Staged Readings -New Federal Theater - NYC
"ACT TWO"
In honor of Juneteenth and Father’s Day, LITERARY BREED takes an overview of past/current/future America through the eyes – and language – of African-American male playwrights including, Joel Willis, Michael A. Jones, Michael P. Moss, Cheo Jeffery, Allen Solder, Kermit Frazier, Ajene D. Washington, and Jamal Williams.

SATURDAY, 7:30 PM, JUNE 30th
AAPEX MEMBER: Jamal Williams' play:
"IS YOU IS OR IS YOU AIN'T"

Featuring Pamela Monroe, Nadhege Ptah,
Iris Williams, Taqiyya Holden, Erwin E.A. Thomas,Michael Jones
D.K. Bowser, Michele Baldwin, and Victor Dickerson

To be read
at
Abrons Arts Center, Recital Hall
466 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002

The play:
After World War II, victorious soldiers and sailors came home while newly liberated women had to give up their jobs and return to being mere housewives. Many black women escaped the South in the War years to work in the West Coast shipyards where they gained "liberation" and new freedom. They drove cabs, buses, trucks, and bulldozers. Black "Rosie-the-Riveters" made money and acquired a powerful sense of self. Many of them vowed never to return to the South.

Olivia Pondexter, straight out of Crosscreek, Alabama breaks the mold and returns to "rescue" two sisters. She has to fulfill a promise she'd made four years before. Because of something shameful she had been forced to do to survive, she had lost contact with them for all those years. Not only does she bring with her a hatbox full of money, she finds herself haunted by the physical spirit of what she has shamefully tried to forget. What makes matters worse, is that in order to regain the crown of Matriarch she has to make them leave their men behind.