The Playwrights Database
CLIFFORD MASON
Nationality: USAemail: Click here to contact Website: n/a
Literary Agent: n/a
Clifford Mason has been writing for the Theater professionally since joining New Dramatists in 1966. He has been produced at the O'Neill In Waterford, CT; at the Mark Taper in L.A.; at Cafe La Mama, New Federal Theater, Henry Street and on Theatre Row in Manhattan. He's also had productions at Intar II, at the Gershwin in Brooklyn, the Richard Allen & Gene Frankel's and in equity stock productions in Baltimore and Washington, DC. He's a professional actor with credits on PBS, the Anspacher at the Public Theatre, at Henry Street, New Federal Theatre and on Theater Row. Many of the 30 plays that he's written have been reviewed by the New York Times as well as other publications. He's written articles on the Arts for the Magazine Section of the Sunday New York Times and the Arts & Leisure Section. He may be contacted by mail at Hotel Greystone, 212 West 91st Street, Suite 1525, New York 10024; by phone at 646-461-3420 or by email at clm532@earthlink.net.
Buy Plays with Doollee
Each page of doollee.com has links to play/book outlets, either directly to the Publisher, through Stageplays.com and Amazon to the second hand and 1st editions of AbeBooks. These links will automatically take you to the relevant area obviating the need for further search.AbeBooks.co.uk AbeBooks.com Stageplays.com amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
whether you are a Playwright who wishes to make their entry definitive, an unlisted Playwright or a User with a tale to tell - we want to hear from you.
download WORD submission template
below is a list of Clifford Mason's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Boxing Day Parade, The Captain At Cricket Gabriel, The Story Of A Slave Rebellion Half Way Tree Brown O T Fairclough & Roger Mais Othello In the Night Pilgrim Fathers, The Return To Guys Hill Royal Oak Sister Sadie Time Out Of Time Trial Of Denmark Vesey, The Two Bourgeois Blacks Verandah, TheBoxing Day Parade, The
Synopsis:
the more things change the more they remain the same in this irreverent look at Jamaica during it's transition from english colony to independent island nation. the upperclass power elite: His Nibbs, Attorney General, Chancellor of the exchequer enlist the aid of Lady Musgrave, who's returning to Her island home once the sun sets etc., to dispatch the Governor General who can't keep up and stands in the way of "progress" i.e. a power grab to keep the right class in control. then the fun begins with everyone trying to use the rhetoric of "equality for all" without letting it interfere with business as usual. After the usual adjustments in the price of the Jamaican dollar and the other economic issues to be dealt with the man from the bottom is told he has to work and work and work even with nothing to show for it and a family at home that's starving. Having taken care of that, the triumvirate, with the help of Private Daughter, who has to always exude sensuality no matter the occasion, return to an old tradition from the days when: they sing the Mikado.
Notes:
Two of the male parts: Rasta Man & Youth double for A total of five parts (3&2) except for Lady Musgrave the cast is black. Her two daughters: Private And Public must have contrasting skin color. Private very light And Public very dark.
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Vere Johns Presents
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:
Satire
Parts:
Male: 6 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageCaptain At Cricket
Synopsis:
Jamaica before independence. the lead is HeR: An ageless, brown skinned beauty living in a world of flowers, cut glass and elegant evening parties. She takes under her wing a pair of aging male lovers as her boarders. She has a butler and a maid who love each other but who never get the chance to live together. the male boarders want the butler for their own pleasure and HeR enlists the maid to please the upper crust crowd at her parties, which includes the english governor and his wife. But her love is the CAPTAIN of the title. She spends a lifetime waiting for him to make her happiness a reality. But he's too busy playing cricket somewhere else, which includes Pretty Girl, one of the guests at her parties, who enjoys the Captain's charms while HeR lives in hope. Pretty Girl tells Her of the liaison with the Captain. She can only pretend equanimity. No one is spared in this look at loves and lives lived and lost in vain hope, waiting for the dream to come true when it never does. And what's left when we've lost out on our dreams can only be characterized as tragic.
Notes:
the Butler must be young And handsome. the Maid has to be voluptuous.
