Search results
Mental or emotional distress; worry
- mental or emotional distress; worry:[ uncountable] a life full of trouble. [ plural] He's got troubles on his mind.
People also ask
What is trouble in mind about?
What does troubled mean?
What does trouble mean in a sentence?
Is trouble in mind a good play?
Learn the definition of 'Trouble in Mind'. Check out the pronunciation, synonyms and grammar. Browse the use examples 'Trouble in Mind' in the great English corpus.
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
Childress was born on October 12, 1920 (some sources say 1916), in Charleston, South Carolina. When she was about five years old, her parents separated, and she was sent to live in New YorkCity with her maternal grandmother, Eliza White. Reared in Harlem, White encouraged her granddaughter’s creative side. As a child, Childress improvised plays wit...
Act I
Trouble in Mind opens inside the entrance of a Broadway theater in New York City. Wiletta Mayer, a middle-aged, African-American actress, bangs on the door and finally lets herself in. She scolds the elderly doorman, Henry, for not letting her in out of the cold, until she sees the stage. While she is enraptured by the sight of the theater, Henry recognizes her from when he was an electrician on a show twenty years ago. When Henry leaves, John Nevins, a young African-American actor, enters. H...
Act II
Three mornings later, Manners and Eddie are rehearsing with a new addition, white actor Bill O’Wray. O’Wray plays Renard, the father figure in the play, and is passionately reading a long-winded speech from the play. When he is done, Bill seems unsure of himself. Bill offers suggestions to Manners about the play. Manners goes on about his personal problems, then asks a favor of Bill. He tells Bill to stop leaving at lunch hour because it looks like he does not want to eat with the black membe...
Millie Davis
Millie is a thirty-five-year-old African-American actress. She is married and says she does not need to work. She displays more wealth than the other African-American characters; she wears a mink coat and an expensive watch. Like Wiletta, she is conscious of how she acts and what she says around whites, and she tries to guide John’s behavior. Millie also does not like the kind of roles she must play because of her race. She says at one point that she did not tell her relatives about the last...
Sheldon Forrester
Sheldon is an elderly African-American character actor and aspiring songwriter. Like Millie and Wiletta, he is conscious about how he acts and what he says around the white people involved in the production. He also tries to advise John about his interactions with whites, especially Judy. Sheldon, more than Millie and Wiletta, wants everyone to get along and not fight amongst themselves. But he also questions certain aspects of Chaos in Bellevillein a non-confrontational manner. Sheldon is th...
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
1. Trouble in Mindwas filmed by the BBC as a television movie.
Race and Racism
Every aspect of Trouble in Mind is touched by race and/or racism. Each African-American character discusses his or her experience as a black actor in a business dominated by whites. In the beginning, Millie, Wiletta, and Sheldon try to guide John, the neophyte, about how to behave around their white counterparts. Sheldon and Millie advocate getting along and not getting too close Wiletta does as well, until the end of the play when she can no longer tolerate the condescending attitude of the...
Sexism
While racism is explored in an explicit manner, sexism is much more implicit in the text of Trouble in Mind.In the beginning of the play, for example, John is not completely comfortable with the advice Wiletta gives him. It is partially due to racial concerns, but also because of what she is telling him. Most of the sexism, however, is focused on the character of Manners, the white director. He treats the female cast members differently than their male counterparts. For example, Manners invad...
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY
1. Compare and contrast Wiletta in Trouble in Mind to Jackie “Moms” Mabley in Childress’s 1987 play Moms: A Praise Play for a Black Comedienne.Both characters are black actresses, though Moms was a real person. Discuss Childress’s depiction of their professional lives and the choices they made. 2. Research the social conditions surrounding African Americans in the United States in the mid-1950s. How does Trouble in Mindreflect these conditions? How does Childress depict them within the play?...
Setting
Trouble in Mind takes place in New York City in fall of 1957. By the author’s own estimation, the play is a drama-comedy. All of the action is confined to the stage of a Broadway theater where the rehearsals for Chaos in Bellevilletake place. The stage is littered with props from previous productions, including tables and benches where the characters sit. Because the play is set in a Broadway theater, some of the black actors, especially Sheldon, feel that they must act the way they believe w...
