Aishah rahman biography for kids

tale of madame zora (1986)

A blues musical about Zora Neale Hurston.

Presented by Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Happy Sweet - Stephanie Berry Dr. Mo - Keith David Black Herman - Willie Barnes Town's People and Musicians - Jean-Paul Bourelly and Deborah Malone

THE MOJO AND THE SAYSO (1989)

The Mojo and the Sayso is inspired by the 1973 killing of a ten-year-old boy by a New York City police officer.

A graduate of Howard University and Goddard College, Rahman along with Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez and others was active in the 1960s Black Arts Movement. Her plays were produced at the Public Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music and theaters and universities across the United States.

She served as director of playwriting at the New Federal Theater in New New York Her plays are distributed by Broadway Play Publishing.

Chewed Water: A Memoir, the story of growing up in Harlem in the 1940s and "50s, was published in 2001 by University of New England Press.

(formerly The Lady and the Tramp) It is dedicated to Charles Mingus Jr’s ingeniousness, his humor and revolutionary spirit, and his great contribution to American classical music more commonly labeled jazz. The play was later revised and renamed Uptown!, part of Rahman’s Mingus Takes (3)

Cast Requirement: 3 (1f, 1m)

Characters: Opal, Psyche, Cellist

Publication Info:Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women.

She described her writing as adhering to a “jazz aesthetic,” and was the author of numerous plays, including the dramas Unfinished Women Cry In No Man's Land While a Bird Dies in Gilded Cage, The Mojo And The Sayso, Only in America, Chiaroscuro and three plays with music, Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy, The Tale of Madame Zora, and Has Anybody Seen Marie Laveau? Her plays were produced at the Public Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, BAM, and theaters and universities across the United States.

In Speaker’s Head, a speaker introduces his concepts on America’s “eminent world domain.” In If Only We Knew, An African immigrant in New York describes how he was shot by police. (Source)

LADY DAY: A MUSICAL TRAGEDY (1972)

An episodic, jazz-infused take on the life and death of Billie Holiday.

In Uptown!, a drunk tramp named Psyche strikes up a conversation with Opal on the bus.

Cast Requirement: 9 (7f, 2m)

Characters: Charlie Chan, Master of Ceremonies; Wilma; Paulette; Consuelo; Mattie; Midge; Head Nurse Jacobs; Charles Parker, Jr., Musician; Pasha, A European Lady

Publication Info:Plays.

Rahman died on December 9, 2014 and she is survived by her daughter Yoruba Richen, a filmmaker. The tossed-away scraps he finds for it in junkyards are transformed into classy, priceless parts. (1999)

An opera that "examines the protean nature of race through a tale of ethnicity, religion, and romance in ante-bellum New Orleans." 

Rahman's opera libretto is a quasi-historical fantasy set on the eve of the Civil War when New Orleans was occupied by Union forces.

Among her numerous fellowships, grants and awards are a special citation from the Rockefeller Foundation of the Arts for dedication to playwriting in the American Theater. An accomplished playwright and author, Aishah Rahman was a Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University from 1992-2011. She participated in numerous demonstrations, including in 1961 to protest the murder of Patrice Lumumba.

She attended Howard University and Goddard College, and in 1992 she became a professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.