First Acts: A Black Playwright Comes of Age

Playwright and television writer Kermit Frazier began life as a precocious Negro boy growing up in southeast Washington, D.C., during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. As a student at an all-Black elementary school, Kermit was selected for a newly formed honors track at a predominantly white secondary school. Traveling a complex path, Kermit tore down segregation barriers, balanced on an academic pedestal, and battled an internal war of denial against his same-sex attractions. This memoir is not a story about a young man rising from ＂＂the hood＂＂ but rather a young Black man struggling with stereotypes, identity, and mild dyslexia while straddling two middle-class worlds, Black and white, and striving not to be everyone’s ＂＂other.＂＂

Kermit Frazier has been a writer as well as a teacher of writing, literature, and theater for nearly forty years. His play, Modern Minstrelsy, was a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. He has written for such television series as Ghostwriter, Gullah Gullah Island, True Colors, The Cosby Mysteries and The Wonder Pets. His articles, reviews, and short stories have appeared in several magazines and journals, including Green Mountains Review, The Chicago Review, American Theatre, Black World, Essence and The New York Times Book Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.