AFTER BIRTH OF A NATION
by David Robson
On the night of the first-ever White House movie screening, First Daughter Margaret Wilson must find a way to break with her past and become her own woman. Yet at a showing of the infamous epic The Birth of a Nation she is forced to fend off advances from a young minister, confront her own racial intolerance, and somehow live up to her duty to her father and to her country without completely losing her mind. After Birth of a Nation is a farcical sendup of politics, piety, racism, and our fractured American experiment.
- Cast Size: 6M 2W
- Running Time: 90+ minutes
- Royalty Rate: $75 per performance
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About the Playwright
David Robson is an award-winning playwright whose work for the stage has been hailed as “compelling”, “forceful”, and “gut-wrenching” by the New York Times, and “an important contribution to contemporary theater” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. His plays include BLUES IN MY SOUL: THE LEGEND AND LEGACY OF LONNIE JOHNSON; WITHOUT CONSENT; HAMMER OF GOD; BIRTHRIGHT (PlayPenn semi-finalist); AFTER BIRTH OF A NATION (Best Delaware Playwright Award); PRICELESS; PLAYING THE ASSASSIN (Philadelphia Critics’ Best Play Nomination); PLAYING LENI (co-written with John Stanton); A FEW SMALL REPAIRS; MAN MEASURES MAN (Barrymore Award nomination); and AFTER DENMARK. Work has been produced by TheaterWorks Hartford, Delaware Theatre Company, Penguin Rep, InterAct Theatre Company, Passage Theatre, and Act II Playhouse, among others. Robson was recently named Delaware’s Best Playwright by Broadway World, and is recipient of the Hotel Obligado Audience Choice Award for New Work. Other honors include the Susan McIntyre Playwriting Award, the Panowski Playwriting Award (runner-up), and two playwriting fellowships and three grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts. Play development: Theatre Exile (Philadelphia);Blank Theatre (Los Angeles), Bated Breath Theatre (Hartford, CT), Lark (NYC), White Pines Productions (Philadelphia, PA), City Theater Company (Wilmington, DE), Great Plains Theatre Conference (Omaha, NE), Last Frontier Theatre Conference (Valdez, AK), Rebel Theatre (NYC), and New Theatre (Coral Gables, FL). His plays and monologues are published by Smith and Kraus and Original Works Publishing. David is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild, the Playwrights’ Center, and is a former playwright in residence at the Lark Play Development Center in New York City. He is also the author of more than 20 books for young adults, including Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, The Murder of Emmett Till, and The Black Arts Movement. He earned an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College, an MS in English Education from St. Joseph’s University, and a BA in Communications from Temple University.
History cleverly disguised as a rollicking, hide-behind-the-sofa farce. Woodrow Wilson’s challenges are all there–a European war threatening to suck America in, racial tensions, an impending re-election campaign, and D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” about to re-ignite the KKK. Oh, and a willful daughter who wants to be a singer. But it’s all presented in a supremely silly package that’ll have audiences weak from laughter. Highly recommended.
Review After Birth of a Nation.