About the Play:

The Talented Tenth has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues, Female/Male Scenes, and Male/Male Scenes.

The Talented Tenth is a full-length comedic drama by Richard Wesley. The play chronicles the story of six Howard University graduates who, entering midlife begin to question their lives. Bernard Evans, a former civil rights activist and current successful business executive questions the choices that he's made in life as he seeks a balance between his activist past and comfortable future.

The Talented Tenth looks at the inner thoughts and lives of a group of middle-aged African American professionals, affluent graduates of Howard University's prestigious business school who have remained friends throughout the years. Now successful leaders in the corporate world, their family vacations are in Jamaica and the children of the three married couples are in private schools. The play's central character Bernard Evans was a star of the civil rights movement in the 1960s when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Bernard was hired fresh out of college by pioneer black businessman Sam Griggs. Bernard has risen to vice president within the ranks of Griggs' radio empire and is enjoying a state of prosperity and power. But something is missing; reality hasn't lived up to the political ideals he nurtured as a student, and Bernard is determined to reclaim the part of his life he feels he has lost. The title refers to NAACP founding member W.E.B. Du Bois' prediction that black people would be saved by the "talented tenth who, by education and exceptional ability, will extend a helping hand to the less fortunate and build them up." It's an obligation Bernard is determined to keep – even if no one else seems to understand the dissatisfaction he feels.

The Talented Tenth premiered in 1989 at the Manhattan Theatre Club and won the Audelco Award for best play. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 5 male

What people say:

"Wesley makes a compelling statement about the guilts, doubts and compromises of those African Americans who have escaped the soul-deadening grind of economic marginalism and achieved – at least ostensibly – the American dream.…Wesley's dialogue is epigrammatically brilliant, his drama far-ranging and moving, his themes universal." — Los Angeles Times

About the Playwright:

Richard Wesley is an African American playwright, and screenwriter for television and cinema. He is an Associate Professor in Playwriting and Screenwriting at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts where he is currently the Chair of the Department of Dramatic Writing.