The Death of Bessie Smith
Death of Bessie Smith, The Author: Edward Albee
First Performance: 1960, Berlin; 1961, New York
Published: 1960
Genre: Drama in 8 scenes
Setting: Hospital and other locations, Memphis, Tennessee, 1937
Cast: 5m, 2f
Two stories alternate. In one, Jack, the black driver and friend of the blues singer Bessie Smith, is stopping with her in Memphis on their way north to a big engagement in New York. He drinks, and they have a crash, but are refused admission to the ironically named Mercy Hospital, because they are black. In the other story, a Nurse at another hospital displays the racist attitudes that she has inherited from her irascible old Father. She reminds a black Orderly that his people have no right to aspire towards assimilation with the whites. She is willingly wooed by a young liberal-minded Intern, but...
[The entire page is 350 words long]
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