Book Signing: Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance

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Join us for a Signing of Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance with editors DeRon S. Williams, Khalid Y. Long, and Martine Kei Green-Rogers.

Doors open at 7. The program begins at 7:30.

About the Book

How are Black artists, activists, and pedagogues wielding acts of rebellion, activism, and solidarity to precipitate change? How have contemporary performances impacted Black cultural, social, and political struggles? What are the ways in which these acts and artists engage varied Black identities and explore shared histories?

Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance investigates these questions to illuminate the relationship between performance, identity, intersectionality, and activism in North America and beyond. It features contributions from scholars, artists, and activists from across disciplines who explore the nuances and varied forms of Black performance in the 21st century while incorporating performance-based methodologies and queer and black feminist theories.

Among the many topics addressed by contributors are antiracist pedagogy, Black queer identity formation in Black playwriting, digital blackface, and Black women’s subversive practices within contemporary popular culture. It encompasses dramatic analysis of Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy, and acts of resistance during the Black Lives Matter summer 2020 highway protests. A series of conversations with artists and scholars are woven throughout the book’s three sections, including with playwrights Christina Anderson and Donja R. Love, and Willa Taylor, Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago.

About the Editors

DeRon S. Williams (he/him) is a scholar, a freelance dramaturg and director, and an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Loyola University Chicago, where he serves as the dramaturgy mentor at Loyola University Chicago. His dramaturgical credits include Annelies (Great Plains Theatre Conference), Without a Formal Declaration of War (Great Plains Theatre Conference), Organized Chaos (Great Plains Theatre Conference), Toni Stone (Goodman); Trouble in Mind, Boulevard of Bold Dreams (Timeline Theatre); and  Anon(ymous) (Middle Tennessee State). His directing and associate directing credits include The Lil’ Flo and Big Moe Show! (Hartford Stage); Trouble in Mind (Timeline Theatre); Jump, Aladdin Jr., Mulan Jr., Leftoevers (Kennedy Center). As a scholar of African American theatre, drama, performance, and directing techniques and pedagogies, Williams is co-editor of Contemporary Black Theatre & Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity with Khalid Y. Long and Martine Kei Green-Rogers as a part of the Agitations: Politics, Text, Performance series that accentuates the expansiveness of Black theatre and performance and how the usage of conventional and nonconventional performance techniques persist to function as a vehicle of activism. He has published in The Journal of American Drama and Theatre and Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama. Williams is also working on an edited collection titled A Cultural Experience: The Role of Theatre at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and a monograph focusing on marginalized theatre directors and their theatrical approaches. He received a BA in Theatre from Albany State University (GA), an MA in Arts Administration from Eastern Michigan University, and a Ph.D. in Theatre at Texas Tech University.  

Dr. Khalid Y. Long is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Films Studies and the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia. As of fall 2023, Khalid will be heading to Howard University as an associate professor of theatre. Khalid is a scholar, dramaturg, and director, specializing in African American/Black diasporic theatre, performance, and literature through the lenses of Black feminist/womanist thought, queer studies, and performance studies. Accordingly, his work addresses the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality within marginalized and oppressed communities. Khalid is working on his manuscript, An Architect of Black Feminist Theatre: Glenda Dickerson, Transnational Feminism, and The Kitchen Prayer Series. He is also co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, August Wilson in Context (Cambridge University Press).

Martine Kei Green-Rogers is the Dean of the Theatre School at DePaul University She obtained her PhD from the Department of Theatre and Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to studying at UW-Madison, she received her B.A. in Theatre from Virginia Wesleyan College and her M.A. in Theatre History and Criticism from The Catholic University of America.

Her dramaturgical productions include: The Greatest with the Louisville Orchestra, Toni Stone and Sweat at the Goodman; Silent Dancer at Salt Lake Acting Company, productions of King Hedley II, Radio Golf, Five Guys Named Moe, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Gem of the Ocean, Waiting for Godot, Iphigenia in Aulis, Seven Guitars, The Mountaintop, Home and Porgy and Bess at the Court Theatre (Chicago, IL); productions of Fences and One Man, Two Guvnors for the Pioneer Memorial Theatre; It’s Christmas, Carol!, Hairspray, The Book of Will, Shakespeare in Love, Hannah and the Dread Gazebo (Research Dramaturg), UniSon (Asst. Dramaturg), The Comedy of Errors, To Kill A Mockingbird, The African Company Presents Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Fences and the Play on! project translations of Comedy of Errors and The Two Noble Kinsmen for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, OR); 10 Perfect and The Curious Walk of the Salamander as part of the Madison Repertory Theatre’s New Play Festival, and A Thousand Words as part of the WI Wrights New Play Festival. She was also the dramaturgical team for the remount of Jagged Little Pill on Broadway.

She has directed a staged reading of Adopting Aunt Tabitha for the Alley Theatre’s HYPE program and Venus and Adonis for the Classical Theatre Company, and productions of Much Ado About Nothing for Kenyon College, The Brothers Size for Ancram Opera House, and Sender for Denizen Theatre Company. She is the stage adaptor of Jason Reynolds’ book Long Way Down which premiered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in October of 2018.

Her publications include the article Talkbacks for ‘Sensitive Subject Matter’

Productions: The Theory and Practice in the Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, Co-Author on “A New Noble Kinsmen: The Play On! Project and Making New Plays Out of Old” in Theatre History Studies, Co-Author on “Visual Dramaturgy: Problem Solver or Problem Maker in Contemporary Performance Creation” in Theatre/Practice, and Co-author on “Continuing the Conversation: Responses to Gabriela Serena Sanchez and Quiara Alegría Hudes” in Theatre Topics. Her most recent publication is the book Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity alongside co-editors Dr. DeRon S. Willams and Dr. Khalid Y. Long and published in May of 2023 by Bloomsbury.

She has previously taught at SUNY New Paltz, the University of Utah, Sam Houston State University, and Kenyon College. Her research interests include violence in African American Theatre, African diaspora theatre, gender and race in American theatre, dramaturgy, devising, and issues of sustainability in the theatre.

She is a proud member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR).