As Broadway exposure grows for black women writers, ‘Trouble in Mind’ resonates - The Washington Post: ...The question of how evolved the performing arts are for black women — even in this presumably enlightened era of gender and racial identity — is posed anew by an old play in which Butler is appearing at the moment at Arena Stage. It is a play from the 1950s by another black woman, Alice Childress, who faced her own formidable obstacles in an industry unwilling at the time to yield her total control over her cold-eyed portrait of the subtle forms of racism she observed in the entertainment business.
Childress’s acclaimed “Trouble in Mind” — an exceptional production that runs through Sunday in Arena’s Kreeger Theater — never made it all the way to Broadway; in a foreword to the published version of the 1955 play, the dramatist is quoted as saying that the show’s producers “had me rewrite for two years” but that she declined to provide “the heartwarming little story” they desired. She kept to her vision of the drama, the tale of a first rehearsal of a bad if well-intentioned Southern play, in which the black actors, eager for employment, were forced to play humiliating stereotypes.
