[BONUS] What’s On My Mind (and My Reading List) — March 2025
Showcasing Some of the Best Playwrights in American Theatre
Here at What’s On My Mind, I put out a reading list of books that have captivated my attention every two months, giving you a glimpse into where my mind is in the areas of literature, philosophy, and modern culture. Having released another entry of What’s On My Mind (and My Reading List) last month, this is an off-schedule reading list from what regular readers of the publication are used to. This, however, I find to be worth mentioning.
My intent with these reading lists is to introduce you to authors and literary formats that you may not be normally accustomed to reading. And in recent months, I've had a strong interest in a particular narrative format: plays.
The theater tradition ties its roots back to the dramas composed by playwrights of ancient Greece and Rome, such as Sophocles and Euripides. Aristotle’s Poetics offers us one of the earliest records of narrative analysis, dissecting the dramas and epics of his time down to their individual components, in an attempt to understand what makes a particular story good.
In the English tradition, no playwright is more well-regarded and highly praised than William Shakespeare for his incalculable contributions to the theatre tradition and, many would say, to the very notion of expression in the English language itself. In the United States of America, we have cultivated our own tradition of theatre throughout the country’s relatively shorter history through pioneers of the craft such as Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller.
I, however, wish to focus on another theater tradition, one born of not only the Western traditions that preceded it, but with elements of the blues, a dialect with distinct roots in the American South, and the force of an entire people seeking liberation through the arts.
African-American Theatre
There are few methods of expression more distinctly American than that of African-American Theatre. Birthed on the plantations of the southern United States and flourishing in Harlem Renaissance and beyond, America’s African-American playwrights have been providing the country with an unfiltered lens into what many have termed the “African-American experience” for over a century.1
What these men and women have to show us is not merely the diversity of the experiences one can have as a citizen in America, but what it is to be an American at its core. They contend that the story of the black man in America is the story of all Americans and, indeed, the story of America itself.
These five playwrights that I’ve selected—Amiri Baraka, Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, James Baldwin, and Suzan-Lori Parks—have captivated my recent attention as a few of the greatest artists to have emerged since the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, a time when African-Americans were beginning to challenge society at large and demand that their voices be heard and received by the masses.
I have intended and still plan to write a more thorough essay discussing the African-American theatre tradition, its influences, and what it has to teach us today. I began my reading on this project back in February and it continues to this day because, put simply, I have become enamored by what I’ve read.
Each of these playwrights, some of whose work I’ve already read or seen performed live in a professional setting, continues to resonate with me as a lifelong scholar of the Civil Rights Movement and as a modern reader of American literature. These plays continue to reach new audiences to this day with not only new productions by theatre companies around the globe but also with new film adaptations such as those produced for August Wilson’s Fences (2016) and The Piano Lesson (2024).
It is my ambition to get this essay written and published for all of you as soon as it is ready. I intend to take my time with all of the works I have assembled. There is an enriching nature to the act of reading a play, distinct from seeing it executed on stage or in film. If you would like to read that essay when it arrives, please subscribe to my free Substack newsletter to be notified of the essay’s release.
Until then, here is a selection of the plays I am reading for research at this moment:
The Amen Corner by James Baldwin
Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin
The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader edited by William J. Harris
Four Black Revolutionary Plays by Amiri Baraka
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window by Lorraine Hansberry
Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays by Lorraine Hansberry
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
The America Play and Other Works by Suzan-Lori Parks
The Red Letter Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
Fences by August Wilson
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson
Seven Guitars by August Wilson
I anticipate that this list will only continue to grow and evolve over time. That is much of the joy to be found in projects like this. I have much to say about the plays that I’ve read so far, many for the first time. I cannot wait to share those thoughts with you.
I encourage you to pick up a few of these books and find out why it is that they’ve captured my interest so strongly. You will not be disappointed. Happy reading!
Socials:
Substack: bryceallenreads.substack.com
Twitter: twitter.com/bryceallenreads
Threads: threads.net/@bryceallenreads
Glasp: glasp.co/#/bryceallen
For more articles on reading, writing, and the creative process, subscribe to my free Substack newsletter!
You can support my writing by buying me a coffee!
You can also show support by purchasing from the affiliate links in this article.
A term some of the playwrights of this list would take an open offense to.