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J Rufus Caleb

J RUFUS CALEB  (1948 - )

 Nationality:    African American
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J. Rufus Caleb has written for theater, radio and television. His play The Rehearsal, developed at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and The New Harmony Project, is included in The Best Short American Plays 1996-1997. His teleplay Benny's Place received the 1981 Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Theatre Award for Best Conference Play and was later produced for ABC television. The production of his radio play The Devil and Uncle Asa received the 1993 Special Achievement Award from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Caleb has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Arts Council and an NEA grant to produce and direct his radio script Moods For Jazz, an adaptation of the Langston Hughes poetry book, Ask Your Mama. His fiction and poetry have appeared in journals such as Obsidian, Shenandoah and The William and Mary Review. Caleb is an associate professor of English at the Community College of Philadelphia.

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below is a list of J Rufus Caleb's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

 Ballad Of Mistuh Jack, The         Benny's Place         City Lights: An Urban Sprawl         Fathers And Sons         Fixed Points         Houston: The Day Of, And The Night After         Jean Toomer's Cane         Men Of Bronze         My Dungeon Shook         Rehearsal, The         Slave Coffee/ With Observer

Ballad Of Mistuh Jack, The

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Benny's Place

Synopsis:
Concerns the crisis of an aging black tool repairman who is employed to operate a repair shop ("Benny's Place") in a steel mill. Pressure is placed on him by his superiors to train a younger black man to do his job, in order that a token black might be qualified for a management position. Rather than give in to this pressure, Benny destroys his shop-a wire cage that he has built himself. (In the TV version, however, Benny is accidentally electrocuted, and his shop is inadvertently destroyed.)

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Recipient of numerous production Awards, including ABC-TV/eugene O'Neill Theatre Award, 1981, presented to the best play from the summer conference of the eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conf.; Writers Guild of America (WGa) TV/Radio Writing Awards nomination

1st Produced:
North Carolina Central Univ., Durham    1980

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Play/Drama

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City Lights: An Urban Sprawl

Synopsis:
Houston Baker has described this play as one which "expansively and surrealistically ranges over countless generations and generalities of afro-American existence" to present "a collage of repeatedly deferred dreams." Baker considers the play a negative portrayal of black progress, in which "the march of the New Negro is but a futile duplication of the old Negro's treadmill stumblings in the dark night of an undemocratic America.' '-Black American Literature Forum, Spring 1983, p. 116

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1st Produced:
People's Light and Theatre Co., Malvern, Pa    1984

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Play/Drama

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Fathers And Sons

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Fixed Points

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1st Produced:
Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore    1972

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Houston: The Day Of, And The Night After

Synopsis:
a day in the life of an afro-American college student. The story takes place on the day Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Houston (the student) and an interracial group of friends who have invested themselves in racial understanding must come to terms with what King's death means for the bonds of friendship they have developed. and Houston himself, in the aftermath of the assassination, must struggle to resist the rising tide of black anger and rage that threatens to sweep away all he has learned from the words of Martin Luther King.

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Genre:
TV Drama, full length

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Jean Toomer's Cane

Synopsis:
From the 1923 book, Cane, by Jean Toomer. The protagonist is an afro-American whose skin is fair enough for him to "pass" as white. To reestablish contact with that part of his ancestral past, and his psyche, that is represented in the afro-American folk culture of the rural South, the character journeys to Georgia. amid the awesome beauty and the undercurrent of terror there, he undergoes a transformation and is able to accept not only the South, in all its contradictions, but himself as well.

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1st Produced:
-    1985

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Genre:
adaptation

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Men Of Bronze

Synopsis:
The story of the 369th (Colored) Infantry Regiment during World War I. The regiment, born of a political payoff-officered by the sons of New York State's first families and soldiered by such notable blacks as jazz musicians James Reese europe and Noble Sissle and artist Horace Pippin-. fought both U.S. and southern racism, to go on to win distinction as part of the French army

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-    1985

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Genre:
treatment for an 8-hr. TV mini-series

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My Dungeon Shook

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Rehearsal, The

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1st Produced:
Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey    -

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in The Best Short American Plays 1996-1997   -

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Genre:
Play/Drama

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Slave Coffee/ With Observer

Synopsis:
deals with the forced march of African slaves from one state to another; Homeland (ensemble) finds a young Japanese woman dealing with the confusion that is life in Los Angeles

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in Rowing to America: The Immigrant Project, Dramatic Publishing   -

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Genre:
one act drama

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