
Then: I bein, in Now in Then, in I will be. I was be too but that’s uh Then thats past. That me
that was-be is uh me-has-been. Thuh Then that was-be is uh has-been-Then-too. Thuh me-
has-been sits in thuh be-me: we sit on this porch. Same porch. Same me. Thuh Then thats
been somehow sits in thuh Then that will be: same Thens. I swing from uh tree. You cut me
down and bring me back. Home. Here. I fly over thuh yard. I fly over thuh yard in all over.
Them thens stays fixed. Fixed Thens. Thuh Thems stays fixed too. The Thems that come
and take me and thuh Thems that greet me and then them Thems that send me back here.
Home. Stays fixed, them do.

From Fabulation by Lynn Nottage

GRANDMA: Sweet pea. I thought that I'd get to this point and be filled with so much wisdom that
I'd know just how to control the pain that's trailed me all my life. The truth would be revealed,
and some great doorway would open and God's light would encircle and lift me out of the
ordinariness of my life. One would think you'd be closer to God at my age, but I find myself
curiously further away.
 ********

From Fabulation by Lynn Nottage

FATHER: Velvet saw the equation on the page, little printed x's and numbers and bam the
solution revealed itself. It was a wonder to watch the brother work. His brain was like Coltrane
on the sax, you know. (Scats.) 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 6, 13. (Scats like numbers are tumbling out of this
mouth.) He kept decades worth of shit in his head, spreadsheets, numbers, birthdays, deaths, a
statistical oasis. Yeah. He wrote out a solution like it was a phone number, drank down his beer,
sucked the last bit of meat off his spare ribs and talked about he was going to step outside to
smoke a cigarette...

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From Mountaintop by Katori Hall:

CAMAE: Negro talk strike faster than lightnin'. They say folks was all cryin'. Sangin'. Mmph.
Mmph. Mmph. I woulda liked to have seen that. Somethin' to tell my chiren. "When I wun't
nothin' but a chick-a-dee, I seen't Dr. Martin Luther Kang, Jr. cuttin' up in the pulpit.
Mmmhmmmm. I bet that was somethin' to see.

**********

KING: You talk about fear, Camae, well... I have felt fear. Felt it in my guts. Felt it in my toes. Felt
it even when I stood in front of my own congregation in my own church. There beneath that
rugged old cross, I quaked and shook with fear. My insides churned and I fought hard to keep
them from leaping out of my mouth. You see, a Negro man is not safe in the pulpit. Not even a
pulpit of his own making. Sunday mornings have been the mornings I am most afraid. 'Cause in
this country a pulpit is a pedestal and we all know that in America, the tall tree is felled first. Tall
trees have more wood to burn, Camae. We are the sacrifice.

CAMAE: Last night, in the back of a alley I breathed my last breath. A man clasped his hands
like a necklace 'round my throat. I stared into his big blue eyes, as my breath got ragged and
raw, and I saw the Hell this world had put him through. The time he saw his father hang a man.
The time he saw his mother raped. I felt so sorry for him. I saw what the world had done to him,
and I still couldn't forgive. I hated him for stealing my breath. When I passed on to the other
side, God-ooooo, she is more gorgeous than me. She is the color of midnight and her eyes are
brighter than the stars...

From Blood Quilt by Katori Hall

CLEMENTINE: And this here quilt, was mama's favorite. Said it was made out of 4,267
pieces. She counted them. Said she had a great grandmother was so tall she'd pull stars
down from they perch in the sky and stitch them in like threads one by one. That's why this
quilt shines like the afternoon sun sinking its feet in a river. Its shapes move. Its cloth talks.
But most importantly its threads heal like the sun on yo' back after your first heartbreak.
*******

From Blood Quilt by Katori Hall

AMBER: It just makes us look like a bunch of pseudo-black nationalists trying to get closer
to the Motherland. Like that random fake ass "Yoruba Village" down the highway. We are
not African and I am not summoning my inner witch-doctor anytime soon and giving up a
pound of flesh to fuse some cloth with my "life force." It's ridiculous.

*********

AMBER: She ain't paid the property tax in more than 7 years, Clementine. Seven
years?!?! Now, I didn't take the Georgia bar, and I as sure as hell barely know even a little
bit about real estate, but I know Georgia gone want that tax back. Especially now, since
they looking for any reason they can to kick people off they land–––