DRAMA OF WORKS
BLACK LIVES
MATTER
If you wish to make a donation to Drama of Works because you were inspired or moved by either of these shows, please earmark it as such and we will make sure that money goes directly to the Artists of Color who created the show.
2/1/21 Black History = American History
6/6/20 Enough is enough.
Drama of Works stands with our colleagues, collaborators, peers, friends and fellow citizens in absolute disgust and horror as our Black and Brown brothers and sisters are being slaughtered with little recourse and no justice. We support the fight for equality and justice.
Drama of Works encourage parents to create safe spaces with their children to speak about the complex issues of race, power, justice, and inequity. In recent years we have been fortunate enough to collaborate with African-American playwright Amina Henry on two plays for young audiences which deal with some of these issues. WATER tackles the water crisis in Ethiopia, while RENT PARTY deals with the history of racism in America, specifically New York City.
In order to help in the process of discussing some of these challenging concepts, Drama of Works is making these performances available online. We hope they will support your dialogues. Art can be a healing force - one that can shed light into the darkness. Please also see a list of additional educational resources we've found below.
RENT PARTY // WATER
Excerpt,
RENT PARTY by Amina Henry
Harlem, NYC, 1920s
Performed by
AnJu Hyppolite,
Maya Posey,
Christian Roberson
and Ashley Winkfield
RICKY: What’s it mean? Discrimination?
ROSE: It means black folks have to pay twice as much as white folks for half as much. Not even half as much sometimes.
RICKY: That don’t seem fair at all.
ROSE: And discrimination is when black folks can’t hardly get jobs doin’ nothin’ but cooking and cleaning and driving for white folk.
JENNY: Right, right, discrimination, like when white folk look at you on the train like you ain’t nothin’. They ain’t exactly mean, but they ain’t exactly nice, either.
ROSE: Right, and sometimes they’re downright mean.
RICKY: When I grow up, I’m gonna punch white folks in the nose.
RESOURCES
A great list of Black owned businesses to shop from:
https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/support-black-owned-businesses/
A great list of children's books about race
Please buy books from Black-owned bookstores, this is a link to a list of online options
Some lessons created to teach social justice to elementary-age children
The full text of GAMES for ACTORS and NON-ACTORS by Augusto Boal (Theatre of the Oppressed)
A lovely article with tips and hints on speaking to your children about social justice
The American Psychological Association's page on helping parents speak to their kids about race
The organization Embrace Race has a lot of helpful info on their website.
One webinar is entitled, "How do I make sure I'm not raising the next Amy Cooper?"
Sesame Workshop's Social Impact Initiatives
Teaching Tolerance, an organization promoting education for social justice
NY Times, 26 mini-films for exploring race, bias and identity with students
Sesame Street and CNN's town hall on teaching children about racism, Saturday June 6th
A playlist of useful videos to help you with your discussions
(These are videos we have found, not videos we have made ourselves)
[More to come. If you have an amazing resource to share, we'd love to add it. Please EMAIL us!]