Alice Childress - Trouble in Mind

In a time when Broadway is going through its own reckoning with its history of erasure, this revival of Trouble in Mind asks, how far have we truly come? Trouble in Mind is holding up a mirror to society, especially the sector that considers itself progressive. Sixty-six years ago, society chose to look away. Perhaps the plays premiere on Broadway is a sign we are finally ready to truly look at ourselves.

DIEP TRAN, NEW YORK THEATRE GUIDE

A sword-sharp satire Glorious to behold.

TERRY TEACHOUT, WALL STREET JOURNAL

Without question, Trouble in Mind is an old-fashioned playif we understand the term to mean well-built, lean, and clear of purpose. You absolutely must see it if you care about Black work on Broadway, American theater, and the evolving state of our canon.

DAVID COTE, OBSERVER

If a Broadway season in which Black playwrights are substantially represented has been a long time coming, the presence of one work is especially overdue. Trouble in Mind clearly and potently reflects its era, its enduring freshness speaks to how much progress has yet to be made.

ELYSA GARDNER, NEW YORK STAGE REVIEW

Alice Childresss searing play Trouble in Mind has finally made it to Broadway and the only frustrating thing about the show is that it has taken this long A play written at the time of Emmett Tills murder needed to be seen by a crowd who lived through the murder of George Floyd It will take your breath away.

MARK KENNEDY, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Trenchant To a startling degree, the play anticipates many of the conversations that have taken place in the past two years about the devaluation of Black artists in the theater world.

ADAM FELDMAN, TIME OUT NEW YORK

Trouble in Mind is an intellectually curious play, whose considerations of Black representation in art and liberal smugness make it hauntingly timely. Its layers of biting humor and damning observations hit notes about race, art, and integrity that are no less important for feeling familiar in 2021especially when you consider that Childress penned this work in the 50s.

LOVIA GYARKYE, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Childresss themes do not feel nearly as distant as they should Trouble in Mind was staged Off-Broadway in 1955, just as America was tipping into the civil rights movement, and Childress captured the very live anger of her era, as it was being experienced.

ARIFA AKBAR, GUARDIAN

Sixty-four years late and right on time, Alice Childresss wise and stirring backstage comedy-drama Trouble in Mind is making its long-in-coming Broadway debut. Trouble in Mind takes a behind-the-curtain look at the racism, coded prejudice, self-flattery, sexism, and built-in bigotry that Broadway has always professed to eschew To describe the play as prescient would be an understatement. Uncanny rings truer.

GREG EVANS, DEADLINE

Trouble in Mind is an engaging and stirring piece of activist theater which wrestles with the structural problems and racial inequalities at the heart of show business.

LIZZIE AKITA, LONDON THEATRE

Childresss play still has a lions bite six decades on and is a rock-solid, ferociously funny, tense piece of writing Her play is a lesson in construction, in the hot-blooded interplay of satire and seriousness. Trouble in Mind is just plain good.

JOHNNY OLEKSINSKI, NEW YORK POST

Written in 1955, the year the Montgomery bus boycott began, Alice Childresss Trouble in Mind is about a gifted and passionate Black actress held back by a predominantly white theater world. The fact that Childresss playfunny, startling, and incredibly modern-feelingisnt in the canon and didnt get a production on Broadway until this year shows how close it comes to the bone.

JESSIE THOMPSON, EVENING STANDARD

Trouble in Mind is not just a theatrical soapbox or a resurrected fusty old work. It is a well-structured play, a backstage comedy-drama filled with portrayals and dialogue that are often quite funny and satirical on the one hand, yet moving and assertive when the time is right.

HOWARD MILLER, TALKIN BROADWAY

Some will call Alice Childress prescient, but what is prescience when the events depicted have been occurring for centuries? Thats what makes this dynamite play even sadderafter sixty-some years, Trouble in Mind couldnt be timelier if it were written yesterday, and the events are as explosive and subversive now as they were in the 1950s.

DAVID GORDON, THEATERMANIA

FORTHCOMING FROM TCG BOOKS ILLUMINATIONS:

Happy Ending and Day of Absence

By Douglas Turner Ward

Insurrection: Holding History

By Robert OHara

Alice Childress

ILLUMINATIONS

THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP / NEW YORK / 2022

Trouble in Mind is copyright 2022 by Alice Childress

Still for a Second: An Afterword is copyright 2022 by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Trouble in Mind is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights, including but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the authors representative: Sarah L. Douglas, SLD Associates LLC, 454 12th Street, #1, Brooklyn, NY 11215, (917) 816-4023; sarah.douglas@sldassociatesllc.com.

Trouble in Mind, words and music by Richard M. Jones, 1926, 1937, Universal-MCA Music Publishing, a Division of Universal Studios, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved.

The publication of Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, through TCG Books Illuminations, is made possible with support by Mellon Foundation.

TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.

Library of Congress Control Numbers

2021045230 (print) / 2021045231 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-63670-015-1 (paperback) / ISBN 978-1-63670-016-8 (ebook)

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Cover, book design and composition by Lisa Govan

Cover painting by Alice Neel. Alice Childress, 1950; Oil on canvas; 30 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches; 76.5 x 51.1 cm; Collection of Art Berliner; The Estate of Alice Neel; Courtesy The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner

First Edition, May 2022