Following an interracial family living in a townhouse within the Morningside Park area of New York’s Upper West Side over the course of a weekend, TUMBLEWEED is a slice of life drama about a young girl named Willow whose off-putting natural hair combined with both her family’s open acceptance of it and lack of maintenance, as well as her blooming womanism, causes controversy in the household. Tensions stir even more so when they get a visit from the patriarch’s estranged no-nonsense mother, a former affiliate of the Black Panther party. The play explores beauty standards both in and out of the black community, ethnic relations, the mixed race family, coming of age, interracial marriage and parenting, relationships, womanist identity and the visibility of black men in the family dynamic.
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Tumbleweed
by Marcus Scott
MARCUS SCOTT is a dramatist & journalist. Selected plays: TUMBLEWEED (finalist: 2017 BAPF & 2017 Austin Playhouse Festival of New American Plays; semifinalist: 2022 O’Neill NPC, 2022 Blue Ink Playwriting Award & 2017 Princess Grace Award), SIBLING RIVALRIES (finalist: Normal Ave’s NAPseries, 2021 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference & 2021 Judith Royer Excellence In Playwriting Award; semi-finalist: 2022 Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, 2021 Blue Ink Playwriting Award & 2021 Princess Grace Award), THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD (finalist: 2023 Princess Grace Award, 2023 Blue Ink Playwriting Award, the 2019 Bushwick Starr Reading Series; semifinalist: 2024 BAPF, 2024 Fault Line Theater’s Irons in the Fire & 2024 O’Neill NPC) and VINYL VANGUARD (Step1 R&D Series).
Full-length musicals: CHERRY BOMB (recipient: 2017 Drama League First Stage Artist-In-Residence, 2017 NY Theatre Barn New Works Series). He was commissioned by Heartbeat Opera to adapt Beethoven’s FIDELIO (Librettist/Co-writer; The Met Museum; NY Times Critic’s Pick). Scott is the recipient of the Robert Chelsey/ Victor Bumbalo Foundation Playwriting Award and a Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Residency (2024-25). Scott is a 2024-2025 Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellows finalist, 2022 Many Voices Fellowship finalist, a 2022 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab finalist, a 2021 NYSAF Founders’ Award finalist, a Top 30 finalist for the 2022 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and a 2021 Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award semi-finalist. His articles appeared in Architectural Digest, Time Out New York, American Theatre Magazine, Playbill, Elle, Out, Essence, The Brooklyn Rail, among others. BFA: State University College at Buffalo, MFA: NYU Tisch School of the Arts.