Finalist 2019-20

Dominique Morisseau

Play: Confederates

Dominique Morisseau

Synopsis: Sara is a strategic rebel slave turned Union spy and Sandra is a decorated professor in a modern-day private university. Though both women live over a century apart, they are strangely connected through the ways in which they navigate the throes of institutional racism, which is made even more pronounced when someone places a picture of a slave woman (Sara) on Sandra’s office door. The play leaps back and forth through time in order to trace the identities of these two black American women and explore the reins that racial and gender bias still hold on American institutions today.

Cast Breakdown: 4 W, 1 M

Set/Costume Requirements: A scarce set that can easily reveal past and present simultaneously. Some parts of the set reveal hints of a slave cabin, the other, a professor’s office. Costumes are similar, especially for all of the characters who double. Hints of the world of enslavement and the world of higher education.

Website: www.dominiquemorisseau.com

Agent:  Jonathan Mills, Paradigm, jmills@paradigmagency.com

Bio: Dominique Morisseau is the author of The Detroit Project (a 3-Play Cycle) which includes the following plays: Skeleton Crew (Atlantic Theater Company), Paradise Blue (Signature Theatre), and Detroit ’67 (Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem and NBT). Additional plays include: Pipeline (Lincoln Center Theatre), Sunset Baby (LAByrinth Theatre); Blood at the Root (National Black Theatre) and Follow Me to Nellie’s (Premiere Stages). She is also the TONY nominated book writer on the new Broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations (Imperial Theatre). Dominique is alumna of The Public Theater Emerging Writer’s Group, Women’s Project Lab, and Lark Playwrights Workshop and has developed work at Sundance Lab, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. She most recently served as Co-Producer on the Showtime series “Shameless” (3 seasons). Additional awards include: Spirit of Detroit Award, PoNY Fellowship, Sky-Cooper Prize, TEER Trailblazer Award, Steinberg Playwright Award, Audelco Awards, NBFT August Wilson Playwriting Award, Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama , OBIE Award (2), Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship, Variety’s Women of Impact for 2017-18, and a recent MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow.