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Purlie Victorious: A Comedy in Three Acts

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A popular and successful 1961 comedy in three acts by the late Ossie Davis soon became a Broadway musical - a satirical farce and a film winning a Tony and Grammy awards. Upon reading this play, you will engage in some vibrant dialogue, outlandish behavior and visionary scenes. It's clear why this play was successful. The book details descriptive antics, costumes and characterization. The reader is provided a clear stage directions.

Set in Georgia in a run-down sharecropper's farmhouse, the plot focuses on a self-ordained preacher, Purlie Victorious Judson, a man in mid-thirties, full of rhetoric, and vitality and hell-bent on bringing freedom to the town by buying the church, Big Bethel. Purlie is intent on making civil rights from civil wrongs. He believes black man will come to power and he makes a stand for the everlasting glory of his people.

The money needs to come from an inheritance controlled by Cap'n Cotichipee, the white plantation owner of everything and everybody. He keeps the town in debt to ensure they will always work and, he carries a bull whip. The $500 inheritance was left by the preacher's wife to Cousin Bee, who is dead.

Now, Purlie schemes to turn an anxious backwoods girl Luttiemae Jenkins into the college-educated Cousin Bee to claim the inheritance so he can open the church and ring Freedom.

What is unique to this book, is a complete list of props needed, act by act, scene by scene costume list, and a stage legend. This play, clearly, is written for stage or screen with its dynamic plot.


"The purpose of Purlie is to point a mocking finger at racial segregation and laugh it out of existence." - Ossie Davis