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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Brutal Imagination: The Play

Brutal Imagination: The Play

Paperback

Series: Illuminations

Plays

Publisher Price: $16.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date November 17, 2026

ISBN10: 1636702678
ISBN13: 9781636702674
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Published: Nov 17 2026
Pages: 112
Language: English

Eady fuses headlines and history with language that is a field holler, a blues shout, a hip hop rap that combusts inside the soul and keep on burning. --Bebe Moore Campbell

This spare and haunting play takes its inspiration from the case of Susan Smith, a white woman who murdered her two young children by strapping them into the back seat of her car and pushing it into a lake. In statements to the police, Smith claimed she had been carjacked by a young Black man. In Brutal Imagination, adapted from his National Book Award-finalist poetry cycle, Cornelius Eady conjures this imaginary Black man as Mr. Zero, who appears in order to to get things done when white people need a scapegoat for the consequences of their own actions. As Smith spins her story into more and more elaborate designs, Mr. Zero begins to rebel against his appointed task, leading Smith (and us) slowly closer to the dark secret at the center of the play.

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