"It's such synchronous situation...As an artist-scholar, I find an issue that's really interesting to me and I end up having a both creative representation of my answer to that question and a scholarly one. The first time that happened was [my play] Single Black Female, which were comedic outtakes from my first book Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African-American Middle Class...[SBF looked at] the same themes I'm working through in this book about how we present Black middle class, educated, professional women, who are allowed to be fully sexualized beings in ways that aren't worried about 'ruining the race' and are sexually active and alive. Two different projects...both of them allow me to look at one issue in two different ways."
We talk with award-winning playwright, author, and University of Texas professor Dr. Lisa B. Thompson about why theatre is like a postcard, the importance of intergenerational connections, how her work in academia and the theatre world inform each other.
Recommendations: Valerie June, Corinne Bailey Rae, Nancy Wilson, Amy Sherald, Deborah Roberts, Julie Dash's Illusions, and Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard
Shout out: Dominique Morisseau, Dr. Monica White Ndounou, Jackie Sibblies Drury