PLAYWRIGHT

Carolyn NUR WISTRAND

Carolyn Nur Wistrand’s plays have been staged in New York City with The Castillo Theatre, The Negro Ensemble Company, Inc., Love Creek Productions, Playwrights Preview Productions, Open Eye: New Stagings, New Perspectives Theatre and The International Center for Women Playwrights.Her work has also been staged at The Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, New Orleans; Bilingual Foundation for the Arts, Los Angeles; Echo Theatre, Dallas; Wordsymth Theatre, Houston, Teatro Bravo and Bridge Initiatives, Phoenix; International Center of Women Playwrights at Around the Coyote, Chicago, Dillard University, New Orleans; The Dept. of Africana Studies, University of Michigan-Flint; Savannah State University; Savannah Black Heritage Festival; Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History; Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta; Wayne State University, Detroit; Southeastern Louisiana University; and The Great Plains Theatre Conference, Omaha.Carolyn is a professor of English and Drama at Dillard University in New Orleans, the oldest HBCU in Louisiana, which houses the longest running degree-conferring Black Theatre Program in the United States. She is a recipient of a MCACA/NEA Theatre Award and NEH Summer Fellowship in Classical Greek Drama for HBCU Faculty.

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AWARD-WINNING PLAYS

FEVER

Set in the summer of 1853, during the deadliest Yellow Fever epidemic of the 19th century, FEVER brings to life the legendary Marie Laveau at the height of her power. As the Vieux Carré succumbs to disease, Laveau tends to the sick with her renowned herbal remedies, even as doctors resort to ineffective and often dangerous treatments. But when her own daughter, Philomène, falls ill, Marie faces a crisis that shakes her belief in her own power—one that summons the presence of Baron Samedi, the Haitian god of the cemetery.Blending historical events with mystical realism, FEVER reimagines the life of a misunderstood icon, portraying Marie Laveau not just as a myth, but as a real woman grappling with faith, fear, and resilience during one of the darkest chapters in New Orleans history.Awards
Sherri Marina Memorial Grant For New Full-Length Plays
Jazz And Heritage Foundation, New OrleansProduction HIstory
Dillard University
Stills from the production of "Fever" at Dillard University belowHome

SHE DANCED WITH A REDFISH

From The Southern Review of Books
There’s something about reading a play that allows for full immersion into a different world. Carolyn Nur Wistrand’s play, She Danced with a Redfish: A Play in Two Acts, creates the feeling of being tucked away, hidden, while watching a secret unfold. Each well-researched scene reveals the moments when Marie Laveau steps into becoming the most famous healer and spiritual leader in New Orleans history.Read the entire review at the Southern Review of BooksFrom Country Roads Magazine
Some plays are best performed on stage and never read; thankfully, this is not one of those, and earlier this year UL Press published it in book-form. Even with relatively minimal stage directions, Wistrand manages to depict Laveau’s world on St. Ann Street viscerally, leaning into drama and magical realism to let the audience’s imagination fill gaps intentionally left vague. Photographs from the original production at Dillard assist in filling in the vision, as well. It is easy to imagine how a theatre director might be drawn to producing She Danced with a Redfish, assuming they could guarantee a strong cast of Black or Creole actors to carry it: the setting is relatively simple and fixed at Laveau’s home, and historical accuracy would likely be the biggest hurdle for the otherwise simple staging.The “Women of the Vieux Carre”—named Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday—act as a chorus, establishing the scene and forwarding the narrative throughout. Wistrand’s use of a chorus conjures the feel of a Greek or Roman play, which draws interesting parallels between the mythology and theatre of New Orleans and that of ancient Greece. A devotee of both, I was inspired by this play to consider connections I never before noticed, depicting Laveau with raw human emotion, tragedy, and power not unlike Sophocles’s Antigone or Euripides’s Medea.

Read entire article at Country Roads MagazineOrder She Danced With A Redfish from UL PressAwards
Winner of the Inkslinger National Playwriting Competition, Southeastern Louisiana University,
Finalist New Dramatists, New York.Production History
Stills below from Dillard UniversityHome

RISING

An African American school teacher is recruited by Abolitionists to go behind the Confederate line to teach recently freed Gullah women, who are designated contraband by the Union, while an Irish girl is sentenced to ten years in a Baltimore penitentiary for carrying a Black man’s child. Based on real historical events that occurred during the Civil War, this is the story of two women, Black and White, facing life threatening encounters on the eve of President Lincoln drafting the Emancipation Proclamation.Order from Brooklyn PublishersPress
University of Michigan-Flint lecturer wins national political writing contest for play about the education of freed slaves after the Civil WarUM-Flint Faculty Member Wins Political Playwriting ContestAwards
Winner of the Mario-Fratti-Fred Newman National Political Play Contest, Castillo Theatre, New York City.
MCACA/NEA Theater Award
Hope and Optimisim Playwriting Award, Cornell University (finalist)Production History
Castillo Theatre, New York City
New York Theatre Workshop, New York City
Negro Ensemble Company, New York City
Great Plains National Theatre ConferenceHome

Ida B. ‘n the Lynching Tree

Black history is American history, to be shared and experienced by all.This is the message the Savannah State University’s(SSU) theatre group, Players by the Sea, in collaboration with The Collective Face Theatre Ensemble, hopes audiences will take away from their theatrical performance of “Ida B. n’ the Lynching Tree,” showing Feb. 16-20 at the Kennedy Fine Arts Center on SSU’s campus.

