Happy birthday George C. Wolfe! Born September 23, George Costello Wolfe is an African American stage and screen director, playwright and producer. His accolades include two Tony Awards for directing the play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and the musical Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk. He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater from 1993 until 2004. Here are some of his notable works:
Happy birthday Anna Deavere Smith! Born September 16, Anna Deavere Smith is an African American playwright, actress, author, journalist, and educator, who is best known for her one-woman plays that examine the social issues behind current events. She is credited with having created a new form of theater. Smith’s work combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance. She was a pioneer in what is now called “verbatim theater.”
View one of Anna Deveare Smith’s performances here:
Heavenly birthday wishes Georgia Douglas Johnson! Born September 10, Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson, was an African American poet and playwright. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. She died in 1966. Some of her notable works:
Belated happy birthday Thulani Davis! Born July 19, is an African American playwright, journalist, librettist, novelist, poet, and screenwriter. She is a graduate of Barnard College and attended graduate school at both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Here are some of her notable works:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Ed Bullins! Born July 2, 1935, Ed Bullins is an African American award winning playwright and author who emerged as one of the leading and most prolific dramatists of Black Theatre in the 1960s. Sharing the tenets of the Black Arts movement, Bullins’s naturalistic plays incorporated elements of Black nationalism, “street” lyricism, and interracial tension. He died in 2021. Here are a few of his works:
Heavenly birthday Lorraine Hansberry! Born May 19, 1930, Lorraine Hansberry was an African American playwright and writer. She was the first Black American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her most notable work was A Raisin in the Sun.
Belated birthday wishes Suzan-Lori Parks! Born May 10, Suzan-Lori Parks is an award winning playwright/musician and novelist. She also is a MacArthur Genius Fellow recipient. Her notable works include Getting Mother’s Body and Topdog/Underdog.
Born April 27, 1945, August Wilson was an award-winning playwright. was well known for his plays Fences, The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. August Wilson passed away in 2005. Other plays are:
Born March 5, Charles Henry Fuller was the playwright for the award winning play, A Soldier’s Play. Soldier’s Play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1982. That play was adapted to a movie, and Fuller was the screenwriter.
Born February 25, Angelina Weld Grimke was a poet, playwright, and teacher. She is best known for her play, Rachel, which was performed in 1916 in Washington, DC. Some of her poems are included in several anthologies.
