STEVE CARTER
PLAYWRIGHT
The History Of A Trail-blazer
The playwright Steve Carter with his mother, Carmen, near where he grew up in Manhattan in 1976. That year the Negro Ensemble Company produced“Eden,” the first of Mr. Carter’s trilogy of plays about Caribbean families living in New York City.
Credit...Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times
Credit...Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times
Born Horace Edward Carter Jr. in New York City to Horace Sr., an African-American longshoreman from Richmond, Virginia, and Carmen, who was from Trinidad, he is professionally known as steve carter (spelled in all lowercase letters).
Carter's first interest in the theatre was to be a set designer. As a youngster, he would make models of sets inspired by motion pictures and the occasional play he would see with his mother. Soon he would populate these models with cutout figures. This led to him creating dialog for the figures as he moved them around the set.
In 1948, he graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City.
His professional career as a playwright began in 1965 at the American Community Theater with the production of the short play Terraced Apartment. This work would evolve years later into an expanded version entitled Terraces.
On November 13, 1967, One Last Look premiered off-off-Broadway at the Old Reliable Theatre Tavern under the direction of Arthur French. It is a dark comedy set during the funeral of a family patriarch. It features the character of Eustace Baylor that would later be found in Eden, the first of Carter's trilogy of plays featuring Caribbean families in New York City.
In 1968, under the direction of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) Founders, Douglas Turner Ward, Robert Hooks, and Gerald S. Krone, Steve became director of the NEC Playwrights Workshop. One of his best known students was Samm-Art Williams, who once said "that no single individual has influenced my writing to the degree that Steve Carter has."
While Carter was at NEC, several of his plays were produced, including the first two of his Caribbean trilogy.
All three plays in the series deal with Caribbean immigrant families living in New York City at various periods during the 20th century. While each family is different, each play features a patriarch that has become incapacitated in one way or another. The plays in the trilogy are as follows:
Eden
Set in the San Juan Hill section of New York City in the late 1920s, Eden tells a story somewhat reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet about a young Caribbean woman who falls in love with a black man from the rural American South. Her strict father does not approve of the relationship, because he feels that American blacks, especially those from the rural South, are vastly inferior to Caribbean blacks. The play was produced by NEC in 1976, then transferred to Theatre de Lys to continue its run for a total of 181 performances. The production garnered Carter recognition from the Outer Critics Circle as the season's most promising new playwright.[3] In 1986, his feature film adaptation, A Time Called Eden, was set to go into production, but has yet to be produced.
Nevis Mountain Dew
Nevis Mountain Dew, the second play in the series, deals with the effects of the patriarch being crippled by paralysis in the Queens section of New York City in the 1950s.
Like Whose Life Is It Anyway?, it deals with euthanasia. Both were among the ten productions selected by the Burns Mantle Yearbook as "The Best Plays of 1978–1979"
Dame Lorraine.
In 1981, Carter left NEC to become the first playwright-in-residence at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. His first play produced there was Dame Lorraine, the final play of his Caribbean trilogy. Set in modern times, the play tells the story of an elderly couple living in Harlem that anxiously await the return of their last surviving son who has just been released from prison.
Other plays produced at the Victory Gardens Theater include House of Shadows, Pecong and the musical, Shoot Me While I'm Happy. Spiele '36: Or the Fourth Medal had its world premiere at Theater of the First Amendment at George Mason University in 1991.
Carter's first interest in the theatre was to be a set designer. As a youngster, he would make models of sets inspired by motion pictures and the occasional play he would see with his mother. Soon he would populate these models with cutout figures. This led to him creating dialog for the figures as he moved them around the set.
In 1948, he graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City.
His professional career as a playwright began in 1965 at the American Community Theater with the production of the short play Terraced Apartment. This work would evolve years later into an expanded version entitled Terraces.
On November 13, 1967, One Last Look premiered off-off-Broadway at the Old Reliable Theatre Tavern under the direction of Arthur French. It is a dark comedy set during the funeral of a family patriarch. It features the character of Eustace Baylor that would later be found in Eden, the first of Carter's trilogy of plays featuring Caribbean families in New York City.
