5 Books Published by Bloomsbury Press on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

The Mountaintop is published here as a Methuen Drama Student Edition, featuring notes and commentary by Martine Kei Greene-Rogers, Assistant Professor at SUNY: New Paltz, US. The introduction offers a discussion of key themes including race, identity, politics, magical realism, one-act plays, historical figures and martyrs.

The night before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. retires to room 306 in the now-famous Lorraine Motel after giving an acclaimed speech to a massive church congregation. When a mysterious young maid visits him to deliver a cup of coffee, King is forced to confront his past and the future of his people.

Portraying rhetoric, hope and ideals of social change, The Mountaintop also explores being human in the face of inevitable death. The play is a dramatic feat of daring originality, historical narration and triumphant compassion.

This edition includes an interview with Ron OJ Parson, director of the Court Theatre production, Chicago 2013/14.

The story of Desdemona from Shakespeare’s Othello is re-imagined by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, Malian singer and songwriter Rokia Traoré, and acclaimed stage director Peter Sellars. Morrison’s response to Othello is an intimate dialogue of words and music between Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary. Morrison gives voice and depth to the female characters, letting them speak and sing in the fullness of their hearts.

Desdemona is an extraordinary narrative of words, music and song about Shakespeares doomed heroine, who speaks from the grave about the traumas of race, class, gender, war and the transformative power of love. Toni Morrison transports one of the most iconic, central, and disturbing treatments of race in Western culture into the new realities and potential outcomes facing a rising generation of the 21st century.

Two actors, a thousand characters, and the story of how a kingdom is changed…

An epic new adaptation of the 4,000-year-old Egyptian poem about the Warrior King, Sinuhe written by Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri that captures the essence of humanity and the complexities of immigration.

This edition of Changing Destiny is published to coincide with the world premiere performance at London’s Young Vic Theatre, directed by Young Vic Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah.

Exactly one year ago, I stood in that crumbling pulpit in Riverside and shouted that this war would be our own violent undoing, freedom’s suicide … Well, I’ll tell you, there weren’t too many Amens that Sunday. But who is a man who does not speak his mind? He is not a man, but I am a man.

The night before his assassination, King retires to room 306 in the now-famous Lorraine Motel after giving an acclaimed speech to a massive church congregation. When a mysterious young maid visits him to deliver a cup of coffee, King is forced to confront his past and the future of his people.

Portraying rhetoric, hope and ideals of social change, The Mountaintop also explores being human in the face of inevitable death. The play is a dramatic feat of daring originality, historical narration and triumphant compassion.

This Modern Classics edition of the play features a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson and an introduction by Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Theatre, University of Maryland.

A new play for Britain’s leading black theatre company, with a premiere at London’s Lyric Theatre in July 2001 Hot, humid, downtown Kingston, Jamaica. The 1970s. Streets pulse with reggae, rhythm and dub. Brotherman is a local Rastafarian guru who heals, preaches and tries hard to live a righteous life. When he gives a homeless young country girl a space in his house, the volatile neighbourhood is sparked into jealousy and violence. Meanwhile, her growing love for him tests his commitment to a pure, spiritual life.Commissioned by Talawa, Britain’s leading black theatre company, and inspired by Roger Mais’ classic novel Brotherman, One Love takes us to the heart of the Jamaican soul, as actors, dancers, singers, live musicians and a DJ draw on influences such as Bob Marley and Lee ’Scratch’ Perry to tell this powerful parable of desire and denial.