Fireflies (Love)
by Donja R. Love

Name: Fireflies (Love)
Brand: Donja R. Love
SKU: 9780822240211
Rating: 3.97 (30 reviews)

Off-Broadway

Fireflies (Love) Book Cover — Fireflies (Love) Cover

Highlights

Female

Male

105 mins 1960s Role(s) for Black Actor(s) Interior Set Period Costumes

Synopsis

Somewhere in the Jim Crow South, the sky is on fire.

A pregnant Olivia’s fierce speech writing is the true force behind her charismatic husband, Charles, and his successful Movement, galvanizing people to march towards freedom.

When four little girls are bombed in a church, Olivia and Charles’ marriage is threatened – as this tragedy and years of civil unrest leave Olivia believing that “this world ain’t no place to raise a colored child.”

This play is part two of a trilogy that explores Queer love through Black History (slavery, the Civil Rights movement, the Black Lives Matter movement).

Part one is the play Sugar in Our Wounds .

Press Reviews

"This is language as lush catharsis, language as endurance, language as empowerment… It feels like going to church."
— New York Magazine

"We are used to seeing Martin Luther King Jr. fictionalized… But we haven’t seen much onstage about Coretta. In Fireflies, playwright Donja R. Love daringly sets out to correct that, subverting the standard portrait of a great-man marriage by making the wife infinitely more interesting than the husband… Perhaps it will not spoil too much to note that Fireflies is the second play in a trilogy [described] as an exploration of queer love through black history… I was moved by Mr. Love’s willingness to imagine, amid the terror of the times, other kinds of lives than the ones that history books offer."
— The New York Times

"A jaw-dropping and explosively dramatic two-hander… A powerful tale of love flashing its light in the dark… Fireflies is a drama of extraordinary depth and complexity… Love thrillingly crafts an intimate story that comes to feel cosmic in its enormity by the end."
— TheaterMania

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Charles M, Black, early thirties; Olivia’s husband, he’s a preacher. Though he drinks a lot, it’s something about him that we like – that makes us feel like he’s the type of man that can lead people through the smoke and into the promised land.	male	—	M, Black, early thirties; Olivia’s husband, he’s a preacher. Though he drinks a lot, it’s something about him that we like – that makes us feel like he’s the type of man that can lead people through the smoke and into the promised land.
Olivia W, Black, early thirties; she’s weary – it’s as if she’s carrying the weight of this fiery world. She writes a lot, she smokes a lot, she stares off a lot, she hears bombs a lot.	female	—	W, Black, early thirties; she’s weary – it’s as if she’s carrying the weight of this fiery world. She writes a lot, she smokes a lot, she stares off a lot, she hears bombs a lot.