Trenton, New Jersey – Two of the most significant artistic collaborations – and subsequent rifts – of the Harlem Renaissance are finding new life on stage this month. David Robson’s Muleheaded, or Zora and Langston Write a Play, currently running at Passage Theatre through , dramatizes the fraught attempt by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes to adapt Hurston’s short story “Mule Bone” into a groundbreaking theatrical work.
The project, funded by the generous patronage of Charlotte van der Veer Quick Mason – affectionately known as “the Godmother” within the Harlem Renaissance community – quickly unraveled, leaving a lasting impact on both the artists involved and the broader artistic ecosystem. As Brishen Miller, artistic director of Passage Theatre, notes, “Many writers who have written about the Harlem Renaissance, as well as Langston Hughes himself, said their friendship both began and ended the Harlem Renaissance.”
The timing of this revival is particularly resonant. The Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of Black artistic and intellectual life, gained significant momentum in the mid-1920s, with 1925 often cited as a pivotal year thanks to the literary prizes awarded by Opportunity magazine and the publication of Alain Locke’s influential anthology, The New Negro. Hughes and Hurston first connected at the Opportunity awards dinner, quickly forging a creative partnership that extended to co-founding the magazine Fire!! with Wallace Thurman and a memorable road trip from Alabama to New York City in 1927.
Mason’s financial support was instrumental in enabling the Mule Bone project, covering not only the fees for Hurston and Hughes but also the services of a typist, Louise Thompson, to record their collaborative writing process. Robson’s play focuses on this intimate dynamic, exploring the tensions and secrets that emerged as the project progressed. “What comes from intimacy,” Robson explained, “is tension and secrets, telling one person one thing but maybe telling someone else another—that creates an engine for drama.”
The collaboration ultimately collapsed amidst disputes over authorship and credit, fueled by envy and resentment. This breakdown effectively severed the friendship between Hurston and Hughes and, according to Miller, “rippled out” through their tight-knit artistic circles, arguably marking a turning point in the Harlem Renaissance. The play itself, Mule Bone, wouldn’t see a full production during their lifetimes, though a version was eventually staged at Lincoln Center in 1991.
The significance of Mule Bone extends beyond its unfinished state. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. Wrote, the play was conceived as a deliberate counterpoint to the minstrel shows of the era, aiming to reclaim Southern archetypes from decades of racist caricature. “Hurston and Hughes believed the time had come to lift the veil that separates Black culture from white,” Gates observed, “allowing Black art to speak in its own voice, without prior restraint.”
The legacy of Hurston and Hughes continues to inspire contemporary playwrights. George C. Wolfe adapted three of Hurston’s stories into Spunk in 1990, and more recently, Tamilla Woodard staged Hurston’s “lost” play Spunk at Yale Rep. James Ijames is currently adapting Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God for the stage, and Hughes’s Black Nativity remains a perennial favorite during the holiday season.
Robson’s Muleheaded offers a unique perspective on this pivotal moment in American theatre history, focusing on the personal dynamics that underpinned the creative process. The production features strong performances from Constance Thompson as Zora and Anthony Vaughn Merchant as Langston, and benefits from smooth direction by Miller and expert design by Jaelyn Alston-Frye. The play’s location, Trenton, New Jersey, is a short drive from Hughes’s former home in Westfield, adding another layer of resonance to the production.
Elsewhere on the New York stage, Daniel Fish’s Kramer/Fauci, currently playing at NYU Skirball Center through , presents a different kind of “historical frenemy” dynamic. The play recreates a 1993 C-SPAN interview between playwright and activist Larry Kramer and Dr. Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Health, during the height of the AIDS crisis. The production utilizes in-ear technology to allow actors Will Brill (as Fauci) and Thomas Jay Ryan (as Kramer) to deliver the original dialogue in tempo with the original broadcast.
Fish was drawn to the performative aspect of the interview, noting that both Kramer and Fauci were acutely aware of the roles they were playing. “That TV interview is an act of performance from those guys,” he explained. “Not that it’s false, not that they’re lying or pretending, but in the sense that, these are the roles, the points of view they adopt.”
The play’s timing is particularly poignant, given ongoing debates about public health and trust in institutions. Kramer repeatedly demanded that President Clinton invoke “emergency powers” to combat AIDS, a tactic that resonates with current controversies surrounding the use of such powers by recent administrations. Fish emphasizes the importance of the ability to disagree respectfully, a skill he believes has been lost in contemporary discourse.
Beyond these two productions, the American theatre landscape is brimming with new works. Highlights include Jacob Perkins’s The Dinosaurs at Playwrights Horizons, Elaine Jarvik’s Borrowed Babies at American Lives Theatre, and Beth Hyland’s Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia at the Geffen Playhouse. These premieres, and many others across the country, demonstrate a renewed interest in exploring complex themes and challenging conventional narratives.
