The First Breeze Of Summer
by Leslie Lee


Highlights
Synopsis
This striking story of a middle class Black family in a small Northeastern city is told on two levels: events that transpire on one hot June weekend and flashbacks to the memories of the visiting grandmother as a young woman.
She recalls the three men, two black and one white, who are the fathers of her three children.
A resourceful woman, she feels some regrets, no shame and feels she has had a useful life.
Lou, an oversensitive boy who is about to graduate from high school, worships the grandmother.
The resolution of his problems and his acceptance of his sexuality and blackness form the backbone of the play.
Press Reviews
"The people emerge as richly complex human beings... Storytelling with a passion ... [that has] all the old fashioned virtues."
— The New York Times
"Leslie Lee explains the revealing of secrets as the seeking of light; like trying to fill the void between reality and God's will"
— The New York Theatre Review
"Delicate[ly] balance[s]...religion and reality, human flaws and dignity, humor, tenderness and pathos."
— Variety
Characters
| Character |
|---|
Nate Edwards black male, in his early to middle 20s |
Lou Edwards Nate's brother, seventeen or eighteen |
Aunt Edna black female, in her mid-fifties |
Milton Edwards Edna's brother, father of Lou and Nate, mid-fifties |
Hattie Milton's wife, her early to mid-fifties |
Lucretia the young Gremmar, her late teens |
Sam Green black male, his mid to late twenties |
Briton Woodward white male, his late teens or very early twenties |
Revered Mosely black male, his early sixties |
Hope Nate's girlfriend, black, her early twenties |
Joe Drake white male, in his mid-forties |
Gloria Townes black female, in her late thirties |
Harper Edwards black male, in hid mid-thirties |
Gremmar Milton and Edna's mother, in her 70s |
Publication
The First Breeze Of Summer is a American play written by Leslie Lee and published by Samuel French in New York (1975).
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Buy Play
Paperback
Samuel French · 1975 · 108 pp
Performance Rights
Restrictions: Major Markets Plus (US) / Standard Plus Add'l Postcodes (UK)
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