Read at Connect Savannah

The true story of Ida B. Wells, America’s most courageous African American female journalist and a founding member of the NAACP, comes to life in the play Ida B. ‘n the Lynching Tree by playwright Carolyn Nur Wistrand. The play will be presented on Wednesday, Feb. 16 as a part of the Savannah Black Heritage Festival.

Read at Savannah TribuneOne of the most important aspects of Black History Month, which the country marks each February, is the attention that it puts not only on the contributions of African Americans to society and history, but the specific focus on notable individuals who otherwise have been so overlooked.Dillard University's theater department spotlights such an individual this month with the local premiere of "Ida B 'N the Lynching Tree," by playwright Carolyn Nur Wistrand.

Read at Nola.comAwards
Confronting Racism Grant,Ruth Mott Foundation
NAACP/ACTSO Natiional Gold Medalist in Drama

Production History
Savannah State University, Savannah, Georgia
Savannah Black Heritage Festival, Savannah, Georgia
Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana
Dept. of Africana Studies, University of Michigan-Flint
Beecher High School, Flint, Michigan
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American HIstory, Detroit, Michigan

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MAGDALENA’S CROSSING

Magdalena's Crossing is a modern tale of life on the Southwest border set between El Paso, Texas and Juárez, Mexico. Alternating between magical realism and grittiness, the story centers on Magdalena, a young woman from the colonias in Juárez, who flees Mexico to escape spousal abuse. Desperate to survive without documentation and limited English skills, Magdalena finds work in a seedy bar in downtown El Paso, where Dalia, the matron, serves as her employer, teacher, and pimp. When Jamal, an African American soldier stationed at Fort Bliss enters the lounge, his presence unravels Magdalena’s guarded secret. A chorus of Latina women serve as the collective consciousness as the divergent border cultures begin to collide. Magdalena’s Crossing shifts between one young woman’s past in Juárez and present in El Paso, ultimately leading to murder and her spirit's choice of where, truly, is home, while the brutality of our present-day immigration crisis looms.AwardsWomen’s International Playwriting Conference, Montreal, Canada
Honoree, Jane Chambers International Feminist Playwriting
Honoree, Feminist Playwriting, Echo Theatre, Dallas Texas
First Runner-Up Female Playwright of the Year, Bridge Initiatives, Phoenix, Arizona
Teatro Bravo New Plays Festival, Phoenix, Arizona
Finalist, Eugene O'Neill Playwriting Conference

Production History
The Negro Ensemble Company, Inc., New York City
Teatro Bravo, Phoenix, Arizona
Echo Theatre, Dallas, Texas
Wordsymth Theatre, Houston, Texas
The Bridge Initiative, Phoenix, Arizona
Ysleta Independent School District, El Paso, Texas

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EVEN THE DIRT BLEEDS DOWN HERE

This play is a folkloric drama of the Deep South that embraces the relationship between magic and everyday life, the hierarchy of skin tone, and the unity of themes in African-American life over the 20th century. The characters appear in 1904 and 1974 linked by fate, blood, and conjure.Awards
James T. Nolan Southern Playwriting Award
The Pen is a Mighty Sword, Finalist, Los Angeles
Big Shout Out Echo Theatre, Dallas
ICWP, Selected Female Playwright, Arthur Seelen Theatre, New York City
ICWP, Selected Female Playwright, Around the Coyote, Chicago

Production HIstory
Love Creek Productions, New York City
Echo Theatre, Dallas, Texas
Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, New Orleans, Louisiana
ICWP, Around the Coyote, Chicago, Illinois
ICWP, Arthur Seelen Theatre, New York CityHome

ONE ACT PLAYS

SECOND COMING (One Act)
Second Coming is a single-act character study in racism that spans 150 years. All of the action takes place in the parlor of a once grand, but now faded, South Carolinian plantation home belonging to the Welsh family. The four characters are Welsh women, but with decidedly different points of view on the nature of their heritage. Through them an examination of racist attitudes in the South is dramatized for the stage.Production History
Love Creek Productions, New York City
Open Eye: New Stagings, New York City
Playwrights Preview Productions, New York City
National One Act Festival, Nat Horne Theatre, New York City

