Cesi Davidson's Articulation: Short Plays to Nourish the Mind and Soul

I'm pleased to announce the release of Articulation: Short Plays to Nourish the Mind and Soul by Cesi Davidson, the founder and curator of Short Plays to Nourish the Mind & Soul, free public theatre in New York City. Articulation is the seventy-first volume in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series, and is available in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now at www.aqueductpress.com, or read a sample from the book.

 
“In these fanciful, often hilarious plays you will discover a fantastic variety of characters—familiar nursery-rhyme figures who work in a ninety-nine-cent store and bet on horses, bananas and radishes, who discuss their ill-fated destinies, birds who sing songs of unrequited love, time travelers who skip about from Caribbean present-day to slavery-era Virginia, bunnies who meet in support groups.

“Many of the plays will have you laughing out loud. But they also explore serious issues and wrenching troubles. Little Bo Peep finds her marriage destroyed by the gambling habits of Big Man Blue. A bunny mother struggles to accept her gender-fluid son/daughter. A young man dreams of different incarnations of his drug-addicted mother, hoping for maternal love to conquer his pain. A traumatized African-American woman seeks to wash away the bloody stains of a racially motivated violent assault.”  —from the Foreword by Zachary Sklar


“Cesi’s plays are adventures in wordscapes that show us the ways we are and the ways we can be. Characters not often seen on screen, stage or page populate her scenes in situations that make these short plays eminently readable and relatable while being unapologetically unique. Lovers of theater and fiction alike will find much to cherish in this collection. Bravo!”  —Celeste Rita Baker, author of Back,Belly, and Side
 
“Cesi Davidson’s short plays are swift but indelible, both light and enlightening, their profound human truths conveyed with power and originality. Each piece assembles an intriguing, often whimsical or fantastic cast of characters (a young man and his dream mothers, two guardians standing watch on a pregnant woman’s belly, a ripening banana and its peel…) and gives them unbridled voice. The result is a series of interactions that embody fresh takes on the conundrums, the alienations and vulnerabilities—including those of race and class and gender and sexuality—of contemporary life. We’re awakened to our own ability to express our experiences, to feel our pain and that of others, to persevere.”  —John Gould, author of the Giller Prize short-listed Kilter: 55 Fictions