Play tries to move beyond reform-school girls cliches

KU News Headlines

LAWRENCE — Can an adult male who’s never been incarcerated relate well enough to the experiences of young minority women sentenced to reform school to write something true and moving about that experience?

Well, if the tears of audience members who saw a staged reading of Darren Canady’s “Black Butterflies” this spring are any indication, the answer is “yes.”

The University of Kansas associate professor of English seems likely to receive further validation when the San Francisco-based American Conservatory Theater stages the world premiere of his latest work July 25-29.

In January, Canady received a commission to write a play for a collaboration among ACT's Education & Community Programs, its Young Conservatory and the Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, California. The show moves to Destiny Arts Center for performances Aug. 4-5.

Canady has written so many things, from short monologues to full-length plays, that he’s lost count, although he’s quick to recall some of the renowned stages his works have graced, from London’s Old Vic to Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre.

A native of Topeka, Canady said that when he began his career as a playwright, he wrote what he knew.

“I wrote from personal and family experience,” he said. “I realized that stories from my family members — black people who lived and died in the Midwest — were largely an empty space in dramatic literature. Over the past couple of years, I have found myself writing more about things that make me angry; people and situations that have been silenced in the larger cultural conversation.

“But it’s tricky writing outside yourself. It’s a harder, slower process. It requires you to lay down your ego, for instance, if someone tells me what I have written is not right or true to the situation. The reward is it has allowed me to stretch the possibilities of what I ...

Read More