Dreaming Emmett is the first play by the Nobel-winning African-American writer Toni Morrison. First performed in 1986, the play was commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY-Albany. The world premier of the play was on January 5, 1986, the first at the Market Theater in Albany, New York, and directed by Gilbert Moses. After the first production of the play, Morrison collected all of the video recordings of the play, and copies of the script, and destroyed them (although some critics describe copies existing but not being released by Morrison). Thus all descriptions of the plot are reconstructed from contemporary reviews.
It is a historical play, retelling the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy beaten to death in 1955 after making a remark, and the subsequent trial and acquittal of the men who killed him. Morrison uses Till's story to explore the "contemporary black urban youth['s] disproportionately high rate of death by violence".
The play received mixed reviews in its initial production. The play has a unique style and form. Margaret Croyden of the New York Times notes how the control of Till's imagination on play's elements and complex structural motifs, such as a play within a play, create a "nonnaturalistic" and "nonlinear" narrative.
Development
The play was commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY-Albany to commemorate the first celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The play is Morrison's first attempt at being a playwright. When asked by an interviewer about her transition to writing plays, she said: "I keep asking Bill Kennedy to find one American who wrote novels first and then successful plays. Just one. And neither he nor I could come up with any one American. Even Henry James was a failure. He tried it three times and each time it was worse than the other. But I feel I have a strong point. I write good dialogue. It's theatrical. It moves. It just doesn't hang there." Morrison wrote the play in the midst of developing her 1987 novel Beloved (which would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1988).
The first production of the play was by Morrison's director friend Gilbert Moses, and the set and props were designed by Dale Johnson.