Carlyle Brown is an African-American playwright, actor, artistic director, and teacher. He is currently based in Minneapolis, but has lived and worked around the country. Brown worked with New Dramatists in New York City, and has received commissions from a variety of places, from the Huston Grand Opera to the Children's Theatre Company to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
Brown's breakout play was The African Company Presents Richard III, a dramatized retelling of the African Grove Theatre Company--the first African-American Theatre Company in the United States--and their pursuit of Shakespeare's works, as well as speculation about the first script written by an African-American writer: the lost play The Drama of King Shotaway. Many of Brown's plays utilize this speculation and investigation of race, culture, and history. Are You Know or Have You Ever Been presents poet Langston Hughes on the night before he is scheduled to appear in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities. Abe Lincoln and Uncle Tom in the White House imagines the literary figure Uncle Tom visiting Abraham Lincoln as the President prepares to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.
Beyond playwriting, Brown has at various times taught writing, literature, and theatre at New York University, the University of Minnesota, Ohio State University, Antioch College, and Carlton College. He's been a visiting artist at schools and organizations around the United States, and has been honored with many awards, fellowships, and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Currently the Artistic Director of Carlyle Brown & Company, playwright and director Carlyle Brown's works investigate race and culture in the United States from both a political perspective as well as an historical lens.
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