Kirsten Greenidge

Kirsten Greenidge is an African American award winning playwright. Her plays usually deal with race related issues such as Baltimore, a play that made The Big 10 Consortium’s New Play Initiative. Her plays are also known as being hyper-realistic and having a close attention to spoken word like language. Other issues included in her works are intersectionality of race, gender and class.

Career

Greenidge started writing at an early age. She got into play-writing when she attended Wesleyan University. Her career shortly took off after participating in the University of Iowa’s playwright workshop. She currently works as an assistant professor at Boston University.[1]

Notable works

Milk Like Sugar

Milk Like Sugar is a coming of age play about 16 year old Annie who makes a pregnancy pact with her friends. As she's swept in dreams about having a baby and leading a happy life, she soon learns teen pregnancy is not all it's made to be in her head. The play won the Village Voice/Obie award.[2]

Luck of the Irish

Luck of the Irish is a play about an African American family’s whose house was bought by an Irish Couple in the 1950s and how to the family’s dismay the deed may have never been properly transferred. The family must now find the deed, convince the couple not to take the house, or risk eviction.[3]

Baltimore

Baltimore is play that Greenidge premiered not long after the Trayvon Martin shooting. After a racial epithet was written on students door the entire campus is in social debate about the racial issues taking place in a very contemporary college setting. Issues such as microaggressions, "color blindness" and social segregation are talked about in the play by an ethnically diverse cast.[4]

Critical reception

Greenidges plays are usually met with fairly mixed reception. New York Times said Luck of the Irish “feels overburdened and overwritten.”[5] Whereas The Chicago Tribune, praised it as “riveting and provocative.”[6] Much of the criticisms against Greenidge’s works comes from her use of hyper realism as a style and how characters may fail to define themselves to an audience.

References

  1. ↑ "Kirsten Greenidge - College of Fine Arts". www.bu.edu. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
  2. ↑ "Mosaic Theater". Mosaic Theater. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
  3. ↑ "Luck of the Irish - Noyes Cultural Arts Center - Chicago". www.theatreinchicago.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
  4. ↑ "College students absorb lessons on race in ‘Baltimore’ - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
  5. ↑ Isherwood, Charles (2013-02-11). "‘Luck of the Irish,’ by Kirsten Greenidge". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
  6. ↑ Jones, Chris. "A different take on racial issues and real estate at Next Theatre". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2016-12-13.
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