photo by Berge Ara Lobain
this collection contains three full-length plays:
THE MOJO AND THE SAYSO
ONLY IN AMERICA
UNFINISHED WOMEN CRY IN NO MAN'S LAND WHILE A BIRD DIES IN A GILDED CAGE
THE MOJO AND THE SAYSO:
“Aishah Rahman has written
an original, engrossing, at times quite beautiful and
moving...play.”
Alvin Klein, The New York
Times
“Like some mythological
monster, it's got the head of a tragedy, the torso of a comedy,
and the wings of a fantasy...it's a very amusing beast.
...a strange and often hilarious
study of the ways that people cope with the aftermath of
tragedy.... All of them are looking for a magic charm, a mojo—`something that will never fail to pull you through the
hard times'.
THE MOJO AND THE SAYSO
represents the triumph of Rahman's fertile comic imagination....”
Jim Beckerman, News Tribune
originally produced by the Crossroads Theater Co, New Brunswick NJ
3 M, 1 F
ONLY IN AMERICA:
ONLY IN AMERICA is oracular, mythic, wicked satire, with outrageous humor and provocative subject matter. In this play, Rahman achieves a synthesis of Jazz and secular speech, as she creates a language for America's “invisible women”.
1 M, 3 F
UNFINISHED WOMEN CRY IN NO MAN'S LAND WHILE A BIRD DIES IN A GILDED CAGE:
“UNFINISHED WOMEN is an underground
classic. It reaches beyond statistics and sociological theories
to find the unarticulated, half-understood longings of teen-age
mothers.... The title implies the central conceit of the play:
the juxtaposition of the Hide-A-Wee Home for Unwed Mothers (the
unfinished women) and Pasha's boudoir, where Charlie Parker (the
`Bird'), the brilliant black saxophonist of years past, spent his
last days. Many types of of girls find themselves in this home:
the child of middle-class upbringing who got `caught'; the
innocent who was raped; the savvy, street-smart girl who let the
music make love to her, as well as the strict nurse who turned
her illegitimate child into a `niece'. Charlie Chan, that
stereotype of Oriental inscrutability, presides over all, a
comment on the power of images in our society.
The play focuses on that moment when the girls must decide whether
to keep their babies or to give them up for adoption. Despite their fantasies of
rescue by `caring' young fathers, they must decide alone. Meanwhile, Bird slowly
dies in the plush boudoir of his longtime mistress, trapped in a narcotic fog
and the lost dreams of his exploited talent.”
From Margaret B Wilkerson's introduction
to the play
originally produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival
1 M, 6 F, and two roles that can be played by either
PLAYS BY AISHAH RAHMAN
I S B N 0-88145-123-1: $16.95