Crumbs from the Table of Joy (NHB Modern Plays)

The Crump family is adrift and in trouble. Recently widowed Godfrey is under the spell of Sweet Father Divine, while his teenage daughters, Ernestine and Ermina, immerse themselves in the illusions of Hollywood to escape racial prejudice. But things change quickly when free-spirited Aunt Lily shows up…

This arresting, thought-provoking play about racial and social issues of the late 1950s was first performed Off-Broadway in 1995, and has since been revived numerous times.

'Lynn Nottage has packed so much life, love and history into her panoramic memory play… No matter how pain-filled and obstacle-ridden this tale of the coming-of-age of an adolescent African-American girl in 1950s Brooklyn might be, what drives this play is the pervasive sense of life as a great and exhilarating feast – a cornucopia of passion, imagination, knowledge, experience and yes, confusion, too'— Chicago Sun-Times

'Imagine a pairing… between Tennessee Williams and Lorraine Hansberry, a memory play about a black family, a glass menagerie in the sun'— New York Post

Imagine a pairing ... between Tennessee Williams and Lorraine Hansberry, a memory play about a black family, a Glass Menagerie in the sun. New York Post; Lynn Nottage has packed so much life, love and history into her panoramic memory play that her use of the word "crumbs" almost seems misguided. No matter how pain-filled and obstacle-ridden this tale of the coming-of-age of an adolescent African-American girl in 1950s Brooklyn might be, what drives this play is the pervasive sense of life as a great and exhilarating feast - a cornucopia of passion, imagination, knowledge, experience and yes, confusion, too. Chicago Sun Times; Lynn Nottage may be one of the most humane playwrights in our contemporary canon. Her plays give breathing space for her characters to find their voices, no matter how constricted their own circumstances may be. Chicago Tribune

Lynn Nottage is a double Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include: Clyde's; Mlima's Tale; Sweat (winner of the Pulitzer Prize); By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Ruined (winner of the Pulitzer Prize); Intimate Apparel; Fabulation; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por'knockers and POOF!Nottage was the recipient of the 2010 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, a MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' Grant, the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play (for Ruined), the Lee Reynolds Award and the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award. Her other honours include the Madge Evans and Sidney Kingsley Award, the National Black Theatre Festival's August Wilson Playwriting Award, the 2005 Guggenheim Grant for Playwriting, the 2004 PEN/Laura Pels Award, and fellowships from the Lucille Lortel Foundation, the Manhattan Theatre Club, New Dramatists and New York Foundation for the Arts.She is a co-founder and producer at Market Road Films LLC, a film production company.

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