- By Kitchen Theatre
- Entertainment
Print 
In the African American Gullah/Geechee community isolated on the Sea Islands off of South Carolina, prejudices of color, gender, and class have divided families for generations. Against this background, the unlikely childhood friendship of Alma and Eugene, blossoms ultimately into love. Each must face the scorn of the community and the demons within each family. Alma struggles to break free from her mother’s poverty and alcoholism, while Eugene must face the inherent hardships of being “yellow”—lighter-skinned than his cruel and unforgiving father.
In language that is at once beautifully poetic and starkly honest, the history of two volatile families comes into revealing focus. As much as Yellowman is a love story and a coming-of-age tale, it is also a searing portrait of the struggles of the working class and the devastation of internal racism within the African-American community of the South in the mid 20th century.
The New York Times called Yellowman a “landmark in theatre history…a battle cry for humanity and its possibilities…[and] an agonizingly contemporary view of fate and tragedy.”
“The next few weeks are bound to be exciting at the Kitchen. I am thrilled to have such a talented team of actors, director and designers here to bring this monumental play to life. On a season at the Kitchen where we have taken so many and various journeys, it is astounding that we still have this amazing play with all its exquisite individuality to take us to yet another new world to discover,” says Rachel Lampert, Artistic Director.
Playwright Dael Orlandersmith is a 2002 Pulitzer Prize Finalist, an Obie Award winning playwright (1995, Beauty’s Daughter), a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and the Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, and a finalist for the 1999 Susan Smith Blackburn Award.
----v3i14