An absolutely brilliant collection of plays, topical and important; rooted in realism and yet highlighting the absurdism of the American racial landscape, Thompson's style is both intimate and distinctive.

I was intrigued and yet hesitant going into this. I feel like my adult brain is well past the comprehension of reading plays, but this was absolutely wonderful. There is a lot to feel and learn with these 3 plays and I highly recommend to anyone. Even to those who do not find themselves to like plays.

Wonderful plays- plays occasionally steeped in realism, occasionally steeped in magic, and always incredibly illuminating. Highly recommend for a progressive classroom, and for anyone that loves plays and wants to educate themselves.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Lisa Thompson for these plays, for taking the time to express important truths with such precision and originality, for the love and fierceness, and thought that clearly go into every line.

By far, the best selection of plays I have read in years.

Ms. Thompson put her heart and possibly her literal soul, into these pages. Each was an in depth look at prejudices, not only from external environments, but internal as well.

This is one group of plays any reader should own.

Thank you to Northwestern University Press and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available Aug 15 2020

WOW. I went into this book completely unaware of who Lisa B Thompson was or having read a play since my high school years where we read August Wilson's "Fences". I was completely unprepared for how much I would end up enjoying the experience. Thompson's three plays, "Underground", "Monroe" and "The Mamalogues" focus on the Black middle class experience, predominantly in the thirty years and older. Coming from all walks of life, Thompson's vivid characters delve into topics as diverse as the Black Lives Matter protests, the Great Migration and Black motherhood. With excellently curated playlists, witty dialogue and deep discussions,Thompson offers a little bit for every audience.

One of my favorite discussions occurred in Underground, between Mason and Kyle, regarding class and protest. As an upper middle class individual, Kyle is able to act and take risks that Mason, a struggling lower middle class, simply can't afford to. Viewed in the context of modern day protests, this important nuance begs us to ask who is taking the risk inherent in protesting and who can afford to do so? A lot of organizers I've worked with are upper middle class kids who can afford to spend hours researching, reading and theorizing, who can afford to risk losing their jobs because their parents can pay the bills. And yet by positioning themselves in leadership positions in protest groups, are they not recreating the same power structures they are seeking to destroy? I don't know what the solution is, just that I got chills in the final moments of the play when there's knocking in the door and Kyle turns to Mason and asks "What are you willing to die for?"

In <b>Underground</b>, Thompson examines masculinity, power, protest and privilege. Kyle surprises "Dix" (Mason) when he shows up uninvited to his hideaway home in upstate New York. From the outset, I was skeptical about the purpose of his visit as Kyle went about furtively going through Mason's things and taking pictures. He came off as a hustler and I was trying to figure out what game he was running. Slowly their past is revealed, as are Kyle's motives, and Mason becomes more assertive. Having risen above poverty, he no longer feels that the Black male struggle is his fight. He fought. He won. He's done.

<b>Monroe</b> is based in part on a real lynching that took place just outside the city of Monroe, Louisiana in 1919. George Bolden*, an illiterate man, was lynched after being accused of writing a letter to a white woman. The play opens up with a community viewing strange fruit hanging from a tree. We get to see the impact on the young man's loved ones as they cope with the brutality of his death and the terror it instills. His sister Cherry cleaves to her religion while his best friend Clyde makes plans to escape the violence and Monroe.

Of the three plays <b>The Mamalogues</b> was the most humorous and lively. Here Thompson turns her lens onto Black single mothers with the aim of dispelling stereotypes and shedding light on issues of inter-sectionality. To this end, Thompson's group of mature successful women hold conversations with the audience about traditional views on marriage, ageism, homosexuality, the school-to-prison pipeline, how to train your child to survive being called the N-word and other basics of <i>"parenting while black and living in the age of anxiety"</i>.

The common thread in all of these plays is the Black middle class. Thompson is particularly interested in the costs, as well as the benefits, of class ascension.

This is a brilliant collection of three plays from scholar and playwright Lisa B. Thompson, each of which navigates issues of racism and trauma as they particularly pertain to the Black middle class. Each play is distinct both in style and subject, but all thematically cohere into a sharp, savvy collection that makes for fantastic reading, though I imagine seeing any of these come to life on the stage with the right actors would be an even more entrancing experience.

Underground - 5 stars

Originally performed in 2017, Underground is the standout play from this collection, which focuses on the tension between two friends, two middle-aged, middle class Black men who had both been activists for the Black Panther movement, but who have drifted apart in life and in ideologies. This play is razor-sharp and startlingly prescient; reading it amid the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement was a rather humbling experience, to be reminded so starkly that the movement's catalysts have been decades, centuries in the making. This exchange in particular drove home a relevant piece of discourse that's been in the news a lot lately:

MASON: Wait. This is not just sensational journalism. They are out here bombing shit, man.
KYLE: Things. Not people. Statues of long dead white men can’t die again.


Monroe - 5 stars

Set in 1940s Lousiana, Monroe follows the impact of a lynching on a small-town community, including one young woman, the victim's sister, who believes herself to be pregnant like the Virgin Mary. Monroe has a sort of mystical, fable-like quality to it which makes it stand apart from the other two plays in this collection, but it's all the more resonant for its examination of the timelessness of anti-Black violence in America.

The Mamalogues - 2 stars

This one's tricky, because here's the thing; I was never going to like this play. I don't like books (and films, and plays, and stories, more broadly) about motherhood and that's what this is. Three Black middle class single mothers compare their lived experiences in this sort of vignette-style play. When you're already disinterested in motherhood as a theme and there's no actual narrative to sustain the play, it's not fun reading. But that criticism is very much on me so I won't hold it against this collection too much. Lisa B. Thompson is a brilliant writer and this is worth the price of admission for the first two plays alone.

Thank you to Netgalley and Northwestern University Press for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

Underground, Monroe, & The Mamalogues is a collection of three plays by playwright and scholar Lisa B. Thompson that cover a range of topics and themes, including protest, motherhood, migration, trauma, and the black middle class. Underground features two old friends discussing politics and protest in the post-Obama era, with a tension lying underneath. Monroe is a 20th century period play that looks at the impact of a lynching on a family and dreams of leaving 1940s Louisiana. And The Mamalogues features three black middle class single mothers sharing stories at a support group, thinking about their children's lives from birth to leaving home.

This is an engrossing selection of plays that are quite different, but all look at the black middle class (which is what Thompson works on) and different elements of race, gender, and respectability. Underground is the most gripping, a play that draws you into one evening when two old friends find themselves back together in a snowstorm discussing the best methods for bringing about change and their thoughts on radical politics. Kyle and Mason are complex characters and their viewpoints become particularly charged and important given current Black Lives Matter protests and action. The Mamalogues also focuses on a single discussion in a single point in time, and really considers the intersection of race and class, but is also funny and frank. Even reading both of these plays gives a real sense of the dialogues happening, but it would be great to see them performed.

Monroe is different again, a play that spans a period of time just after the lynching of Cherry's brother, and looks at the dream of migrating away from Louisiana to somewhere that might be better. The historical setting and greater number of characters onstage makes it feel more traditional, but it also has a lot of ambiguity. All three plays have detailed notes on performance, including suggested playlists, so this copy would be useful for those studying theatre, but the plays are accessible and enjoyable so this text shouldn't be confined only to academic reading. All three plays are relevant to current discussions, but in particular Underground is vital reading for thinking about radical politics and race, as well as being a great, tense play.