
Stylized
Combining West African folklore and contemporary American culture, If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must be a Muhfucka follows four teenage girls as they grapple with societal definitions of beauty. In the fictional setting of Affreakah-Amirrorkah, the four young women – Kaya, Massassi, Adama and Akim – are given an opportunity to live in a society where their individual beauty can reign supreme. But this opportunity comes at a dangerous cost.
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2019, Playwrights Horizons, New York City
2021
Samuel French, Inc.
9780573709111
Stylized
Stylized
Dutchman is an emotionally charged and highly symbolic version of the Adam and Eve story, wherein a naive bourgeois black man is murdered by an insane and calculating white seductress, who is coldly preparing for her next victim as the curtain comes down. The emotionally taut, intellectual verbal fencing between Clay (the black Adam) and Lula (a white Eve) spirals irrevocably to the symbolic act of violence that will apparently repeat itself over and over again. Jones/Baraka's play is one of mythical proportions, a ritual drama that has a sociological purpose: to galvanize his audience into revolutionary action.