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Langston Hughes Playwrights Workshop at Lincoln University
History
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Evolution of the Langston Hughes Playwrights Workshop
In 1983, the 52nd Street Writers Workshop was established by Bushfire Theatre of Performing Arts under the advisement of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Charles Fuller and Rufus Caleb. Located at 224 South 52nd Street, the Writers Workshop is a 90-seat cafe facility where workshop plays are mounted.
At this time, the main stage space developed into a four-play season with at least two of those plays coming out of workshop. A resident group of non-professional actors was established and a series of classes was created to facilitate the development of workshop plays. In 1985, a resident core of professional actors and playwrights was established after Bushfire attained professional status through LOA with the Actors Equity Association.
The 52nd Street Writers Workshop continued to grow and developed a relationship with director Lloyd Richards and playwrights P. J. Gibson, Jeff Stetson, Judy Ann Mason, Richard Wesley, and the late Matt Robinson. In 1990, Al Simpkins, Bushfire's founder and artistic director, was invited to the Eugene O'Neill Summer Workshop in Waterford, Connecticut (where the late August Wilson served as dramaturg) by Tony Award-winning O'Neill Workshop director, Lloyd Richards. By 1991, the 52nd Street Writers Workshop had increased its annual number of workshop plays to twelve and Bushfire was producing at least three world premier plays each season. Because of the overwhelming number of plays coming in to be workshopped and due to Bushfire's inability to meet the demands of the number of local and national playwrights submitting plays, the initial idea for the Langston Hughes Playwrights Workshop emerged.
Al Simpkins sought support for the Langston Hughes Playwrights Workshop from nationally recognized playwrights, Pearl Cleage, Kathleen McGhee Anderson, Richard Wesley, Rudy Grey, and P. J. Gibson. The Playwrights Think Tank Symposium resulted from this and African American playwrights continued to meet once a year for the next two years to discuss their needs. Bushfire began discussions with Lincoln University in 1995 on the establishment of the Langston Hughes Playwrights Workshop because Langston Hughes graduated from Lincoln University. Since 1995, nationally recognized playwrights have come to Lincoln on three occasions to advise in the development of the Langston Hughes Playwrights Workshop.
Lincoln University and Bushfire Theatre of the Performing Arts are pleased to announce the first Langston Hughes Playwrights Workshop on June 23, 2006 through June 30, 2006.
Langston Hughes at Lincoln University
Langston Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University in 1926. "Lincoln is wonderful," Hughes wrote to Countee Cullen after a week at the little university of just over 300 students located amidst "trees and rolling hills and plenty of country." For the first time since the segregated third grade in Kansas, Hughes was in school among his own people. His first impressions were all favorable. He said, "Out here with the trees and rolling hills and open sky, in old clothes and this do-as-you-please atmosphere, I rest content. I like Lincoln so well that I expect to be six years in graduating." While a student living in Cresson Hall, Langston continued to write and graduated in 1928.
