Its been about a month since attending the International Black Theater Festival (#IBTF2026) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and I am still reeling from the stories, the conversations, the anecdotes, the film screening, and the UNFORGETTABLE stage plays I saw.
I could not let the month of August pass without reflecting on what attending that festival meant to me, and tying it back to what I got from watching the Broadway production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone directed by Debbie Allen.
In the broadway play I saw in May was a STRONG theme for me of the parent-child relationship.
I was most struck by the way Joshua Boone’s Harold Loomis fathered his daughter Zonia, and how he dealt with the grief of giving her to her mother. In the plays I saw at #IBTF2026 the biggest theme for me in each play I saw was the parent-child relationship. Before I share what I gleamed about this relationship, I wanted to discuss these plays in the context of a novel written by an artist whose work stood out to me at this festival: Jackie Alexander. I noticed his novel being sold in the lobby of the theater where the film screening was held.
His novel’s title is Our Daily Bread and comes from the third to last chapter where the protagonist Kevin is told by his grandfather Da-dee: “Kevin, this world promises us nothing, not even our daily bread. But Jesus said to us, ‘what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.” Kevin hears this when Da-dee is trying to encourage Kevin after losing two of his best friends. I chose to write about this novel because its the first coming of age novel set in the late twentieth century that I read that is written from a male perspective. This is also a Gulf coast novel, set in Louisiana. I have lived on or near the Gulf for a big portion of my life, mainly in Pasco County, Florida that borders the Gulf, and I am aware of the social norms such a geographical area produces, and Alexander’s protagonist Kevin broke through each one. The only obstacle to his development seems to be his resentment towards his father for abusing his mother. Kevin is a biracial child to a Black father and a white mother. In most of the novel, Kevin resents his father for the way he abused his mother. However, as he grows up, dating women, he finds solace in multiple sex partners. When he marries one of them in Jolie, he gets confronted with his instinctual abusive tendencies from his father and by its end, seeks to eliminate these tendencies by choosing to see his father in prison and demanding from him the reason he abused his mother. I was impressed by Kevin’s introspection in this novel, and mostly by his decision to see his father when he noticed his tendency to hit Jolie.
In my second book Critical Responses about the Black Family in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child: Comrades in Comradeship, I quote my former therapist, Dr. Ayo Maria Gooden about how parents can set their children up for a healthy future by making healthy choices.
Harold Loomis wanted a more stable life for his daughter so he made the healthy yet difficult choice to let her mother raise her.
In the conversation I had with Ralph Carter, he shared that Woodie King Jr. directed him in a play that he got John Amos to perform in it, where his dad was schooling him about street life.
In the play I saw “Blooming in Dry Season,” written by Eljon Wardally, the father character was at first reluctant to let his daughter leave Grenada to pursue a career as a musician in the States. By the play’s end, he chooses to give his savings to let his daughter pursue her dream.
In the play reading I attended called “The Nigga and the Pitbull,” a daughter brings her boyfriend home to a contemptuous father who has nothing but disdain for his class background. The story reveals that those elements the father paid to spy on his daughter’s boyfriend end up being the same forces that kill his daughter.
In the conversation with Nate Jacobs, the writer of the musical Marvin: A Marvin Gaye Revue, I was struck by the father-son relationship between Marvin and his father. This is a relationship I want to explore in a sketch I am currently working on.
The #IBTF2026 stirred some creative juices inside me that have been dormant for years.
In the play I saw “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” written by Jackie Alexander, I was struck in that play by how the father’s neglect of his son resulted in the son seeking attention and validation elsewhere, with drug dealers. It took Bagger Vance to save the son and to redirect the father to pay more attention to his son.
I cherished attending a conversation between actress, director, producer and dear friend Bianca Laverne Jones having a conversation with her dad Herman Levern Jones about his relationships with Woodie King Junior at New Federal Theater and with My favorite anecdote of this conversation was Bianca as a seven or eight year old kid putting up the peace sign to her dad and Larry Hamilim while eating her McDonalds hamburger with the limo window going up (you had to be there).
My favorite of the plays I attended was the Tuesday night reading of Karani Marcia Johnson’s play “The Trial of One Short Sighted Black Woman Versus Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae.” The entire play is a court case where the quintessential career woman is suing Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae for what she believes is perpetuating the harmful stereotypes of the mammy (Mammy Louise) and the Jezebel (Safreeta Mae). After hearing the case of the career woman, played unforgettably by Lisa Arrindell, and her lawyer, the prosecutor performed perfectly by Bianca Laverne Jones, who cites a famous mainstream film that Mammy and Safreeta Mae supposedly appeared in, makes the case that Mammy and Safreeta are guilty of promoting stereotypes of Black women that are harmful to the progress of the race. The career woman and the prosecutor’s arguments seem absolutely void of conscious parenting. The play shines in the second half when Mammy Louise gets to tell her side of the story. She is speaking on behalf of the character and dignity of all Black parents who did their best to raise conscious Black children. She wails on behalf of all Black people, and makes clear to the career woman and the prosecutor that what they thought they saw in the mainstream film, was in fact NOT her. Her presence, her pain and her dignity was nowhere in those
This is a play that Woodie King Jr. brought to the festival in Winston-Salem in 1999. I see why. Any conscious parent should make their child aware of what Mammy Louise says in Karani Johnson’s play.
In Our Daily Bread, Kevin’s biological father made clear to him that he was not the monster that Kevin made him out to be. He had reasons for his flawed behavior, but they were still reasons.
Each of these plays encouraged me to
not feel weighed down or tied down by the bad decisions of one’s parents. They encourage all of us to find the tools and to use the tools to learn from their successes and failures in order to develop to our highest self. -RF.