Order from One Act Play Depot9 STEPS FROM ST. ANN STREET (One Act)When her daughter disappears, a mysterious free woman of color must come to terms with her decision to embrace African traditions in antebellum New Orleans.Order from One Act Play Depot Production History
2014 Arts & Letters Drama Finalist
2009 Great Plains Theatre Festival, Omaha
2008 UM-Flint, Lecturer’s Award)
Equity Showcase Production: GIRL/POWER
New Perspectives Theatre, New York City
UM-Flint, Creative Arts Activity AwardTHE INSURRECTION OF 1822 (One Act)Based on the ill-fated insurrection, led by Denmark Vesey, in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822.Production History
National African American History Conference
Featured Production: Michigan State University
Dept. Africana Studies, University of Michigan-Flint
Black History Month Featured Production, Beecher High School, Flint MichiganWATCHWOMEN (One Act)When a South African nursing student faces deportation from the United States for stealing medicine from a clinic, three young African girls haunt her prison cell with memories from the homeland.Production History
Commissioned By Savannah State University
Players By The Sea, Savannah State UniversityMEAN MOLLY (One Act)
When Watah Mocasin goes fishing in a slave burial ground, the spirit of Mean Molly, a young West African woman that died in Massah George’s smokehouse, is unleashed upon the newly freed men and women in the low country of South Carolina during the first year of Reconstruction. Guided by the Ijebu warrior, Obonto, the people work collectively to return her trust to the Ancestor House.Production History
Featured For Black History Month At Beecher High School, Flint, MichiganOrder from One Act Play DepotTIC TOCTwo disgruntled employees are forced to work the suicide shift in an inner-city modern diner on the night a drug deal goes awry.Production History
Commissioned by Savannah State University for World Aids Day.
Production History
Savannah State University, Savannah, Georgia

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Youth Plays

THE CASE OF THE LOST LAVAKIAN PRINCESS (One Act)
The Case of the Lost Lavakian Princess is a mystery set in 1895. When the Lavakian Princess is kidnapped in London, the Baroness of Slovakia solicits the services of Sherlock Holmes’ niece to find her. Sherina Holmes and her sidekick Winifred Watson head for Hobble Row, in London’s crime district, where they discover underworld petty criminals involved in an international plot. Things go awry after Miss Watson is taken hostage, leaving Miss Holmes to solve the case before time runs out! A fantastic mystery for teens!Order from Drama NotebookProduction History
2024 Theatre Camp, California
2023 Creative Alliance, Australia
Mount Si High School, Washington
2022 Vidalia Heritage Academy, Georgia
Dolan Middle School, MichiganELLA CINDER’S BLUES (One Act)
Ella Cinder and her two sisters scrub floors in Eddie Diamond’s depression era jazz club where the Showgirls treat them like servants. On the night everyone is preparing for the big card game they receive a visit from their magical godparents.
Waller High School, Texas
Andover High School, Kansas
Providence Day School, North Carolina
Wauneta Pallisade School, Nebraska
Northpolk High School, Iowa
Ysleta Middle School, TexasOrder from Brooklyn PublishingBEAUTY IN BLACK PERFORMANCE The four plays in this book bring together aspects of American history and culture that dramatize the presence and contributions of Africans and African Americans in the shaping of the United States. Written for performance by junior and high school youth, the plays introduce students to The Middle Passage, The Antebellum South, Slave Revolts in 19th century America, Reconstruction & The Jim Crow Era, Lynching, Folktales of The Deep South, and The Harlem Renaissance.Production HistoryDept. of Africana Studies, University of Michigan-Flint
Pierce Elementary School, Flint, Michigan
International Academy, Detroit, Michigan
Beecher High School, Flint, MichiganOrder from African World PressTAHIRIH
Dramatization of the famed Persian poet who unveiled her chadar in an assemblage of men in 1848 and was martyred at the age of 36 for her religious beliefs, heralding the dawn of a new revelation, in Tehran, Iran in 1853.Production History
Africana Studies, University of Michigan-Flint
Beecher High School, Flint, Michigan
International Baha’i Youth Conference, Bloomington University
Detroit Masonic Temple
University of Michigan-FlintHome

PUBLISHED PLAYS

All published plays are linked here

SHE DANCED WITH A REDFISH
Order She Danced with a Redfish at Amazon
Order She Danced With A Redfish at U.L. Press
Order She Danced With A Redfish at Barnes and NobelBEAUTY IN BLACK PERFORMANCE
Order Beauty in Black Performance from Africa World PressRISING
Order Rising from Brooklyn PublishersIDA B. 'N THE LYNCHING TREE
Order Ida B. ‘n the Lynching Tree from Amazon
Order Ida B. ‘n the Lynching Tree from One Act Play DepotSECOND COMING
Order Second Coming from One Act Play Depot9 STEPS FROM ST. ANN STREET
9 Steps from St. Ann Street from One Act Play DepotMEAN MOLLY
Order Mean Molly from One Act Play DepotELLA CINDER'S BLUES
Order Ella Cinder's Blues from Brooklyn PublishersTHE CASE OF THE LOST LAVIAKAN PRINCESS
Order The Lost Laviakan Princess from Drama NotesbookWATCHWOMEN
Read the play at the Cochella Review
The Coachella Review is a literary arts journal published by the University of California, Riverside–Palm Desert MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts.BEST ONE ACT PLAYS ANTHOLOGY
Best One Act Plays AnthologyTAHIRIH
Carmel Publishers, Chandigarh, IndiaBEFORE THE SPANISH CAME
Contemporary Drama ServiceIMMIGRATION MAN
Bittersweet Woman’s Monologues, Theatre UnboundHome