Dictionary of the Black Theatre: Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Selected Harlem Theatre

of John Cort. He wrote the books for This and That and Baby Blues ( 1919), two black shows, as well as the lyrics for Go-Go and Sharlee ( 1923), performed by whites. His final Broadway contribution was My Magnolia^* ( 1926) which he wrote and directed.

Reference: " Alexander Rogers" File, PFL/TC.

ROLLE, ESTHER ( 1922- ). Rolle, television's "Florida" from Maude and Good Times (Columbia Broadcasting System) first appeared Off- Broadway as a replacement in The Blacks^* in 1962. Her first major role, "Miss Maybelle" in Don't Play Us Cheap!^* ( 1972), attracted the attention of Norman Lear, and she was lured to Hollywood. She also participated in several plays of the early years of the Negro Ensemble Company.^*

Credits: Happy Ending^*/ Day of Absence^* ( 1965); Summer of the Seventeenth Doll^*; God Is a (Guess What?)^* ( 1968); An Evening of One Acts*; Song of the Lusitanian Bogey^*; Man Better Man^* ( 1969); Day of Absence; Akokawe^* ( 1970); Rosalee Pritchett^*; The Dream on Monkey Mountain^*; Ride a Black Horse^* ( 1971); A Ballet Behind the Bridge*; Don't Play Us Cheap! ( 1972); Horowitz and Mrs. Washington ( 1980).

Reference: " Esther Rolle" File, PFL/TC.

SANCHEZ, SONIA ( 1934- ). Sanchez was perhaps the most significant woman playwright in the Black Revolutionary Theatre Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States. She was born on September 9, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama, to Wilson and Lena (Jones) Driver. She started writing poetry as a child. Sanchez received her B.A. degree from Hunter College in 1955 and did further study in 1957 at New York University. In 1972, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wilberforce University. The mother of three children, Sanchez has combined a busy career as a teacher, lecturer, editor, writer, and poet.

Sanchez turned to plays as a form of expression because they permitted the expansion of ideas beyond the confines of a poem. Most of her plays are short and range from the starkly realistic to those that employ symbolism and poetry. She has experimented with abbreviated, slashed, and fused words as well as with irregular capitalization and punctuation. Her language is that of the people whom she is portraying: often men and women who, from their spiritually impoverished lives shaped by an environment of oppression, are struggling to create new and improved existences that will be informed by a high level of black consciousness.

-246-