Staging Black Motherhood: Lisa B. Thompson’s “Mothers Day” and “I Don’t Want to Be”

 

 

Lisa B. Thompson is an award-winning playwright and Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her plays include Underground (Austin Critics Table 2017 David Mark Cohen New Play Award), Single Black Female (2005 LA Weekly Theatre Award for Best Comedy nominee), Mother’s Day, Watch, I Don’t Want to Be (Mamie Till), Dreadtime Stories: One Sista’s Hair, and Mother Nature. She is also the author of the book Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (University of Illinois Press, 2009). She has held fellowships and residencies from institutions such as Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African

American Research, Stanford University’s Michele R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, UCLA’s Center for African American Studies, the University of Texas at Austin’s Humanities Institute, the University of California’s Office of the President, the Five Colleges, Hedgebrook, and The Millay Colony for the Arts.