Valetta Anderson

Valetta Anderson

Valetta’s live stageplays include “Hallelujah Street Blues,” produced by Atlanta’s Horizon Theatre, “The Match” commissioned and produced by Kennesaw State University, “Leaving Limbo” produced as part of POWER PLAYS, Essential Theatre Festival, “Today” (AT&T:Onstage Award) and “She’ll Find Her Way Home” by Atlanta’s Jomandi Productions, Pittsburgh’s Kuntu Repertory Theatre and Nashville’s Fisk University...
Valetta’s live stageplays include “Hallelujah Street Blues,” produced by Atlanta’s Horizon Theatre, “The Match” commissioned and produced by Kennesaw State University, “Leaving Limbo” produced as part of POWER PLAYS, Essential Theatre Festival, “Today” (AT&T:Onstage Award) and “She’ll Find Her Way Home” by Atlanta’s Jomandi Productions, Pittsburgh’s Kuntu Repertory Theatre and Nashville’s Fisk University and also available at Blue Moon Plays. "Edward Coles: The Man Who Freed Illinois," and “Traveling Thomas” are in development. “Toni” is her first screenwriting credit and can be viewed at no cost to Amazon Prime Members.

Valetta is currently a member of Actors and Playwrights Collaborative and the Contemporary Club both in Cincinnati, Ohio, Working Title Playwrights in Atlanta Georgia and the Dramatists Guild. Formerly she has served on the Boards of Directors of Decatur Arts Alliance, Georgia Assembly of Community Arts Agencies and Working Title Playwrights. She was Executive Director of DeKalb Council for the Arts and was Resident Teaching Artist at the Alliance Theatre Institute for Educators and Teaching Artists. She was Teaching Artist with Atlanta’s Fox and Horizon Theatres and Adjunct Professor of Playwriting at Spelman College.

Plays

  • Edward Coles: The Man Who Freed Illinois by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    7–16
    ·
    Genre: biography, drama + 2 more
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    Keyword: Fictionalized History, Southern Illinois + 6 more
    Genre: biography, drama, period, political
    Keyword: Fictionalized History, Southern Illinois, Colonial Virginia, American slavery, anti-slavery, Abolitionist, Governor of Illinois, reparations
    The second governor of the State of Illinois, Edward Coles, was the tenth child of an Irish descended, Virginia slaveholding family. As neighbor of Thomas Jefferson, he grew up believing his mentor’s words were self evident. His education with Rt. Rev. James Madison, President of William and Mary College confirmed his desire to end slavery.

    Jefferson’s reply to Coles’ request for help was “This...
    The second governor of the State of Illinois, Edward Coles, was the tenth child of an Irish descended, Virginia slaveholding family. As neighbor of Thomas Jefferson, he grew up believing his mentor’s words were self evident. His education with Rt. Rev. James Madison, President of William and Mary College confirmed his desire to end slavery.

    Jefferson’s reply to Coles’ request for help was “This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation.” To Coles this meant that it was up to him and his generation to end slavery. Coles didn’t set his inheritance free in Virginia to be run out of the state without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. He handed out twenty manumission papers on the Ohio River, en route to land he purchased for them in the “free” State of Illinois.

    But Illinois had other plans for it’s “Free State” constitution. And Coles was determined to protect the families he had brought into Illinois, from being swallowed alive by a change to “Slave State” status. And so this play about an unsung though evermore remembered and actual United States Founder begins, through the gaze of those whom Coles’ actions set and kept free.

