Ed Bullins


Ed Bullins is an American playwright. He was also the Minister of Culture for the Black Panthers. In addition, he has won numerous awards, including the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and several Obie Awards. He is among the best known playwrights of the Black Arts Movement.

Early life and education

Bullins was born July 2, 1935 in Philadelphia. He was born to Bertha Marie Queen and Edward Bullins, and was raised primarily by his mother. As a child, he attended predominantly white schools and became involved with gangs. He attended Franklin High School, where he was stabbed in a gang-related incident. Shortly thereafter, he dropped out of high school and joined the navy. During this period, he won a boxing championship, began to read, returned to Philadelphia, and enrolled in night school. He stayed in Philadelphia until moving to Los Angeles in 1958, leaving behind a wife and children. He married poet and activist Pat Parker in 1962. Parker and Bullins separated after four years. Parker later said that Bullins was physically violent and that she was "scared to death". After completing his G.E.D., Bullins enrolled in Los Angeles City College and began writing short stories for the Citadel, a magazine he started. In 1964, he moved to San Francisco and joined the creative writing program at San Francisco State College, where he started writing plays. Bullins' first play was How Do You Do, immediately followed by Clara's Ole Man and Dialect Determinism.

Black House and Black Panthers

After seeing Amiri Baraka's play Dutchman, Bullins felt that Baraka's artistic purpose was similar to his own. He joined Baraka at Black House, the Black Arts Movement's cultural center, along with Sonia Sanchez, Huey Newton, Marvin X, and others. The Black Panthers used Black House as their base in San Francisco, where Bullins served temporarily as their Minister of Culture in producing theater as protest. Black House eventually split into two opposing factions: one group considered art to be a weapon and advocated joining with whites to achieve political ends, while the other group considered art to be a form of cultural nationalism and didn't want to work with whites. Bullins was a part of the latter group.

New Lafayette Players

Robert Macbeth, the director who took the trilogy to The American Place Theatre, read Bullins' plays and asked him to join the New Lafayette Players, a new theatrical group in Harlem. The first production the New Lafayette Players performed was a trilogy called The Electronic Nigger and Others. The trilogy earned Bullins a Drama Desk Award for 1968. The trilogy's title was later changed to Ed Bullins Plays for what Bullins called "financial reasons". Bullins worked with the Lafayette Players until 1972, when the group ended due to lack of funding. During these years, ten of Bullins' plays were produced by the Players, including In the Wine Time and Goin' a Buffalo.

1970s-1990s

After Bullins left the New Lafayette Players, he and his family remained in the Bronx.
Several of his plays were produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the early 1970s. Street Sounds was produced at La MaMa in October 1970 and again in February 1971, then toured to Middletown, Connecticut, for a performance at Middletown High School sponsored by Wesleyan University on February 9, 1971. The next Bullins production at La MaMa was a set of four one-acts, called Short Bullins, in February/March 1972. The four works were How Do You Do?, A Minor Scene, Dialect Determinism, and It Has No Choice, and the production featured music by Aaron Bell. These four one-acts, along with another Bullins work called Clara's Ole Man, toured to Italy alongside Richard Wesley's Black Terror in fall of 1972, with performances in Venice and Milan. Bullins later performed in Wallace Shawn's The Hotel Play at La MaMa in 1981. Clara's Ole Man was produced again at La MaMa in 1981.
In 1973, he was playwright-in-residence at the American Place Theatre. From 1975-1983, he was on staff at the Public Theater with the New York Shakespeare Festival's Writers' Unit. During these years, Bullins wrote two children's plays, titled I am Lucy Terry and The Mystery of Phillis Wheatley. He also wrote the text for two musicals, titled Sepia Star and Storyville.
Bullins later returned to school, and received a bachelor's degree in English and Playwriting from Antioch University in San Francisco. In 1995, he became a professor at Northeastern University, where he is currently a distinguished Artist-in-Residence.

Other work

In addition to Bullins' playwriting, he wrote short stories and novels, including The Hungered One and The Reluctant Rapist. The Reluctant Rapist features Bullins' alter ego, Steve Benson, who appears in many of Bullins' works.

Criticism

Many critics praised his early work, but others thought his plays were too violent and negatively depicted African-Americans. One critique of his work questioned whether black writers should challenge revolutionary activity without providing alternative directions and resolutions. Many black critics rallied to defend Bullins, criticizing white critics for using traditional white notions of good drama to evaluate black theatre.

Awards

Bullins has received numerous awards for his playwriting. He has twice received the Black Arts Alliance Award, for The Fabulous Miss Marie and In the New England Winter. In 1971, Bullins won the Guggenheim Fellowship for playwriting. He received an Obie Award for distinguished playwriting for The Taking of Miss Janie in 1975, which also received a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Also in 1975, he won the Drama Desk Vernon Rice Award, four Rockefeller Foundation playwriting grants, and two National Endowment for the Arts playwriting grants. In 2012, Bullins received the Theatre Communications Group Visionary Leadership Award.

Selected works

Anthologies:
Individual plays: