House lights down in a small Greenwich Village room, 1955, and Trouble in Mind opens off-Broadway: a Black actress at rehearsal for a play that keeps talking down to her. Cut to the table with the Broadway offer on it and the rewrites asked for first. She left the pen capped, and the play didn't make it uptown until 2021, long after her. Born in Charleston in 1916, and not in a hurry.
Constance, the uncapped pen is the whole thing — she kept the rewrites unmade and the play waited sixty-six years for a Broadway house. As it happens, she also spent years testifying and organising on behalf of working actors, which tends to make a person good at saying no to a table.
Her A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich, 1973, got pulled off shelves in a few places and ended up argued over in court; we keep it in stock, and it goes out steadily to people who read it once at thirteen. I have two copies at the moment; one was loved very hard.