Bullins, Ed (1935-2021), was an African American playwright. His plays range from tragicomedies about Black life in the United States to attacks on white society. Some of Bullins’s plays are realistic in form, and others are extravagant fantasies.
In the 1960’s, Bullins began a cycle (series) of 20 plays about Black Americans in modern urban society. Several of the plays feature Cliff Dawson, a young Black man, and Steve Benson, his half brother. In The Corner (1969), Dawson develops from a ghetto street person into a reluctant family man. In the play In the Wine Time (1968), he takes the blame for a pointless murder committed by his wife’s nephew. In In New England Winter (1967), Benson needlessly kills a friend. Bullins describes Benson’s sexual involvement with women in The Duplex (1970). The Fabulous Miss Marie (1971) focuses on one of Benson’s girlfriends who appeared in The Duplex.
Bullins’s noncycle plays include Clara’s Ole Man (1965), which deals with life in a Philadelphia slum, and Goin’ a Buffalo (1968), a story about prostitutes. The Gentleman Caller (1969) and The Pig Pen (1970) treat racial conflicts in a nonrealistic manner.
Bullins also wrote poetry, short stories collected in The Hungered Ones (1971), and a novel called The Reluctant Rapist (1973). He edited a number of anthologies of modern Black plays. He also taught theater at a number of workshops, colleges, and universities.
Edward Artie Bullins was born on July 2, 1935, in Philadelphia. He became a playwright during the Black Arts Movement of the mid-1960’s to mid-1970’s. The writers of the Black Arts Movement rejected traditional literary techniques and themes and developed their own forms of self-expression. Bullins died on Nov. 13, 2021.
