A Dramedy

By Vincent Terrell Durham

October 3, 2020 at 7:30pm

A liberal white couple open the doors of their renovated Harlem brownstone to host a cocktail party for a Black Lives Matter activist, his plus one, a sistah named Shemeka and the mother of a slain 12-year-old black boy. A night of cocktails and conversation spark emotional debates ranging from under-weight polar bears, Lana Turner, saving the planet, gentrification, racial identity and protecting the lives of black boys.

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Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids was commissioned and originally developed by PlayGround (James A. Kleinmann, Artistic Director) in association with Planet Earth Arts (Michael Fried, Director).

Polar Bears, Black Boys & Prairie Fringed Orchids was presented as part of the inaugural Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project (Aldo Billingslea, Producer)

About the Playwright

Vincent Terrell Durham (he/him/his) is a playwright and author who first honed his storytelling skills as a stand-up comic in comedy clubs across the country. He was born and raised in Binghamton, New York to a family of vibrant storytellers themselves. His powerful new play Polar Bears, Black Boys, and Prairie Fringed Orchids is a 2020 Eugene O’Neill semifinalist and a 2019 National New Play Network finalist. The piece was also the cornerstone for the Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project–a night of virtual readings of the play in celebration of Juneteenth and to bring further awareness to the civil uprisings resulting from the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others.

Vincent confronts what it means to be Black in America with clarity, irony and humor. All of this can be found in his 2020 Great Plains Theatre Conference finalist play, The Fertile River as well as his 2020 Samuel French OOB finalist play, Masking Our Blackness. His voice as a proud gay man of color is fresh, compelling and his marksmanship for piercing the souls of theater audiences is unerring. He goes unflinchingly to the heart of the matter and pulls no punches. Vincent writes to pay honor to Alberta and Poogie Johnson’s nine children, who happen to be the best storytellers a little Black boy could have ever spent time with.