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William Wellington Mackey

WILLIAM WELLINGTON MACKEY  

 Nationality:    African American
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a


William Wellington Mackey is from Louisiana and attended Southern University in Baton Rouge. after graduation in 1958 he taught high school in Miami, FloridA. With money earned during summers as a waiter and bellhop in the Catskills, a job Cab Calloway helped him land, he entered the University of Minnesota, where he earned a master's degree. While working as a recreational therapist at the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo, Mr. Mackey completed his first full-length play, BeHOLD! COMeTH THe VaNDeRKeLLaNS, begun when he was a graduate student at MinnesotA. The play, an attack on the black bourgeoisie done in avant-garde manner, was performed by the eden Workshop, the Negro theater group in Denver, in 1965. COMeTH THe VaNDeRKeLLaNS, which is particularly satiric of a Negro college president and his family, has attracted a great deal of attention.

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below is a list of William Wellington Mackey's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

 Behold! Cometh The Vanderkellans         Billy Noname         Family Meeting         Requiem For Brother X

Behold! Cometh The Vanderkellans

Synopsis:
an attack on the black bourgeoisie done in avant-garde manner

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
eden Workshop, Denver    1965

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
full length Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Billy Noname

Billy Noname
musical play has a 'vividly exultant vitality and a varied and delightful score by Johnny Brandon that make it genuinely exciting to watch" -Richard Watts, New York Post. It is the odyssey of a now successful black American writer who, having found his own place In the sun, is deeply troubled that his voice is perhaps not clearly heard with those of his brothers who demand Freedom now" To find out where he should go from here he retraces his life from the day of his conception in a street rape in Bay alley, a southern ghetto, on the night Joe Louis became heavyweight champ of the world in 1937. Most of the joy - and there is plenty of it - Is in the good and powerful songs. This all black musical is so buoyant that its effect lasts several hours after the house lights come up." -edith Oliver, New Yorker.

Notes:
Music And lyrics by Johnny Brandon; book by William Wellington Mackey

1st Produced:
Truck and Warehouse Theatre, New York    1970

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
R e Richardson Productions, NY,    ocr-9545

Music:
Original cast recording: Original Cast Records (9545) 1970

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Musical

Parts:
Male:  8            Female:  7            Other:  optional chorus

Further Reference:
-

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Family Meeting

Synopsis:
The place is Heavenly Heights, U.S.a., where a flourishing black capitalist and his family enjoy the gaudiest blessings of material success, while regarding the poor black people of Goodbread alley with disdain. The irony of their attitude is enhanced by the casting of black actors as white and white as black, with roles reversed as the play progresses; until all are merged at a point of soul stirring catharsis as the need to recover a stolen humanity is made undeniably and powerfully clear.

Notes:
avant-garde in style, this biting, satire, employs brilliant theatricality to probe into the conflict between middle-class blacks And their less fortunate brothers

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Jarboro Players

1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY,    -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
satire One act

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Requiem For Brother X

Synopsis:
a ghetto family gathers, they vent their anger and frustration on each other - but it is an old spiritual that binds them together

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Off Broadway    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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