In 1968, under the direction of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) Founders, Douglas Turner Ward, Robert Hooks, and Gerald S. Krone, Steve became director of the NEC Playwrights Workshop. One of his best known students was Samm-Art Williams, who once said "that no single individual has influenced my writing to the degree that Steve Carter has."
While Carter was at NEC, several of his plays were produced, including the first two of his Caribbean trilogy.
All three plays in the series deal with Caribbean immigrant families living in New York City at various periods during the 20th century. While each family is different, each play features a patriarch that has become incapacitated in one way or another. The plays in the trilogy are as follows:
Eden
Set in the San Juan Hill section of New York City in the late 1920s, Eden tells a story somewhat reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet about a young Caribbean woman who falls in love with a black man from the rural American South. Her strict father does not approve of the relationship, because he feels that American blacks, especially those from the rural South, are vastly inferior to Caribbean blacks. The play was produced by NEC in 1976, then transferred to Theatre de Lys to continue its run for a total of 181 performances. The production garnered Carter recognition from the Outer Critics Circle as the season's most promising new playwright.[3] In 1986, his feature film adaptation, A Time Called Eden, was set to go into production, but has yet to be produced.
Nevis Mountain Dew
Nevis Mountain Dew, the second play in the series, deals with the effects of the patriarch being crippled by paralysis in the Queens section of New York City in the 1950s.
Like Whose Life Is It Anyway?, it deals with euthanasia. Both were among the ten productions selected by the Burns Mantle Yearbook as "The Best Plays of 1978–1979"
Dame Lorraine.
In 1981, Carter left NEC to become the first playwright-in-residence at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. His first play produced there was Dame Lorraine, the final play of his Caribbean trilogy. Set in modern times, the play tells the story of an elderly couple living in Harlem that anxiously await the return of their last surviving son who has just been released from prison.
Other plays produced at the Victory Gardens Theater include House of Shadows, Pecong and the musical, Shoot Me While I'm Happy. Spiele '36: Or the Fourth Medal had its world premiere at Theater of the First Amendment at George Mason University in 1991.
His arrival as a playwright was heralded in 1965 with a production of his one-act play “Terraced Apartment,” a satire about a lower-income Black couple who feel out of place after moving into a more upscale neighborhood in Harlem. (He revised it years later as part of a series of sketches titled “Terraces,” offering four views of life in a well-to-do terraced apartment building.)
Two years later his surreal dark comedy “One Last Look,” centered on a funeral during which members of two Black families reflect on the death of their common patriarch, had its premiere at the Old Reliable Theater Tavern, an Off Off Broadway theater in the back room of a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“Mr. Carter succinctly and graphically provides more insight into black people than can be found in a library of sociological treatises,” the critic John J. O’Connor wrote in his review in The Wall Street Journal. “More should be heard from him."
Two years later his surreal dark comedy “One Last Look,” centered on a funeral during which members of two Black families reflect on the death of their common patriarch, had its premiere at the Old Reliable Theater Tavern, an Off Off Broadway theater in the back room of a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“Mr. Carter succinctly and graphically provides more insight into black people than can be found in a library of sociological treatises,” the critic John J. O’Connor wrote in his review in The Wall Street Journal. “More should be heard from him."
Mr. Carter, front, with his fellow Negro Ensemble Company playwrights (from the top)
Herman Johnson, Al Davis and J.E. Gaines in 1974.
Credit...Gene Maggio/The New York Times
Herman Johnson, Al Davis and J.E. Gaines in 1974.
Credit...Gene Maggio/The New York Times
Mr. Carter made a significant stride in his career when he came under the tutelage of the playwright Lonne Elder III at the Negro Ensemble Company, founded in Manhattan in 1967 by the actor Robert Hooks, the playwright and director Douglas Turner Ward and the producer and director Gerald S. Krone. (Mr. Krone died in February.) Mr. Carter was put in charge of the company’s literary department and playwriting workshop.
“I learned as much from the playwrights in the workshop as I think they learned from me,” Mr. Carter said in an interview in 2016.
