WALLACE THURMAN’S
FIRE!!

Written and adapted by Marilyn Campbell-Lowe and Paul Oakley Stovall

In 1927, FIRE!!, a quarterly “Devoted To Younger Negro Artists” was published in Harlem and changed the future of American literature. Including illustrations, poems, essays, short stories and plays, FIRE!! was the first all-Black magazine, by a young group of writers and artists including Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lewis Grandison Alexander, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. This theatrical happening will weave together the lives of legendary giants as they speak their incendiary stories, make explosive music, dance, debate, collaborate and celebrate their work from FIRE!!

OCT 8 - NOV 2, 2025

Adapting a revolutionary magazine into a play

Fire!: Devoted to Younger Negro Artists imagines the story of Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Richard Bruce Nugent after the publication of their magazine, Fire!, and before the remaining copies went up in flames. The play centers around Wallace Thurman, who owes the publishing house $2000. In a desperate attempt to appeal to potential white patrons, he and his fellow editors stage a reading and performance of the play, shorts stories, and poems found in the magazine. Thurman, in particular, is feeling the heat because he, alone, does not have the money to pay the publishing company, but neither do his fellow writers, even though he would like to believe they might have money to spare. As the night of performances progresses, with little money raised, Thurman’s fear of being indebted only intensifies as the performance of Richard Bruce Nugent’s unapologetically queer story approaches.

The play begins in the lobby with Thurman and the other editors welcoming their patrons and potential patrons to the evening’s performance. As the audience moves into the theater, the stage serves both as a backstage where the stressfulness of the evening unfolds, and as the front of house where the performances take place.

The central stories told and performed for the front of house are Zore Neal Hurston’s play Color Struck, Gwendolyn Bennett’s short story “Wedding Day,” Wallace Thurman’s short story “Cordelia the Crude,” Bruce Nugent’s short story “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade,” Hurston’s short story “Sweat,” and Arthur Huff Fauset’s essay “Intelligencia.”

Color Struck centers around Emma, a dark complexioned black woman and her light complexioned boyfriend, John. Emma, convinced that John is going to leave her for a light-skinned woman, refuses to attend the cake-walk competition with him, even though they are guaranteed to win. They separate, but John finds her twenty years later living in abject poverty with her sick daughter. He has been thinking about Emma all this time and wants to be with her. When he discovers she has a sick daughter, he encourages her to get a doctor, but she never retrieves the doctor because she is convinced John is attracted to her child, given that she has a light complexion.
“Wedding Day” takes place in Paris and follows a black boxer, John, who has come to Paris in hopes of escaping the racism of America. He swears he will never date a white woman, but that changes when he meets Mary, a prostitute. Her claims of loving him regardless of his race are foiled on his wedding day, when she calls off the wedding because his race is inferior to hers. Her rejection undermines the positive sense of self Paul was just beginning to form. Bennett was interested in highlighting the fact that racism exists in other countries, like Paris where many black folks resided as expats.
In “Cordelia the Crude,” Thurman tells the story of Cordelia, a promiscuous young woman, who enjoys her sexual encounters at the Roosevelt Theatre, a theater that catered to black audiences with shows and black cinema. Cordelia’s seemingly innocent exploits are given a name six months later when she meets the Dicty Kid. After encountering her at the theater, she takes him home with her, and upon leaving, he hands her two dollars. When the Dicty Kid meets Cordelia six months later, she has lost her innocence and become a more hardened prostitute.
“Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” is a story told in stream-of-consciousness. As a gay writer, Nugent celebrated homosexual love, something that would have been taboo in the 1920s. His story is perhaps even more taboo because the central character in the story, Alex, has two lovers, one male (beauty) and one female (Melva), and the male lover is white. The story is not plot-driven. Instead, the central character tries to understand his polyamorous love. How is it that he can be in love with two very different people? And yet, he is.
“Sweat” is a story about domestic violence. Delia is financially independent from her husband, Sykes, which leads to his abuse, verbally and physically, of her. Delia is destroyed emotionally and physically from his abuse, and feeling emboldened Sykes takes a lover whom he flaunts around town. Eventually, Sykes wants to leave Delia for this other woman, but Delia won’t let him. In hopes of killing her, Sykes brings a rattlesnake into the home and plants it in a place where he thinks she will surely encounter it. However, Delia escapes the snake and for the first time becomes angry. Her anger liberates her from the oppressive Sykes who ends up getting killed by the snake.
Fauset’s essay, “Intelligencia,” is a condemnation of the black elite whom he believed were more interested in assimilating into white society. In their attempt to assimilate, he argues they are no better than the racist white people that work to keep black folks from progressing.

-Megan Schumacher, Dramaturg