Crumbs from the Table of Joy

Godfrey, recently widowed, is spellbound by charismatic preacher, Father Divine, while his teen daughters, Ernestine and Ermina, find refuge from the racial prejudices of 1950s Brooklyn in Hollywood movies. With the arrival of their fiercely independent Aunt Lily, things suddenly change: Godfrey marries a white woman displaced from war-torn Germany, Ermina discovers boys, and Ernestine is torn between communism and bebop. From the pen of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, the play examines a family’s process of grief and healing in a decade of political, racial, and social upheaval in the United States.