NEW YORK CITY: Last week during an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Jeremy O. Harris announced the Golden Collection, a collection of 15 plays by prominent Black playwrights which will be donated to public libraries and community centers in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam. The collection, launched in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, was named in honor of Harris’ grandfather Golden Harris, who died two weeks before Harris learned his play Slave Play would take the stage at Broadway’s Golden Theatre.
The Golden Collection is set to include Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry, The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe, An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs Jenkins, Sweat by Lynn Nottage, A Collection of Plays (Wedding Band and Trouble in Mind) by Alice Childress, Fucking A by Suzan-Lori Parks, We Are Proud to Present a Presentation by Jackie Sibblies Drury, The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, Is God Is by Aleshea Harris, Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith, Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange, Bootycandy by Robert O’Hara, Dream on Monkey Mountain by Derek Walcott, and Harris’ Slave Play.
The collection is being donated to libraries that are passionate about bringing these plays to their community, with many of the libraries and community centers spotlighting historic sites of racial progress, sites of continued racial violence and inequity, and serving predominantly Black communities. The Golden Collection is donated by Slave Play in lieu of sending scripts to Tony Award voters—Slave Play has received a historic 12 Tony nominations, more than any play in Broadway history—and the 800 total individual scripts were purchased from Sister’s Uptown Bookstore, the oldest Black-owned bookstore in Manhattan and a community resource center.
Slave Play has also partnered with Books and Crannies, a Black woman-owned independent bookstore located in Harris’ hometown of Martinsville, Va., to encourage individuals to purchase, gift, or donate the collection. For every purchase of the full collection, the bookstore will make a $10 donation to the National Black Theatre. The collection is available for $210 on the Books and Crannies website.
More information on the Golden Collection, including an interactive map highlighting the libraries and community centers receiving the donations, is available on the Slave Play website.
