‘The Work of a Black Playwright’ is Subject of Talk
At Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus on April 28

Brooklyn, N.Y. — A major American playwright whose works established the basis for excellence during the Black Arts Movement will speak at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus.

Ed Bullins, Distinguished-Artist-in-Residence at Northeastern University, will discuss "The Work of a Black Playwright" in his Brooklyn Campus talk. The "Starting from Paumanok" annual lecture, sponsored by the Campus’s English Department, will take place on Wednesday, April 28 at 6 p.m. in the Health Sciences Building, Room 121.

Bullins has been called "one of the most powerful black voices in contemporary American theater." Along with Amiri Baraka, he was a key player in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, a group of African-American artists who sought to transform the way black Americans were portrayed in the arts.

Raised on the rough streets of North Philadelphia, Bullins has written more than 100 plays, from historical dramas to musicals to absurdist pieces, often focusing on the bleak side of the African-American urban experience. They include "Clara’s Ole Man," "Dr. Geechee and the Blood Junkies," "Goin’ a Buffalo," "The Taking of Miss Janie" and "Hot Feet," a Broadway-bound musical highlighting the life of Leonard Harper, a Harlem Renaissance director, dancer and showman.

Bullins has won several Obie awards, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and has received fellowships and grants from Guggenheim, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others.

Long Island University’s lecture series on American culture and literature, "Starting from Paumanok," carries the title of one of Walt Whitman’s most celebrated poems, and honors the University’s connection with Long Island’s poet laureate. "Paumanok" is a Native American word for Long Island.

The series is supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation and the John P. McGrath Fund. For more information, call (718) 488-1050.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Some 30,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s three residential and three regional campuses, including more than 11,000 at the Brooklyn Campus. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.