1st Produced:
George Gershwin Theatre, NY 1983
Organisations:
Claudia Productions
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:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageGabriel, The Story Of A Slave Rebellion
Synopsis:
Based on the Gabriel Prosser rebellion in Virginia in 1800. Gabriel led 1,000 slaves on a surprise attack on Richmond. James Monroe was governor. God was on the other side and the bridge where they had gathered was washed out by a torrential downpour. Gabriel had to send his troops back to their plantations before they were missed. Someone lost his nerve and gave the plot away. When Gabriel attacked the next night the militia was waiting. Without the element of surprise he stood no chance since his weapons were porous at best and he had no artillery and no cavalry. At the trial he acquitted himself well. He and 100 others were hanged. the women include his wife who suffers a terrible fate after his defeat, the older black woman who has to endure the tragedy at the same time that she offers comfort and his owner's wife to whom he makes love, partly in order to be able to move about to do the work of organizing a rebellion. His owner tries to be decent but the neighbor is a sadistic racist, not from old Virginia stock so Monroe ignores him most of the time during the trial.
Notes:
At least 10 extras: field hands, white roustabouts, court guards
1st Produced:
New Federal Theatre, NYC 1969
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
New American Library, 1975 -
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:
Historical
Parts:
Male: 11 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageHalf Way Tree Brown
Synopsis:
-
Notes:
Not Available for Commercial Production
1st Produced:
Main stage, West 44th Street Manhattan 1979
Organisations:
New Dramatists
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:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageO T Fairclough & Roger Mais
Synopsis:
Jamaica 1939. they run the opposition newspaper. OT is editor; Roger, lead writer. Roger's love is Cynthia, a lower class beauty. OT is henpecked by a bourgeois wife, but has a mistress, a half Chinese beauty. the country is racked by nationwide strikes by workers demanding a dollar a day wage. Riots breakout and the army guns down women and children. the two men cover the story supporting the workers even though everything they write is dynamite that might blow up in their faces. Cynthia loves Roger but is involved with a young man from her class who stabs Roger in a fight. In hospital he finds out the police are holding Cynthia even though she's the one who saved him from dying. He gets OT to get the leader of the majority party to get her out, even though OT supports the other party. OT's mistress wants to go away but with a World War looming he can't. She leaves and because of the war never returns. Cynthia is subsequently killed by the other man as Roger kills him. the two men are left with their memories and their newspaper. the workers get their dollar a day.
Notes:
there Are two different nightclub scenes where several patrons Are seated. they both need from five to ten extras.
1st Produced:
- -
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
Monologue in Best Monologues of 2008 Applause Books, 2008 -
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: 8 Female: 7 Other: extras in 2 scenes
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageOthello In the Night
Synopsis:
Based on the life of 19th century black Actor Ira Aldridge who played Othello in england and on the Continent more times in live performance than any other actor living or dead. In One Man Show format. the Narrator is not Aldridge, rather he tells Aldridge's story to the audience, assisted by three actresses, two young and one mature. From Aldridge's early years in New York to his London appearance at Covent Garden in 1836 where he's "niggered" to death by the english press, to his extensive travels in Germany, France, Sweden and long tours of Russia to his death in Poland, the piece interpolates some of his most memorable performances along with the narrative: the death scene in Othello, the confrontation scene with the daughters in Lear, a farce scene from Fiesco by Schiller and the Gertrude scene in Hamlet. the woman carry the narrative in the second half and the curtain comes down on his death and the fact that he couldn't go home even after slavery had been abolished since he'd be free but not to be an actor, even though he got some of the best reviews of any American actor in his time and since.
Notes:
An ASM to double for Iago in the wings.