    ----------#----------
    1) “Thomas Jefferson to Edward Coles, August 25, 1814,” image, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, accessed June 16, 2021, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.047_0731_0734/?st=gallery.
  • The Sisterhoods: Almighty God's Own Fault by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    4
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: historical fiction, Sisters of Mercy + 1 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: historical fiction, Sisters of Mercy, american race relations
    The play begins in a Roman Catholic all girls high school in Chicago 1963, ventures on to May 1970's college life on Kent State and Jackson States campuses and lands on the Mall in Washington D.C. at President Barack Obama's January 2009 inauguration.
  • Medusa In You by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    7–10
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental
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    Keyword: 21st century black urban history, black lives matter + 2 more
    Genre: drama, experimental
    Keyword: 21st century black urban history, black lives matter, Death and transformation, Death by Police
    In parallel universes, two sets of Black/White parents race to stop daughter Eve’s quest to end all that makes her twin brother Adam’s murder by police, “tragically justifiable.” Four desperate parents battle for the one child, they have left, as History unearths an agenda all its own.
  • The Match by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, drama
    ·
    Keyword: Chekhov Adaptation, Judo
    Genre: adaptation, drama
    Keyword: Chekhov Adaptation, Judo
    “The Match” is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Duel.” Evan Lewis’ and his “still married to someone else” mistress, Nzinga Moore’s transplanted lives spiral out of control during the most northern bound hurricane to ever pass through Atlanta, Georgia. Evan’s inept business affairs and parasitic relationships disgust Judo Master, Robert King, to the point where he too misuses Nzinga to force his most...
    “The Match” is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Duel.” Evan Lewis’ and his “still married to someone else” mistress, Nzinga Moore’s transplanted lives spiral out of control during the most northern bound hurricane to ever pass through Atlanta, Georgia. Evan’s inept business affairs and parasitic relationships disgust Judo Master, Robert King, to the point where he too misuses Nzinga to force his most lackadaisical student, Evan, into a no-holds-barred and potentially deadly match.
  • Fame's To Blame by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: drama, experimental + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: Abandoned love, ballet + 3 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, tragedy
    Keyword: Abandoned love, ballet, regrets, Mourning, Sisters By Choice
    Rose and Lonnie resume their decades-long battle, as mourners gather to bury Angel, the dancer the world loved as much as Rose and Lonnie loved her.
  • Hallelujah Street Blues by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    7
    ·
    Genre: drama
    ·
    Keyword: Survival amidst gentrification, senior citizens + 1 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: Survival amidst gentrification, senior citizens, home
    A feisty matriarch and her family face off with each other and their changing neighborhood in this multi-generational comedy-drama. Elderly Josephine just wants some peace and quiet to live out her days and sip sweet tea. But the neighborhood is abuzz with renovators and speculators, and the house itself starts to burst at the seams when her adult children descend to fuss and fight over mama. But when their...
    A feisty matriarch and her family face off with each other and their changing neighborhood in this multi-generational comedy-drama. Elderly Josephine just wants some peace and quiet to live out her days and sip sweet tea. But the neighborhood is abuzz with renovators and speculators, and the house itself starts to burst at the seams when her adult children descend to fuss and fight over mama. But when their street is threatened by a large new development, Josephine and family must rally or risk losing their beloved house and neighborhood.

    Hallelujah Street Blues was born out of frustration with the on-going gentrification of established communities whose inhabitants go back in the same neighborhoods for generations. For today’s “urban pioneers,” gentrification is an exciting adventure in neighborhoods’ economic revitalization, that enjoys banner headlines and government support. But the elders, who struggle to hang onto their lifelong investments... their homes, are voiceless amid this clamor for pretend “progress.”