Play within a Play
Trouble in Mind focuses on the rehearsals for a Broadway play, Chaos in Belleville. In Chaos, Job (played by John) is a young man living in the South who has been called up for military service. He wants to vote, and his actions in this matter lead to a lynch mob coming after him. His family work as sharecroppers. His mother Ruby (played by Wiletta) sends him to his death, believing a lynch mob will show him mercy. Sheldon plays Job’s father, Sam, while Millie’s character is named Petunia. So...
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are used in several different ways in Trouble in Mind. Many of the black actors feel that the characters they portray in Chaos in Belleville are stereotypical. These characters are naive and child-like, wearing cheap clothes and using cliched language. Sheldon’s character Sam just sits and whittles a stick in several scenes. Ruby does not protect her son but listens to the advice of Renard and his daughter. Only Job seems strong and more original, but he is murdered by the end of...
In the mid-1950s, the United States was a world leader on several fronts. Home to many scientific and technological innovations, America was also one of the principal players in the high stakes arms race with the Soviet Union. The so-called Cold War
Critics of the original production of Trouble in Mind found much to praise. Harry Raymond of The Daily Worker wrote, “Trouble in Mind is a play with an important point of view about the problems of Negro actors in the theatre. She has written about it with a brightness and compassion that sends the audience home with some sound thoughts on one of t...
A. Petrusso
Petrusso explores how the play being rehearsed in Trouble in Mind, entitled Chaos in Belleville, reflects Trouble’s tensions and characters, especially Wiletta. In Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind a racially mixed group of actors and a white director and writer are rehearsing a Broadway play that is ostensibly anti-racism and anti-lynching. The white actors and director believe that Chaos in Belleville will impart a positive message of racial tolerance to its audience; they believe they are...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf,a play by Notozake Shange published in 1977. The play concerns African-American women who are fighting for their integrity and self-respect. 2. Florence, a play by Childress which was first produced in 1949. The play explores racism in the South under Jim Crow laws. The title character is an actress who lives in New York City and has a hard time finding work. 3. The First Black Actors On the Great White Wayis a nonficti...
Claire Messud
Messud reviews a revival production of Childress’s play. While noting that many of the playwright’s themes seem dated, “the play is not without resonances and relevance today.” “Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of reality... the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.” Thus wrote James Baldwin in 1963, in...
Abramson, Doris E. Negro Playwrights in the American Theatre, 1925-1959, Columbia UniversityPress, 1969, pp. 188-205. “CHILDRESS INSISTS IN THIS DRAMA THAT BLACKS MUST MAINTAIN THEIR INTEGRITY AND IDENTITY IN THE THEATER, REFUSING TO ACCEPT ROLES THAT CHARACTERIZE THEM AS EXOTIC OR HALF-HUMAN CREATURES, REGARDLESS OF THE MONETARY LOSSES” Austin, Ga...
Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth. “Alice Childress: A Pioneering Spirit” in Sage,Spring 1987, pp. 66-68. Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth. Their Place on the Stage: Black Women Playwrights in America,Greenwood Press, 1988, pp. 28-34. Bryer, Jackson R., editor. “Alice Childress,” in The Playwright’s Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Dramatists,Rutgers...
The meaning of IN MIND is in one's thoughts. How to use in mind in a sentence.
Mar 9, 2011 · 2. If you or someone you know has been troubled enough to enter a psychiatrist's office, she or he has probably emerged with a prescription and a diagnosis, possibly even a numerically coded label ...
IPA guide. Other forms: troubled; troubles; troubling. Trouble is anything that causes difficulty, worry, and inconvenience, or that prevents you from doing something. If you have trouble getting along with a classmate, it is hard to be friendly with him or her.
Nov 18, 2021 · Sara Krulwich/The New York Times. By Jesse Green. Nov. 18, 2021. NYT Critic’s Pick. So far this season, five plays by Black authors have opened on Broadway, each with something urgent to say.
Trouble definition: to disturb the mental calm and contentment of; worry; distress; agitate.. See examples of TROUBLE used in a sentence.
