Some Sing, Some Cry
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Award-winning writer Ntozake Shange and real-life sister, award-winning playwright Ifa Bayeza achieve nothing less than a modern classic in this epic story of the Mayfield family.
Opening dramatically at Sweet Tamarind, a rice and cotton plantation on an island off South Carolina's coast, we watch as recently emancipated Bette Mayfield says her goodbyes before fleeing for the mainland. With her granddaughter, Eudora, in tow, she heads to Charleston. There, they carve out lives for themselves as fortune-teller and seamstress. Dora will marry, the Mayfield line will grow, and we will follow them on an journey through the watershed events of America's troubled, vibrant history--from Reconstruction to both World Wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam and the modern day.
Shange and Bayeza give us a monumental story of a family and of America, of songs and why we have to sing them, of home and of heartbreak, of the past and of the future, bright and blazing ahead.
Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shange (1948-2018) is the author of thirty-six published works, made up of plays, novels, children's books and poetry collections. Her 'choreo-poem' for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf retains its status as the longest running play by an African American writer in Broadway history. Its 2022 Broadway revival garnered seven Tony Award nominations. She has been posthumously inducted into both the NY State Writers and the Off-Broadway Alliance halls of fame, cementing her legacy as one of the most cherished Black feminist writers of our time.
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