American College Theater Festival Award for his
first play, Up for Grabs. By 1979 Wolfe headed to
New York City, where he took a position teaching
at City College and polishing his plays. He also
worked as a musical director and a dramaturge. In
1983 he completed a masters of fine arts in musical
theater at New York University.
Wolfe’s first major work to receive critical ac-
claim was The Colored Museum in 1986. A sophis-
ticated satire of the lies America tells itself, the play
remains one of the most controversial examples
of contemporary African-American drama. Com-
posed of 11 vignettes, the play explores African-
American attitudes toward sexual identity and the
community’s homophobia. The work mocks the
African-American middle class and its hunger for
mobility and, at turns, humorously and poignantly
reminds its audience that the past is an inescapable
burden. The sketch “Celebrity Slaveship” garnered
some of the harshest criticism, yet it challenges Af-
rican Americans to consider honestly where they
have been historically as a race and what they will
have to sacrifice to embrace the American dream.
The Colored Museum was produced at the New
York Public Theater in 1986. PBS televized a ver-
sion in 1991.
Adapting the work of ZORA NEALE HURSTON,
Wolfe wrote and directed the play SPUNK in 1989.
Wolfe captured Hurston’s African-American com-
munal folk voice in the play’s chorus. He won an
Obie Award for directing the play the following
year, and its success elevated Wolfe in the New York
theater community. In 1990 he was appointed ar-
tistic associate of the New York Shakespeare Fes-
tival/Public Theater. The same year, he directed
Thulani Davis’s version of Bertolt Brecht’s The
Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Jelly’s Last Jam, the story of pianist Jelly Roll
Morton, was first performed in 1991. Wolfe
brought the play to Broadway the following year.
In the work, Wolfe examines African-American
identity and culture within the context of the birth
of jazz and the larger-than-life personality of Jelly
Roll Morton. A musical sensation, the play drew
critical and popular acclaim, winning three Tony
Awards. In the same year, Wolfe was made artis-
tic director of the New York Shakespeare Festival/
Joseph Papp Public Theater. As the artistic direc-
tor, Wolfe produced and directed Tony Kushner’s
award-winning AIDS drama, Angels in America,
and won a Tony Award for his directing. He also
helmed Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles- In 1995 he directed a postcolonial reading of
Shakespeare’s The Tempest for the Public Theater.
Emphasizing Afro-Caribbean dance, costumes, and
masks in the production, Wolfe’s version examined
the cultural imperialism inherent in Prospero’s
“education” of Caliban. Wolfe also revised Caliban
as an intelligent revolutionary unable to thwart the
powerful “magic” of Prospero’s control. In Wolfe’s
hands, this production illustrated the struggle of
African-American cultural identity within the
framework of Western ideology and civilization.
The island embodies nature, orality, community,
and kineticism, while Prospero symbolizes a world
of books, ideas, and individualism—high human-
ism. The production has generated praise as one
of the first successful multicultural presentations
of Shakespeare’s work.
The year after The Tempest, Wolfe wrote and
directed Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk, a
history of African-American dance. One of the
most unique productions of the contemporary
American stage, the play celebrates African-Amer-
ican heritage entirely through music and move-
ment. Wolfe won another Tony for best director
for the work and continues to direct and produce
for the Public Theater. Averaging a production a
year, he also continues to win numerous Drama
Desk Awards from New York theater critics and to
write original plays. His contributions to the New
York stage make him one of the most prolific Af-
rican-American playwrights and directors of the
American theater.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Elam, Harry. “Signifyin(g) on African-American
Theater: The Colored Museum by George Wolfe.”
Theater Journal 44, no. 3 (1992): 291–303.
Rowell, Charles. “Interview with George Wolfe: Play-
wright, Director, and Producer.” Callaloo 16, no. 3
(1993): 591–629.Wolfe, George 559