UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, As Told to Aaron Coleman by Aaron Coleman

- Reading, The Old Globe, Powers New Voices Festival 2023
- Semi-Finalist, 2021 Princess Grace Award
- Selected for 2019 Primary Stages/ESPA Drills Reading Series

THERE'S MORE TO THE TALE THAN ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH.
Uncle Remus’s Brer Rabbit folktales have enchanted Americans for over a century—no one more so than Aaron Coleman, a writer trying to find his own story in...
- Reading, The Old Globe, Powers New Voices Festival 2023
- Semi-Finalist, 2021 Princess Grace Award
- Selected for 2019 Primary Stages/ESPA Drills Reading Series

THERE'S MORE TO THE TALE THAN ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH.
Uncle Remus’s Brer Rabbit folktales have enchanted Americans for over a century—no one more so than Aaron Coleman, a writer trying to find his own story in today’s world. Needing inspiration, Aaron finds himself in a plantation cabin in the late 1800s, face-to-face with the legend himself. As Remus starts spinning his wild stories, conjuring up a fantastical world of rabbits and foxes, he also reveals his untold life growing up in the antebellum South—a life that inspired his tales of family, courage, and survival.

UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, AS TOLD TO AARON COLEMAN is a new play about visiting the stories of the past to understand the present—and reveals the ultimate truths about being a black storyteller in America.

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UNCLE REMUS, HIS LIFE AND TIMES, As Told to Aaron Coleman

Recommended by

  • David Hansen:
    3 Apr. 2021
    “ The playwright himself travels back in time to meet the real Uncle Remus -- of course, there was no “real” Uncle Remus, but through a wild and wily adventure the Aaron Coleman of the play discovers the truths concealed in the fiction, and an even more important truth about himself, in the end literally (in the literary sense) reclaiming the narrative for future generations. It is marvelous with humor and also candor, fantastic and biting and witty, a timely tale of appropriation and cultural ownership. Check this out! ”
  • Crystal Skillman:
    20 Nov. 2020
    “ Through reading UNCLE REMUS, His Life and Times, As Told to Aaron Coleman, we are hearing the work of a tremendous new playwright in theatre - and the play’s message, as well as the rich history it explores and how it explores racial identity, story, and myth in this complex landscape called America floors me. Mixing folktales, American history and personal narrative, this work is both deeply personal and expansively universal. This play speaks to everything we are currently experiencing, and shows us how we got here. This play must be produced when we return to the theater. ”
  • Lee R. Lawing:
    18 Feb. 2020
    “ Wow! There is a story deep down in all of us, but what Coleman does is tear back all the junk history that we are fed and put the real stories front and center. All those regular people who just try to exist and find their place in their day to day lives. To voice their own stories. Their pain and struggles which were not properly shared. And most times still not. Our history books need a complete overhaul. I am in a better place today after reading Uncle Remus. Thank you Aaron Coleman for providing such a masterful lesson. ”

Development History

  • Reading
    ,
    Primay Stages / ESPA Drills Workshop & Reading Series
    ,
    2019

Awards

Semi-Finalist
,
Princess Grace Award
,
New Dramatists
,
2021