Ten-Minute Plays - Paperback

by Zetta Elliott (Author)

STASH: Charity, a young woman is accused of killing and castrating her abusive father. QUALITY: Two white women do laundry while discussing the challenges of living in a neighborhood that is gradually being gentrified. INNOCENTS: Three black women gather behind a courthouse in the South to reflect on their loss of innocence. SELF/PRESERVATION: A white couple, desperate to save their home from eminent domain, falsely claims their cellar was once part of the Underground Railroad. HER VOW: After miraculously recovering from a coma, Lila attacks life with a vigor that frightens and alienates her devoted husband, Jerome.

Author Biography

Zetta Elliott earned her PhD in American Studies from NYU. Her poetry has been published in the Cave Canem anthology, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Check the Rhyme: an Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees, and Coloring Book: an Eclectic Anthology of Fiction and Poetry by Multicultural Writers. Her novella, Plastique, was excerpted in T Dot Griots: an Anthology of Toronto's Black Storytellers, and her essays have appeared in The Black Arts Quarterly, thirdspace, WarpLand and Rain and Thunder. She won the 2005 Honor Award in Lee & Low Books' New Voices Contest, and her picture book, Bird, was published in October 2008. Her first play, Nothing but a Woman, was a finalist in the Chicago Dramatists' Many Voices Project (2006). Her fourth full-length play, Connor's Boy, was staged in January 2008 as part of two new play festivals: in Cleveland, OH as part of Karamu House's R. Joyce Whitley Festival of New Plays ARENAFEST, and in New York City as part of Maieutic Theatre Works' Newborn Festival. Her one-act play, girl/power, was staged as part of New Perspectives Theater's festival of women's work, GIRLPOWER, in August 2008. She currently lives in Brooklyn.