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Crumbs from the Table of Joy
Crumbs from the Table of Joy
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Author: Lynn Nottage Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Format: Softcover # of Pages: 68 Pub. Date: 1998 ISBN-10: 0822215721 ISBN-13: 9780822215721 Cast Size: 4 female, 1 male
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About the Play:
Crumbs from the Table of Joy is a full-length drama by Lynn
Nottage. An African-American widower and his two teenage
daughters join the post-WWII northward migration to New York. The
changes they encounter, from segregated to integrated; from rural to
urban; and from widowed to re-married, forever alter their hopes,
their values and their lives. Crumbs from the Table of Joy features a true to life American Black family and gives voice to a generation that has long been ignored, and continues to be even today.
Crumbs from the Table of Joy is a sharp and boisterous play
from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynne Nottage about
family, faith, and revolution. Recently widowed Godfrey Crump, and
his daughters Ernestine and Ermina, move from Florida to Brooklyn for
a better life. Not knowing how to parent, Godfrey turns to religion,
and especially to a man called Father Divine, for answers. The girls
absorb their new surroundings, but immerse themselves in the
illusions of Hollywood instead of religion. But things change quickly
when free-spirited Aunt Lily, Godfrey's sister-in-law, shows up from
Harlem, having promised her sister that if anything ever happened,
she'd look out for the girls. Lily, while fascinating to her nieces,
stands for everything Godfrey dislikes: communism, sexual freedom and
the fight against racial discrimination. As the racial and social
issues of the late 1950s escalate, personal issues between Godfrey
and Lily explode, prompting him to walk out. A few days later, he
returns, with a new wife – a white, German immigrant, Gerte. With
Godfrey under the spell of Sweet Father Divine, Lily claiming to be a
part of the new revolution, and quiet, stoic Gerte coming from the
horrors of Germany, life in the household gets heated. Ultimately,
Lily must leave, seeing as she's neither Godfrey's wife nor the
girls' mother. Godfrey and Gerte keep the family together as best
they can, but nothing lasts forever. Ernestine, about to graduate
from high school, gets a job offer from her father, but it's not what
she wants to do. Instead, as a young woman in the dawn of a new age,
she sets off for Harlem in search of her spiritual mother, Lily, and
all of the causes she supposedly stood for during the "revolution."
Crumbs from the Table of Joy premiered in 1995 Off-Broadway
at the Second Stage Theatre. Since
then the play has been produced widely at professional theatres across
the US and has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.
Cast: 4 female, 1 male
What people say:
"Imagine a pairing… between
Tennessee Williams and Lorraine Hansberry, a memory play about a
black family, a glass menagerie in the sun… Crumbs from
the Table of Joy [is] a small window into the past, and
this almost voyeuristic glimpse is worth attention." — New
York Post
"…Crumbs from the
Table of Joy, a complex, thought-provoking play…."
— Chicago Sun Times
About the Playwright:
Lynn Nottage is an African-American playwright and
screenwriter whose work often deals with the lives of African
Americans and women. She is a graduate of Brown University and the
Yale School of Drama, and is also an Associate Professor in the
Theatre Department at Columbia School of the Arts. Her plays have
been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world.
She won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Ruined and for Sweat,
making her the first woman to win the prestigious award twice.
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