    To examine a “social problem” without taking into account its impact on human relationships and their accompanying emotions would be like examining a medical problem without asking the patient how she felt. Hallelujah Street Blues gives voice to these senior citizens whose hard work and determination are the shoulders on which all younger generations stand.
  • The Moral Of The Story by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    5–8
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, comedy + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: Grades PreK-6, Ibo + 1 more
    Genre: adaptation, comedy, fable/folktale, young audiences
    Keyword: Grades PreK-6, Ibo, Nigeria
    Why does Harry Hare, television spokes-hare for the National Hare Council on Carrots, race his longtime friend, Tommy Tortoise? Why can’t Harry’s niece, Harriet Hare spell carrot? This modernized children’s play also reveals the ancient Ibo (northern Nigeria) reason that tortoises have cracked, lumpy shells. This is a comedy in one-act play revealing much that inquiring young minds have always wanted to know –...
    Why does Harry Hare, television spokes-hare for the National Hare Council on Carrots, race his longtime friend, Tommy Tortoise? Why can’t Harry’s niece, Harriet Hare spell carrot? This modernized children’s play also reveals the ancient Ibo (northern Nigeria) reason that tortoises have cracked, lumpy shells. This is a comedy in one-act play revealing much that inquiring young minds have always wanted to know – an inside scoop on Aesop’s most famous Fable.
  • Leaving Limbo by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: drama, period
    ·
    Keyword: Gullah, hip hop + 3 more
    Genre: drama, period
    Keyword: Gullah, hip hop, Igbo, Pre-Colonial Africa, modern
    Absorbed in loneliness and his Spoken Word art, Chuck is struck by the death of “the closest thing to a mom I ever had,” Daisy’s Aunt Emma, whose mentoring spirit is replaced by the actual Spirit of an ancient slave trader, suddenly released from Limbo. These two, along with Daisy, her unborn child and two friends are swept to a pre-colonial African village where women mother large broods, divorce disappointing...
    Absorbed in loneliness and his Spoken Word art, Chuck is struck by the death of “the closest thing to a mom I ever had,” Daisy’s Aunt Emma, whose mentoring spirit is replaced by the actual Spirit of an ancient slave trader, suddenly released from Limbo. These two, along with Daisy, her unborn child and two friends are swept to a pre-colonial African village where women mother large broods, divorce disappointing husbands and seal newborn twins into jars abandoned among the trees... a horror to Chuck, who, with Spirit, are the only ones not absorbed into the village’s citizenry.

    “One ever feels this two-ness.-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body...” (Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls Of Black Folk (1903). Ed. David W. Bight and Robert Gooding-Williams. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997, Page 38.)

    Two-Ness... Hip Hop, drip drop, magical times and kinships with timeless love and ancestry chained to modern improvs of haunting, though forgotten memories.
  • She'll Find Her Way Home by Valetta Anderson
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: drama, period
    ·
    Keyword: Mound Bayou, Mississippi + 2 more
    Genre: drama, period
    Keyword: Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Reconstruction, Post Civil War
    This full-length drama tells the story of the only child of a wealthy though deceased Mississippi slaveholder. Martha Robb views her coming of age with the expectations of adolescent longings and the seemingly unending horizons promised by the victorious Union Army and her quadroon complexion. She and her lifelong and as fair complexioned friend, Thomas, could forge new lives for themselves, lives without...
    This full-length drama tells the story of the only child of a wealthy though deceased Mississippi slaveholder. Martha Robb views her coming of age with the expectations of adolescent longings and the seemingly unending horizons promised by the victorious Union Army and her quadroon complexion. She and her lifelong and as fair complexioned friend, Thomas, could forge new lives for themselves, lives without barriers… if they could only get past her mother, Gussie, who will not be swayed. Isaiah Montgomery, Vicksburg’s newest, wealthiest, coal-black complexioned store owner, is more than welcome to come courting her daughter. “She’ll Find Her Way Home” is a fictionalized account of the courtship of Martha and Isaiah Montgomery, the historical founders of the African-American town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

    “Like August Wilson’s scenes of blacks at home and at leisure, these moments have the natural, artless flow of life itself. And below the easygoing horseplay, the historical context creates an undertow of suspense, for these are the lonely advance scouts on a perilous journey from slavery into an alien white world.” (Dan Hulbert, Theater Critic, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, February 6, 1991. )

    “Jomandi Productions’ “She’ll Find Her Way Home” Hits Home… Anderson fingers something vitally important that all too often gets overlooked, pushed aside, –benignly censored from African American theater. Hats off to her for writing a love story about how an African American man and woman are able to work through difficulties, and learn to trust each other.” (Angela E. Chamblee, Theater Review, The Atlanta Voice, February 16, 1991.)