“Slave Play” and playwright Jeremy O. Harris will donate a collection of plays by Black playwrights to 53 libraries and community centers across the country.
The collection, named the Golden Collection in honor of Harris’s late grandfather, comprises 15 plays, including “Slave Play,” as well as works by Katori Hall, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Adrienne Kennedy and more. “Slave Play,” which is funding the project, is launching the collection in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign.
Harris announced the news on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” Tuesday, calling the collection a way of “complicating who we consider to be in the canon.”
The plays will be sent to libraries and community centers in all 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam. Many of the locations serve predominantly Black communities or are based in areas that are historically significant to the community or face continued inequities.
In addition to “Slave Play,” the full collection consists of “Les Blancs” by Lorraine Hansberry,” “The Colored Museum” by George C. Wolfe, “An Octoroon” by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, “Sweat” by Lynn Nottage, “Wedding Band” and “Trouble in Mind” by Alice Childress, “Fucking A” by Suzan-Lori Parks, “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation” by Jackie Sibblies Drury, “The Mountaintop” by Katori Hall, “Is God Is” by Aleshea Harris, ‘Fires in the Mirror” by Anna Deavere Smith, “Funnyhouse of a Negro” by Adrienne Kennedy, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf ” by Ntozake Shange, “Bootycandy” by Robert O’Hara and “Dream on Monkey Mountain” by Derek Walcott.
The plays that were donated were purchased from Sister’s Uptown Bookstore, a Black-owned bookstore in Manhattan. The collection can also be purchased from Books and Crannies, a Black-owned bookstore in Martinsville, Virg. For each purchase of the full collection, Books and Crannies will donate $10 to the National Black Theatre.
