FSEM 163   Contemporary African American Drama

Faculty Profile for Professor Bass

The dramatic writing by current African American writers represents some of the richest, most urgent, daring, provocative, diverse, challenging, and dynamic writing being done for the American Theater today. These current and vibrant Black voices are adding to, disturbing, disrupting and recontextualizing the American theater landscape. Their bold plays, which speak potently to our current national moment vis-à-vis Black lives, dramatize and theatricalize ideas, themes, and issues of race, racism, spectatorship (“the white gaze”), class, mass incarceration, genders, the legacy and continuing impact of American slavery, sexualities, family dynamics, love, and relationships. Students study the dramatization of African American experiences and perspectives, examined through close readings, viewings, and informed discussion of works by current contemporary Black American playwrights, scholars, and drama critics. Students who successfully complete this seminar receive credit for THEA 273 and can satisfy the human thought and expression areas of inquiry requirement or the confronting collective challenges liberal arts practice requirement.

Kyle Bass is the author of the plays Toliver & Wakeman, Tender Rain, Citizen James, or the Young Man Without A County, Salt City Blues, Possessing Harriet, and is the co-writer of the screenplay for the film Day of Days. He teaches courses in playwriting, narrative screenwriting, and dramatic literatures, and is the Resident Playwright at Syracuse Stage.