|
Alice Childress was born in 1920 in South Carolina. She joined the
American Negro Theater of Harlem in 1940 as an actress. In 1941, she became
the Director of the American Negro Theater. She was the first African-American
woman to have a play produced professionally on the Broadway, and was the first
woman to win an Obie Award. Childress was also awarded the Paul Robeson Prize
for her outstanding contribution to the Arts. She dedicated herself to the cause
of young Black women.
She says: "My writing attempts to interpret the `ordinary' because they are not ordinary".
Wine in the Wilderness is a one-act play, a social comedy. The comic situations
help Childress to throw light on the ironies of her timepolitical, social and theatrical.
Though the comic situations ease the tensions generated in the play, the serious intention of
the playwrightto focus upon the conflict of attitudes towards African-American
identitycannot be undermined.
The play is set in the apartment of Bill, a Black artist. Bill is painting a triptych
`Wine in the Wilderness'. One panel shows a little Black girl in all her innocence. Another,
the centerpiece, the `Wine in the Wilderness', shows an exquisite, perfect ideal of
African beauty. The third is to be a contrast to the ideal. Bill is on the lookout for a model for
this third panel, when he gets a call from his neighbor Sonny-Man and Cynthia. They find
a perfect model for the lost woman. They meet Tomorrow Marie, or Tommy, who is in
a bar, waiting for a race-riot to end. |
