"An original
play, full of vitality... Miss Childress has some witty and penetrating things to
say about the dearth of roles for Negro actors in the contemporary theater, the
cut-throat competition for these parts and the fact that Negro actors often find
themselves playing stereotyped roles in which they cannot bring themselves to
believe." –
New York Times, 1955
"Sixty-six
years late and still on time, the play most of the moment is only now getting
the mainstream attention that it deserves. Alice Childress's 1955
Trouble in
Mind, a play about power and race in the theater, is a satire and tragedy
that deserves to be a classic." –
New York Times, 2021
"In
Trouble in Mind, Childress fearlessly unmasks the theater's deeply
rooted racism. Something that the playwright struggled with in the '50s still
chimes loudly in the present day. In the aftermath of the country's racial
reckoning and amid the ongoing call for Black lives to matter, a predominantly
white-run American theater industry has finally held a mirror up to itself.
What the Great White Way is only fully recognizing now, Childress long ago
detailed in
Trouble in Mind." –
Variety
