Bullins, Ed,
1935-2021, American playwright, b. Philadelphia, Pa., as Edward Artie
Bullins, Antioch Univ. of San Fransico (B.A., 1989), San Francisco State
Univ. (M.F.A., 1994). Bullins served in the Navy (1952-55), and then began
writing short fiction. In 1964, he settled in San Francisco, where he
became part of a community of Black writers addressing contemporary social
issues. His first produced play was How Do You Do? (1965)
that was well-received locally and also by others in the Black Arts
Movement. He believed Black writers should write for the large Black working
class audience, rather than trying to cater to liberal whites. In 1966,
Eldridge Cleaver hired him
to be artistic director of his newly established Black House, which was a
community service center but also home to the political movement, the
Black Panthers.
Bullins left by the end of the year, not wanting to be limited to writing
didactic dramas. He served as resident playwright at New York's New
Lafayette Theater (1967-72), where he wrote many of his his best-known
works, including In Wine Time (1968) and The
Fabulous Miss Marie (1971; Obie Award, best play). His most
celebrated play was The Taking of Miss Janie (1975; Obie
Award for Distinguished Playwrighting; N.Y. Drama Critics' Circle Best
American Play of the Year). In the 1980s, Bullins returned to San Francisco,
where he collaborated with poet/playwright Ishmael Reed, among others. Moving to Boston, he
taught playwrighting at Northeastern Univ. (1995-2012). Among his awards and
honors were a Guggenheim Fellowship (1971), four Rockefeller Foundation, and
two N.E.A. grants for playwrighting, and the Theatre Communications Group
Visionary Leadership Award (2012).
See his Five Plays (1969), Four Dynamite Plays
(1972), The Theme is Blackness (1973).
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