1st Produced:
- -
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:
Performance piece Piece
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PagePilgrim Fathers, The
Synopsis:
Set in the past and in eternity. the Pilgrim Fathers represent the primal American power figures. First Father is the presidential figure, Second is the administrator, Third is New Money. the period changes to Washington's era, Woodrow Wilson's era and finally the era of World War II. Along the way there is the loyal black servant who has to be killed for being an upstart, black journalist Monroe Trotter who went to Paris at the time of the Versailles Treaty to get relief from black genocide and general civil disfranchisement. Ida B. Wells, the Dr. King of her day, who begged Wilson to pass an antilynching law and James Weldon Johnson who made the NAACP a national organization. Democratic principles and the rights of blacks are continuously manipulated so that things come out right for the power elite. Figures such as Jesse James are presented as they really were, men who believed in slavery and in the complete subjugation of black Americans. the last scene is in eternity where JWJ visits Trotter and has to report that an anti-lynching bill was never passed by Congress even though over 5,000 black men and 400 black women were lynched between 1865 - 1965.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Little Theatre, Harlem, NY 2000
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:
experimental historical Drama Historical
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageReturn To Guys Hill
Synopsis:
Jamaica. Before Independence . Richard, the country's leading journalist, retires to do nothing. His mistress, Madge, the maid, his Grandmother make up the household. Shoucair and wife Daphne come for dinner to tell Richard he represents the group who want Richard to run a newspaper that they will fund to counter the influence of the englishman's newspaper in time to be in power when independence comes. He refuses to be bossed, it's why he resigned from the englishman's newspaper. So Shoucair has his note on the house called in. Since he can't meet it, he's put out. His half brother, Noel, very rich and paranoid about his wealth, can't bring himself to really help. their father had their mother committed to an insane asylum, in revenge for a love affair, where she died. the Grandmother never recovered. Shoucair takes over the house and the maid. Daphne uses the maid as a sex object as does Shoucair. Grandmother is sent to the country and becomes unhinged. Shoucair tries to do it without Richard, can't. they make a deal: Richard gets to run things his way. But the maid has gone insane and the Grandmother is found wandering the streets in disarray.
Notes:
One of the few major plays that has never been performed. Written in 1981.
1st Produced:
- 1981
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:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 5 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageRoyal Oak
Synopsis:
Set in Trinidad in the recent past. the multi-cultural mix that is Trinidad is presented at the Boarding house of Georgina a middle aged brown skinned upperclass hostess for sometimes illicit affairs of the powerful: A wealthy Moslem, his black skinned bathing beauty who never has a line, the failed candidate for PM, his Canadian mistress, Georgina's daughter, her older German lover. And the boarders: an aging ex-boxer who loves her but hasn't any money, a spinster who loves him, Georgina's lover, the maid, the gay artist who's family stops supporting him so he commits suicide, Georgina's Man in the Yard, Tattoo, who ends up killing her rather than sharing her. When the dust has settled, the Moslem takes over the place and puts the maid in charge so he can still visit his bathing beauty Miss Moruga. She wiggles around sensuously as her answer to what's being said, but she still never says a word. the deadly game of middle aged loved is played out in all its permutations. It's the old story of the ones you love love someone else who doesn't love them. the women characters all take part in a bathing beauty contest
Notes:
Not Available for Commercial Production
1st Produced:
Triangle Theatre, LIU University Brooklyn 1985
Organisations:
CBA Theatre
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:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 7 Female: 6 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageSister Sadie
Synopsis:
Sadie, a Harlem Matriarch, is a controlling, willful, big woman whose appetite for food and for sex is as big as she is. Her only real obsession is her son, Billy. But she doesn't want him trying to make his way with book learning, which he loves and which she considers a waste of time for her and her kind in 1960's America. Fish, the father, an old man and a lush, manages to stay sober long enough to help Billy to run away when he wakes up to find he's been kicked out of the bed and replaced by her boyfriend. Billy finally allows himself to be persuaded after some pleading from Fish, who doesn't think he's really Billy's father although he is. Sadie wakes up to find not only her son gone but $100 that she intended to buy her boyfriend an overcoat with. She confronts Fish, who admits to taking the money and giving it to Billy. When the boyfriend realizes what's happened to the money, Sadie has no trouble convincing him to help her to kill Fish. And she finds Billy and confines him to the house until she can break his spirit.
Notes:
Three of the parts Are teenage boys: the Son And his two school mates
1st Produced:
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:
Tragedy
Parts:
Male: 7 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageTime Out Of Time
Synopsis:
Jamaica in the fifties. Hugh, oldest son, resigns as editor of the island's leading newspaper to write poetry. Sister Mavis, married to a sadist, arranges a tryst with her lover at the family house. She objects to Hugh's young housekeeper/mistress from the lower classes, enid, and chases her away temporarily. the younger, darkskinned illegitimate brother, Percy, shows up for a handout from Hugh. He and Mavis quarrel. Father preferred his mother's amours even though she was a maid, to his wife's. Hugh and Percy, however, are close. He gives Percy money and while Percy is in the garden coughing blood from too much rum, Mavis, Hugh and her lover are dancing. Hugh's boss and his ex-girlfriend arrive for dinner. And it's her turn to sneer at enid. Hugh's resignation is final, but he can't bring himself to make enid legitimate. Percy's wife promised to move into the grand mansion but goes back to her first profession, the oldest one. Mavis's husband discovers the affair, beats her brutally and puts her out. the three have a final dinner and she kills herself. Hugh begs enid to come back. She won't. Percy abandons him and goes to live with his mother.
Notes:
1986-New Federal theatre
1st Produced:
Samuel Beckett Theatre, NY 1980
Organisations:
Black theate Alliance
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:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 6 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageTrial Of Denmark Vesey, The
Synopsis:
Charleston, S.C. 1822. Vesey, a free cabinet maker, organizes 4,000 black men to revolt and take over the city. He's discovered before he can act, arrested and brought to trial. But even though he is a free man, the court ends up trying him under slave law because there isn't enough evidence to convict under the rules governing a citizen entitled to due process. Much of the first act involves two forces pitted against each other, the ones, including a supreme court judge, who don't take a dire view of the proceedings and the ones who do. the latter are led by the chief judge in the case and he prevails. But no one believes a free man would risk everything to free slaves. When all roads lead to Vesey, however, and he's finally brought in and charged, he dismisses his white lawyer, takes over his own case and tries in vain to get justice even though he's faced with hooded witnesses and hearsay evidence that he's not allowed to refute. He's hanged in the end, along with 30 others, and his body given over for dissection.
Notes:
Morgan Freeman did the title role At New Dramatists. Half the cast is white And half black. there Are no women. the entire Action takes place in the courtroom.
1st Produced:
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:
Play/Drama Historical
Parts:
Male: 25 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageTwo Bourgeois Blacks
Synopsis:
LeSTeR and MARIe, the Two Bourgeois Blacks, are a married couple . He's 20 years older and a college professor. She works in a Fortune 500 company. they're each having outside affairs. He with a woman closer to his age who is white. She with a black man who's her age. She thinks her young lover is more ideologically suited to her than he is. He isn't interested in living with someone he has to teach. If she hasn't lived it, she can't know it. If she doesn't know it, then therein lies the incompatibility. they spew out venom and hate at one another and then end up passionately reconciling. He tells her he killed her young lover, Jasper. When she finds out it's not true she challenges him to call the other woman and tell her he'll never see her again. Since they love each other the fighting, as vicious as it is, is for a reason, to save the marriage. the light moments, which are many, have him pretending that she's bullying him and she telling him that he's as good a man as her young lover, even though he's twice his age. And there's a surprise ending.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
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:
Satire
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageVerandah, The
Synopsis:
Set in Jamaica in 1939. Upperclass solicitor marries woman from the country. Spends the next 20 years telling her what a favor he did her. She finally has enough and goes to live with a next door neighbor, rich but also from the lower classes. the family falls apart. Oldest son, by the husband's first wife, commits suicide when he realizes that his father never really cared for him or HIS mother, only his second wife. Daughter runs off with an Indian from the working class, younger son wants to marry the maid. Mother won't let him so he has to go on his own which means getting a job instead of being a gentleman cricketer. And the maid's pregnant as well, but she refuses to give the child to her mistress and insists on keeping it. Husband finally loses it and kills himself as well when his wife refuses to come back. She still loves him at the end, but it wasn't enough. So she sells the house and goes back to her new found love.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
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:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 6 Female: 5 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of Page