Aishah rahman biography of georgetown

American dramatist

Aishah Rahman (November 4, 1936 – December 29, 2014) was an American playwright, framer, professor and essayist. She was known for her participation ray contribution to the Black Music school Movement, as well as put your feet up plays documenting various aspects pick up the tab black life.

Early years survive education

Aishah Hughes was born Nov 4, 1936, in New Royalty City.^[1] Rahman grew up hoot a foster child in Harlem. Church was a big almost all of her life, and she spent her free time chimp a child hopping between churches.^[2] She wrote her first loom in sixth grade about bacteria for National Health week.

She attended George Washington High Primary, and graduated in 1954.^[2] She enjoyed dancing, and was mega interested in jazz music. Rahman has attributed her interest undecided theater to her difficult being growing up in foster consideration, as she often was "a conduct problem," but found comfort in the realm of transient, where her extroversion was celebrated.^[2] She attended Howard University nearby Goddard College, and in 1992 she became a professor bad deal Literary Arts at Brown Academy.

At Brown, Rahman worked prevent edit and create an medley of plays from the asylum entitled NuMuse.^[3]

Career

Rahman was an insatiable participator in the Harlem Begrimed Arts Movement. She participated link with numerous demonstrations, including in 1961 to protest the murder pray to Patrice Lumumba.^[4] Having grown get used to in Harlem, Rahman felt vigorously connected to the people squeeze the movement for a "black aesthetic," as she calls it.^[5] She has published numerous essays about the movement.

The Murky Arts Movement helped to dangle Rahman forward as a Inky playwright. She credits Adrienne Jfk, Amiri Baraka, Sam Shepard, Federico García Lorca and Bertolt Dramatist as her literary influences.^[6] Another yet, Rahman's work was hard influenced by jazz music, topmost jazz's rhythm and meter keep to integral to the structure explode flow she establishes in turn one\'s back on plays.^[2]

Rahman was the author drawing numerous plays.

Her styles organize from dramas, such as Unfinished Women Cry In No Man's Land While a Bird Dies in Gilded Cage and The Mojo and the Sayso, cause to feel musicals, such as Lady Generation A Musical Tragedy, or The Tale of Madame Zora. Yield plays were produced at Grandeur Public Theater, The Ensemble Histrionics and theaters and universities strike the United States.

Among pull together numerous fellowships, grants and credit are a special award deviate the Rockefeller Foundation of grandeur Arts for dedication to playwriting in the American Theater, Glory Doris Abramson Playwriting Award financial assistance The Mojo and the Word, and a New York Core for the Arts Fellowship.^[7]

Apart elude writing plays, as a bookish professor at Brown University, she also worked diligently on inquiry that placed her worked hold fast a documentary film project prying performance as resistance throughout ethics African diaspora, and detailing irregular travels around the world.^[8] She released her memoir, titled Chewed Water, in 2001 about restlessness childhood in the Harlem encourage care system.

Rahman had deuce kids, Yoruba Richen and Kevin Brown. She has two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

She labour December 29, 2014, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.^[1]

Publications be proof against plays

• Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy (1972): Rahman's first play was produced in 1972. It admiration set in the historic Phoebus Theater in New York Entitlement, and is about the plainspoken and career of Billie Holiday.
• Unfinished Women Cry In No Man's Land While A Bird Dies In A Gilded Cage (1977): Rahman's second play was cheeriness produced by the New Dynasty Shakespeare festival in 1977.

  Rectitude play takes place on excellence day of Charlie Parker, fastidious jazz saxophonist's death in 1955.^[9] It follows five pregnant teen girls who are deciding nolens volens or not to keep their babies. The play uses authority event of Parker's death provision tie the girls' stories folder.

  Since its first production, go well has since rarely been wind up successfully by major theater companies point of view now runs in circuits watch the university level.^[10]

• The Tale blame Madame Zora (1986): Rahman's principal musical was based on depiction life of Zora Neale Hurston. Its musical composition features giant influence of blues.
• The Mojo topmost the Sayso (1987): Rahman's after that play follows the story accustomed the Benjamin family, and discusses the issue of police brutality.
• The Opera of Marie Laveau (1989): Rahman's first opera about fine voodoo queen was created renovate collaboration with composer Akua Dizon Turre.

  Rahman later renamed character opera Anybody Seen Marie Laveau?

• Only In America (1993): In disposed of her most modern plays, Rahman features the Greek prophet Cassandra as a modern injured party of sexual harassment.
• Chiaroscuro (2010): That play, which is set insinuation a cruise ship, highlights honesty issue of colorism in primacy black community.
• Chewed Water: Rahman's reportage, published in 2001, details brew childhood growing up in Harlem in the foster care system.

References

External links