High Yello Rose and Other Texas Plays
by Sterling Houston
9780916727543 Cost: $17.95
Paperback with French flaps , 264 pages
Two secure methods to shop!
Edited by Sandra M. Mayo, Ph.D.
Dr. Mayo holds degrees from Syracuse University, Buffalo State, and the State University at Buffalo. She is currently the Director of Multicultural and Gender Studies and Associate Professor of Theatre at Texas State University-San Marcos. Her publications include editing and writing the introduction to Myth, Magic, and Farce: Four Multicultural Plays by Sterling Houston, published by the University of North Texas Press in 2005.
High Yello Rose and Other Texas Plays highlights Sterling Houston's
lifetime (1945-2006), but also goes back over 100 years to the fight for Texas and the early years of the 19th and 20th century in San Antonio — the Alamo City. High Yello Rose takes us back to 1835-36 in the midst of the salient events of the Texas Revolution. Living Graves starts in the early years of the 21st century but reflects back to the early 1800s in developing San Antonio. Miss Bowden's Dream starts at the turn of the century in 1902 when Miss Artemesia Bowden began academic leadership of St. Philip's Episcopal School and moves forward in time to the 1940s when St. Philip's joins the Alamo Community College District. Cameoland and Driving Wheel turn to the post world war years of the 1940s, while Black Lily and White Lily highlights the pre-civil rights era of the 1950s. La Frontera brings to the fore the post-segregation, post civil rights era of the 1990s.
Over these seven plays—farce, domestic tragedy, domestic magical realism, and musical docudramas, Sterling Houston becomes, as one reviewer called him, a "story teller/history teller." The body of Houston's work shows him as first and foremost a postmodern avant-garde satirist influenced by the eclectic, technical pastiche, anything-goes, rebellious and extravagant flare of artists working in America and abroad from the 1960s to the present.
Over these seven plays—farce, domestic tragedy, domestic magical realism, and musical docudramas, Sterling Houston becomes, as one reviewer called him, a "story teller/history teller." The body of Houston's work shows him as first and foremost a postmodern avant-garde satirist influenced by the eclectic, technical pastiche, anything-goes, rebellious and extravagant flare of artists working in America and abroad from the 1960s to the present.
Critical Praise for High Yello Rose and Other Texas Plays
- Sterling Houston's High Yello Rose brings new meaning to "Remember the Alamo". His stories are the histories America forgets.
— Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street and Caramelo
- About the play "High Yello Rose" (title work of this collection):
"Riotious . . . deliciously wicked."
— Mike Greenberg, San Antonio Express-News columnist
- High Yello Rose and Other Texas Plays is a panoramic knock-out. Sterling Houston covers such vast emotional and historical territory in this collection that I found myself repeatedly stunned. It's a real pleasure to feel your heart stretched so deftly. These plays hold ample reason for belly-laughs, deep sorrows, and flashes of rage -- sometimes within the same scene! It is extremely rare to find a playwright who is both unflinching in his socio-political critique and, at the same time, so much fun to read. I am amazed that his work isn't more widely known and produced.
— Tim Seibles, author of Hammerlock
- Until Professor Sandra Mayo sent me a prepublication copy of High Yello Rose and Other Texas Plays, I thought that Ted Shine was the only black Texan playwright worth reading. Surprise! Sterling Houston before his death in 2006 wrote 33 plays, nearly all of them produced. The seven plays in this volume focus on Texas history as retold by Houston in a manner and style all his own -- a style at once comic, satirical, seriously dramatic, and true to folklore history. If you read the first play, "High Yello Rose," you'll read the other six....
— James V. Hatch, Professor Emeritus of History, City University of New York. Co-author with Errol G. Hill of A History of African American Theater
- Dr. Sandra Mayo's insightful assessment of the rich and vital history of San Antonio's black East Side community in Sterling Houston's High Yellow Rose & Other Texas Plays is exemplary. Mayo cites the playwright's thesis that "history is mythology; mythology is history ..." as a prelude to the record of Houston and his contribution to the arts in Texas, and to illuminate these seven compelling works by the Alamo City's favorite playwright. The plays span nearly two-centuries: from an irreverent revisionist piece of history set during the Texas Revolution; to a flashback from the present to the 1800s with historical figures returning from their graves to tell their stories; to Ms. Artemesia Bowden realizing her dream in 1902 to found and head (for half a century) what became St. Philip's College in San Antonio; to the life of an "everyday Joe" in the 1940s who finds solace and amusement in the local cinema as an escape from his social milieu; to the author's coming to terms with his own sexuality during the mid-1960s; to a domestic piece on race relations in the 1950s that looks at the interdependency between a black employee and a white employer; to the depiction in the 1990s of similarities among the Mexican American and African American cultures that enrich them both. The various character types range from the historic to the visionary to the everyday, and are emblematic icons of race relations in America. They enlighten and entertain with a ting of music and ethnic humor that stimulate intellectual discourse and curiosity. This delightful and amusing anthology will be extremely useful for theatre scholars, students and academicians of African American drama.
— Anthony D. Hill, Professor, Ohio State University. Author of The Historical Dictionary of African American Theater
About This Author
Read more about Sterling Houston HERE.