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Career
[edit]Robbie McCauley is not only a playwright, but also an actor, writer, and director. Her involvement in theater began during the late 1960's, when she worked as an apprentice at the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. Since the 1970's she has been working playwright, director, and actor in many New York-based projects, both on and off Broadway, in the US and abroad. Her first, and most successful work, Sally's Rape, won an OBIE award in 1991 for best new American play and a Bessie Award in 1990. Her other major works include Sugar, Mississippi Freedom, Quabbin Dance and Indian Blood. As an actress, she is known for her performance in Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf on Broadway.
Her work deals with themes of race and racism in the USA. Robbie is eager to confront the hard issues of racism, and her work often facilitates dialogues on race between races in the community.
Outside of the theater, McCauley has taught at City College of New York, Hunter College, Mount Holyoke College, University of Massachusetts, and Emerson College.
Awards
[edit]Robbie McCauley was awarded the IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Solo Performance.
She was selected as a 2012 United States Artists Ford Foundation Fellow.
She received an OBIE Award and a Bessie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Performance for her play, Sally's Rape.
In 2012 she received a $50,000 USA Ford Fellow for ?Theater Arts award.
Notable Works
[edit]Sugar
[edit]Sugar is an auto-biographical piece about McCauley's life as a diabetic. The story is heartfelt, personal and vivid in detail as McCauley tells and shows the audience some of the difficulties and complexities of living with diabetes as a black woman working in the theater and elsewhere. She makes a powerful parallel between sugar and slavery: both have chained her. The premiere performance of the piece was put on by ArtsEmerson, an organization at Emerson College, directed by Maureen Shea.
Mississippi Freedom-Turf-The Other Weapon
[edit]Mississippi Freedom is the first in a trilogy of theater works that McCauley created in the 1990's that highlight race relations in the US during the 60's and 70's. In collaboration with The Arts Company as well as local artists, the pieces are mixed media, incorporating elements of music, audience participation, and more. Mississippi Freedom is centered around the fight for the right to vote. It toured around the state of Mississippi in 1992, and was presented in New York in 1993, and Texas in 1996. Mississippi Freedom is followed by Turf: A Conversational Concert in Black and White, which is centered around the Boston school busing controversy. It was performed in four different neighborhood locations around Boston in 1993. The last piece in the trilogy is titled The Other Weapon, and tells the stories of the Black Panther Party, community empowerment, and law enforcement in Los Angeles. It was shown at four locations in LA in 1994.
Quabbin Dance
[edit]Quabbin Dance is based upon an actual events that took place in Western Massachusetts in the late 1930's when four towns were flooded in order to provide a reservoir, the Quabbin, to provide Boston's water supply. It was performed at Mount Holyoke College.