“I learned as much from the playwrights in the workshop as I think they learned from me,” Mr. Carter said in an interview in 2016.
His writing gained wider attention when the Negro Ensemble Company produced “Terraces” in 1974. Two years later it produced “Eden,” the first of Mr. Carter’s trilogy of plays about Caribbean families living in New York City in the 20th century, which explored how a strict father disapproves of his Caribbean daughter’s relationship with a rural Black Southerner.
The second play in the trilogy, “Nevis Mountain Dew,” was produced by the company in 1978. It deals with euthanasia and its impact on the family of an incapacitated father who is confined to an iron lung.
The inspiration for the disabled character, Jared Philibert, was Morton Lane, a Paramount Studios lawyer who was a quadriplegic, and whom Mr. Carter had taken care of years earlier as an orderly at New York Hospital (now NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital). Mr. Lane had encouraged Mr. Carter to pursue a writing career, and Mr. Carter dedicated “Nevis Mountain Dew” to him.
In his Times review of that play, Mel Gussow wrote that Mr. Carter had written “dialogue that is hearty, flavorful and lightened with West Indian rhythms and humor.”
“This is a serious play with moments that make us laugh out loud,” Mr. Gussow added, “and, it must be emphasized, this is laughter that rises directly from character.”
Mr. Carter left the Negro Ensemble Company in 1981 to become the first playwright in residence at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. His first play to premiere there, in 1981, was “Dame Lorraine,” the final play of his Caribbean trilogy. It tells the story of a beleaguered family anxiously awaiting the return of the last surviving son, one of eight brothers, who has just been released from prison after 27 years.
Three years later, Victory Gardens mounted the premiere of Mr. Carter’s “House of Shadows,” about two teenage boys who decide to rob the home of two elderly women, only to be surprised by what they encounter.
That was followed by “Shoot Me While I’m Happy” (1986), a window on the dark side of the vaudeville circuit for Black performers, and “Pecong” (1990), perhaps his best-known work, a contemporary retelling of Euripides’ “Medea” set on a fictional Caribbean island.
The second play in the trilogy, “Nevis Mountain Dew,” was produced by the company in 1978. It deals with euthanasia and its impact on the family of an incapacitated father who is confined to an iron lung.
The inspiration for the disabled character, Jared Philibert, was Morton Lane, a Paramount Studios lawyer who was a quadriplegic, and whom Mr. Carter had taken care of years earlier as an orderly at New York Hospital (now NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital). Mr. Lane had encouraged Mr. Carter to pursue a writing career, and Mr. Carter dedicated “Nevis Mountain Dew” to him.
In his Times review of that play, Mel Gussow wrote that Mr. Carter had written “dialogue that is hearty, flavorful and lightened with West Indian rhythms and humor.”
“This is a serious play with moments that make us laugh out loud,” Mr. Gussow added, “and, it must be emphasized, this is laughter that rises directly from character.”
Mr. Carter left the Negro Ensemble Company in 1981 to become the first playwright in residence at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. His first play to premiere there, in 1981, was “Dame Lorraine,” the final play of his Caribbean trilogy. It tells the story of a beleaguered family anxiously awaiting the return of the last surviving son, one of eight brothers, who has just been released from prison after 27 years.
Three years later, Victory Gardens mounted the premiere of Mr. Carter’s “House of Shadows,” about two teenage boys who decide to rob the home of two elderly women, only to be surprised by what they encounter.
That was followed by “Shoot Me While I’m Happy” (1986), a window on the dark side of the vaudeville circuit for Black performers, and “Pecong” (1990), perhaps his best-known work, a contemporary retelling of Euripides’ “Medea” set on a fictional Caribbean island.
Mr. Carter in 1976. His work, one critic wrote, provided more insight into Black life “than can be found in a library of sociological treatises.”
Credit...Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times
Credit...Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times
Steve Carter was born Horace E. Carter Jr. on Nov. 7, 1929, in Manhattan. His father was born in New Orleans and grew up in Richmond, Va. His mother, Carmen Annetta Samuels, was from Trinidad. He had two brothers, both of whom died as infants, and a younger sister, June Bentham, who is his only immediate survivor.