Vincent Terrell Durham

Vincent Terrell Durham

Vincent is an award-winning LA-based playwright who was born and raised in Upstate New York. His plays include MASKING OUR BLACKNESS (Winner, 2020 Samuel French Short Play Festival), POLAR BEARS, BLACK BOYS & PRAIRIE FRINGED ORCHIDS (2020 Semi-finalist, O’Neill), 61 UNUSED PAGES, THE FERTILE RIVER, TWELVE, and the short play collection VOL. 1—A POST-RACIAL AMERICA. His monologue “A Park For Children To...
Vincent is an award-winning LA-based playwright who was born and raised in Upstate New York. His plays include MASKING OUR BLACKNESS (Winner, 2020 Samuel French Short Play Festival), POLAR BEARS, BLACK BOYS & PRAIRIE FRINGED ORCHIDS (2020 Semi-finalist, O’Neill), 61 UNUSED PAGES, THE FERTILE RIVER, TWELVE, and the short play collection VOL. 1—A POST-RACIAL AMERICA. His monologue “A Park For Children To Pretend In” has been published in 08:46 Fresh Perspectives, A Collection of Monologues by Black Playwrights. Recently, Vincent developed new work as part of Utah Shakespeare Festival’s new play program Words Cubed and he has received commissions from Playground San Francisco/Planet Earth Arts and City Lights Theater. A proud gay man of color, Vincent writes to contribute to the legacy of Black theater-makers and to honor his family of vibrant storytellers.


Plays

  • Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids
    Inspired by his adoptive grandfathers, August Wilson and Norman Lear, Vincent Terrell Durham has penned the new play Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids. With the perfect blend of wit, humor, and pathos, Wilson and Lear invited audiences to sit back and eavesdrop on the human condition and the complexities of the times. Playwright Vincent Terrell Durham invites you to do the same by way of a...
    Inspired by his adoptive grandfathers, August Wilson and Norman Lear, Vincent Terrell Durham has penned the new play Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids. With the perfect blend of wit, humor, and pathos, Wilson and Lear invited audiences to sit back and eavesdrop on the human condition and the complexities of the times. Playwright Vincent Terrell Durham invites you to do the same by way of a last-minute cocktail party hosted by a well-intentioned white couple in their recently renovated Harlem brownstone. With little input from her trauma surgeon husband Peter Castle, socially and environmentally conscious Molly Castle has invited an array of Harlem neighbors over for cocktails. The guests are Jaquan Wallace a Black Lives Matter activist; Jaquan's plus one; Shameka a businesswoman, and author; and Rita Dupree a single mother of a slain 12-year-old black boy. The cocktail conversations quickly reveal the various personalities gathered around the bar. Emotional debates ranging from under-weight polar bears, un-flushed toilets, saving the planet, gentrification, racial identity, and how best to protect the lives of black boys reveal how complex and varied the American experience can be. A near tragedy brings them all together, while another quickly reminds us of the times we find ourselves.
  • Twelve
    A Short Play - 5 Black women recount the deaths of their sons over the course of several decades.
  • The Fertile River
    It’s the summer of 1958 and Mrs. Sarah Woods has been visiting colored families in a small rural North Carolina community. Armed with her North Carolina Eugenics Board questionnaire, she has been doling out sterilization orders to families of the afflicted, feebleminded, and genetically undesired. The targeted households, already ashamed of having imperfect children and impaired family members, keep their new...
    It’s the summer of 1958 and Mrs. Sarah Woods has been visiting colored families in a small rural North Carolina community. Armed with her North Carolina Eugenics Board questionnaire, she has been doling out sterilization orders to families of the afflicted, feebleminded, and genetically undesired. The targeted households, already ashamed of having imperfect children and impaired family members, keep their new misery a tightly held secret. Cora Lee Burden is the latest to receive an appointment notice from Mrs. Woods. The sixty-four-year-old grandmother of a mentally challenged child has no idea what a white social worker from the government would want with her family. But being a colored woman of the south she knows the visit is a call for caution.
  • Masking Our Blackness
    A Short Play - 5 friends gather to welcome in the new year and share resolutions on how to survive another 365 days of being Black in America.
  • NOW
    A Short Play - A NOW organizer arrives at a home in 1973 Massapequa, Long Island with an invitation to liberate the long-suffering housewife inside. She mistakes the Black housekeeper as the lady of the house.
  • 61 Unused Pages
    An unexpected delivery forces a son to confront childhood memories and the pain left by his absentee father.
  • Vol. 1, A Post Racial America
    Vol. 1 – A Post Racial America is a theatrical reminder of a broken promise. A reminder that the emergency brake on the Post Racial America train, conducted by Barack Hussein Obama, has been pulled, lurching a train full of hopeful Black Americans back to a time when 46.09% of voters thought America was great. Vol. 1 – A Post Racial America will ask theatergoers to bear witness as we disembark the stalled train...
    Vol. 1 – A Post Racial America is a theatrical reminder of a broken promise. A reminder that the emergency brake on the Post Racial America train, conducted by Barack Hussein Obama, has been pulled, lurching a train full of hopeful Black Americans back to a time when 46.09% of voters thought America was great. Vol. 1 – A Post Racial America will ask theatergoers to bear witness as we disembark the stalled train and drag her back from 1619 to 2020 and reclaim the promise of a Post Racial America.

  • Baby Black Jesus - Play One
    A Short Play. Darryl and Richard have just leased their first apartment together as a couple. Darryl is out to his family, but Richard is still passing Darryl off as his best friend. A surprise visit from Richard's mother leaves the two men with a decision to make.
  • Baby Black Jesus - Play Three
    A Short Play - Darryl and Richard are a couple of two years. Darryl is out to his family but Richard is still passing Darryl off as his best friend. This year Darryl wants Richard to come out during the annual Christmas Eve dinner party.
  • Baby Black Jesus - Play Four
    A Short Play - Darryl and Richard are putting a final end to their relationship, after Richard's horrible coming out attempt at his mother's annual Christmas Eve dinner party.
  • A Park For Children To Pretend In
    A Short Play - A couple take an Uber ride home from the hospital with their newborn son only to take a detour off into the future.
  • A Park For Children To Pretend In (Monologue)
    Darryl has come upon the murder scene of his 12 year-old son at the hands of the police.
  • A Change of Heart
    A Short Play - Two years after the death of their teenage son, Diane and Richard Peterson meet the man who received his heart.
  • Trash Day
    A Short Play - A woman confronts a homeless man rummaging through her garbage for discarded soda cans. She quickly discovers how much her garbage reveals about herself.
  • A Barefooted Easter
    A Short Play - Alberta Mae simply needs to purchase a new pair of Easter shoes for her growing daughter. Jim Crow laws of 1962 Mississippi won't allow colored children to try shoes on beforehand, so mothers have made the practice of tracing their child's foot on brown butcher paper and presenting it at the shoe store in exchange for a new pair of shoes. This Easter that practice will be tested.